Pictures from London

Piccadilly Circus is like the Times Square of England.

Big Ben, looking gorgeous. 

Guards leaving Buckingham Palace after a hard day of standing around.

Wellington Arch, where our free tour began. Too bad I only recognized this place because of the movie The Parent Trap.

The Tower Bridge at night. 

Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross. There was literally a line to take pictures. I'm wearing the Hufflepuff scarf. Yeah!

Posing outside of the Tower Bridge. The Tower of London is to the right. 

London for the Weekend

Hi! It is 1:05 PM here in Canterbury and 8:05 AM back in Indiana. I returned last night around midnight from my weekend trip to London, and what an amazing time I had! I saw a lot of London's main sites: Piccadilly Circus, the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye, plus I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery. London is so beautiful, much more so than I expected. Coming over the bridge into London on the bus literally took my breath away. Big Ben is so pretty; pictures don't do it justice. It has gold on it, and the sun shines off of it in the loveliest way.

 Amazingly, I didn't spend that much money. Spending my two nights in London in a hostel cost about 25 pounds, or about 41 US dollars. The hostel, Equity Point, is located in Piccadilly, a bit of a hike from London, but who can beat that price? It was nice, clean, and quiet, and I didn't get stabbed by any strangers in my eight-person room, so A+. Granted, I was staying with five other people I know, but, still, that two-person remainder could have been sketchy. The two other people ended up being French girls who called us names in French, but, eh, could have been worse, yeah? I would highly recommend the hostel to anyone looking to save some dough while in the Big Smoke.

To further constrain my budget, I tried to spend below 10 pounds at every meal, and I limited myself to only a few souvenirs. I spent most of my money in a teashop at the Piccadilly Circus called Fortnum and Mason because, well, when in Rome... My friends and I especially saved a lot of money by doing a free tour of London offered by this company. If anyone is interested, I can send you the name. The tour lasted 2 and half hours and covered a lot of the city's main attractions. Our tour guide, Steph, was from Amsterdam and has been a London resident for eight years. She told us that she majored in theatre in college, and you could totally tell. She was spunky and told great stories about London's attractions. Like, for instance, Buckingham Palace used to have the worst security. One time in the 80s, a curious, drunk Irish man stumbled into Buckingham Palace to see if he could spend the night there and ended up in the Queen's bedroom. The security system was undergoing maintenance at the time, so when the Queen pressed the panic button on her bedside table, it didn't work. She ended up calling her butler for a cigarette, and since she doesn't smoke, the butler knew something was up. Everything ended up fine, obviously, but since then Buckingham Palace has undergone some serious external renovations, like the addition of an electrified fence.

On a side note, the guards of these palaces and headquarters are ridiculous, and they know it. We visited Prince Charles's house, and there were two guards outside of it, doing their thing. One guard straight-up giggled when we started taking pictures of him. Newbie? We also saw guards change shifts here, and the amount of pomp and circumstance that comes with this simple action is, frankly, silly.

With London off my bucket list, my friends and I are now looking into going to Bath for a day or two sometime soon. I've heard it's a nice, little town, a change of pace after London. Thank you for reading! Pictures are above.

PS- Canterbury 2013 friends, if you're reading this, you're the best. You made London fantastic!

Canterbury: The Town

'Ello! It's 5:19 PM in Canterbury and 12:19 PM back home. I just got back from a day of shopping in Canterbury. I was supposed to go to Dover today, but the trip was cancelled because it's snowing. Not that there is a copious amount of snow here or anything; it's just that the British cannot handle having any amount of snow on the ground. It's been snowing all day, making me fully aware while walking around that my snow boots from high school are no longer cutting it. By the end of things, my socks were very nicely and roundly water-logged. So, R.I.P. Totes, it's been a great ride. Hello, Peppermint boots. I also got milk today (WOW!) and soap (OOOOH!).

The main entertainment today was going to see The Canterbury Tales, a house filled with mannequins that tell the stories contained in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. You walk around with a little phone held to your ear, and a man reads abridged versions of the stories as you look on mannequins doing the deeds in the tales. I did not know that the stories were so raunchy! I mean, dang, Chaucer, ingest some saltpeter. The most interesting story told of a knight who, as punishment for rape, must find out what women really want and then report back his findings to the queen. Asking around, he finds women have all different desires. (Duh.) Finally, he comes across an old, magic gorgon who promises to tell him the one, true answer if he keeps a promise to her. He agrees, not knowing the promise. They go to the queen, and the hag tells the queen that all women want power, sovereignty - to wear the pants in their relationships. The queen nods, and the knight is forgiven. He turns to the old woman, and she says he must marry her to fulfill his promise. Ah, curses! Wretched fate! She explains, however, that she can make herself sexy with her magic if he wants, but she will probably cheat on him if he chooses this option. Option number two is that she remains ugly but faithful. He goes, "How about you decide?" Because women want power in their relationships, right? He's granting her that. And she goes, "You chose the right one." Then, she becomes a sexy lady who is faithful to him always. It's a nice story, except for the fact that the knight is a rapist. So.

Tonight, I'm going to dinner at Rutherford, one of the dining halls ("canteens") on campus. There's no meal plan here, so I've been eating out a lot, and I need something healthier. Hopefully, they'll have, like, carrots and chicken tonight. Then, I need to finish my readings for my Victorian history class. We're learning about Dickens right now and how he's considered the quintessential Victorian. I need to work ahead tonight as well because I'M GOING TO LONDON THIS WEEKEND! I'm leaving Thursday night and coming back Saturday night. I don't have any classes on Fridays, making travel easier. I'll be staying in a hostel and seeing some of the main sites: Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Big Ben. I'll definitely post something here afterwards with pictures. Thanks for reading, and good night!

Some more pictures

The Templeman Library on campus. Why? Because I'm an English major. 

Interesting signage. He Who Knows All. 

The "Origins" bar, inside the Darwin Dorm.

The Darwin Dorm is colorful and open to the elements. 

Alcohol is available on campus in stores run by the university.

The Cathedral can be seen from the Rutherford Dining Hall. 

Adjusting

Hello, again! It's 9:39 pm here in Canterbury and 4:39 pm back home. I just had my second day of classes, and so far, so good! Back at IU, I'm an English major, but here, I'm a History major because I couldn't get into the English classes I wanted, so I'm taking mostly history-related classes. Yesterday, I had both my class and discussion section on Victorian Britain, as well as my English class, "Guilt and Redemption in Modern Literature." I'm now 150 pages into Crime and Punishment for that class and loving it. Today, I had my Sex and Religion class and discussion section. Our first reading assignment is The Kama Sutra. Yes,  I know. Before everyone judges me for taking this class, just know it was, like, fourth on my list of alternatives. Thursday, I have my Politics class. I am so excited for the readings in this class and my other ones.

As for me and settling in, I'm definitely still adjusting to living here. I'm super jet-lagged and having trouble sleeping through the night. I think I got 3 hours of sleep yesterday, tops. And if I can complain for a second more, the house I'm living in has paper-thin walls, making it even harder to sleep. It's especially difficult because all the doors are crazy squeaky, so if one of my housemates goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I immediately wake up, thinking the ogre from Pan's Labyrinth is coming to comb my hair with his creepy hand-eyes. Then, I lay in bed, terrified, and sleep evades me. I think that it'll be better in a week, but, for now, ugh. I hate you, insomnia. We're not friends.

Furthermore, my stupid international phone won't work, so blah. When I try to work it, it says that I need to call a number to set it up. But my phone can't call, so I can't call to set it up. To whomever designed this, I say, "Boo."

On the bright side, I am loving class and meeting new people. I'm going into town tomorrow with some new friends to explore the farmer's market, and I'm pumped. Then, this Sunday, the school is sponsoring a trip to Dover, which should be lovely. I'll post some pictures afterwards. For tonight, what I'm most excited about is discovering how much longer Raskolnikov can keep his wits about him. He was thisssss close to confessing his sins to Zametov two pages ago.

Talk to you later!

PS- The chocolate here is so much better than in the States. Someone told me that the chocolate in the UK has a higher cocoa content in it as mandated by law, so maybe that's it.

Some Pictures!

Alarming Laundry Detergent? 1 Pack = 1 Vaccine.

Hello! Jan. 11

Greetings! It's 1:10 in the afternoon here in Canterbury, and it's 8:05 in the morning back home. I just got back from a trip to ASDA, the British Walmart. I got school supplies, like pens, and food, mostly because I don't know where else to get food and school supplies. The trip to ASDA was part of Welcome Week here at the University of Kent, so all the new international students were transported there via bus. It was chaos because we were given about an hour to shop, and ASDA is huge, so everyone was running around, trying to get what they needed in such a small timeframe. It felt like "Project Runway," when the contestants have an hour in the fabric store Mood to get all their supplies, and no one can ever find what they need.

It took me thirty minutes to locate the mobile phones, and it also took me way too long to locate cream cheese. I wanted a reusable water bottle, and I could only find thermoses. The laundry detergent aisle was incomprehensible because the fabric softeners and detergents were indistinguishable from one another, so I ended up buying "Fairy non Bio," and I really hope it cleans clothes. The label boasts that for the product, "1 pack = 1 vaccine." I don't know what that means, and I'm a little terrified to find out.

I've only been into the heart of Canterbury once, and that was two days ago. I hope to go later today after I have found where my classes are and after I get Crime and Punishment from the library. I'm suppose to read it by Friday! Mhmm.

On a side note, the University of Kent is not a dry campus, but before I came here, I wasn't sure of the implications of that. Well. The stores on campus (C-STORES for my IU peeps) literally carry alcohol and a lot of it. It's super expensive -like 25 pounds for a little thing of whiskey- but definitely available. The restaurants on campus also serve alcohol. The restaurant that's adjacent to the theatre building has a little bar in it. Kent literally owns and runs two nightclubs. The most startling event, however, occurred when I went to a Kent-sponsered dinner last night for international students. Servers brought us water, which was expected, but when they came back to every table to present us with a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine, I was like, "Whatttt." Culture shock, for sure.

More soon, much love!