Time travel

Yesterday we went to the Prime Meridian in Greenwitch . It was about what you'd expect; we climbed a giant hill, waited in line, took a picture with our feet in both hemispheres, and left. We tried to bully ourselves into the museum since we had gone all that way but it was just all very dull (at least to us). After the trek back into town we stopped off for lunch. Now that was fun! Somehow it ended up being just myself, two friends, and the DG family (Dr. DG is my prof here and Head of the Psychology department at Baylor). His oldest son is about to start college... so it was only appropriate that we all share roommate horror stories. It was really cool to just hang out with my professor and his family talking about nothing related to class. It was a good thing that our day was relaxed because last night was the big Jack the Ripper Walk with world famous Ripperologist Donald Rumbelow. Among serial killer experts this guy is top notch. He's a retired Scotland Yard detective and is the one sought out to help Johnny Depp prepare to play Jack in the film From Hell. The walk was perfect, there was a constant drizzle and eerie cloud cover the entire time. Mr. Rumbelow told the story splendidly. His voice and knowledge made a once distant horror feel almost to close for comfort. He made us all feel as if we knew the victims personally, he demystified Jack, and took us back in time so much so that I half expected a horse drawn carriage to come around the corner in place of a London cab.
Today we went to Freud's house. Again, it was exactly what you'd expect... weird. After that Emily and I tubed out to Wimbledon to take a tour and see the museum. After dinner we went to the London Eye and got a magnificent view of the city. It was a good day. Tomorrow I'll leave for Paris. I don't plan to take my laptop so I won't be able to update the blog until I make it home to South Ken.

Why?

Why? why? why? I heard a lot of that today; we toured Stonehenge. We had more of those great tourist audio guides and after almost every bit of information the little British voice would say something along the lines of "But the question remains... Why?" Well, nobody knows... but we do know that Stonehenge means hanging stones and lots of other fun trivia about the place. After Stonehenge we went to hang out in Salisbury where we went to the Cathedral, which happens to be the tallest one in England. Salisbury Cathedral is also home to one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta. It was pretty cool to see but regrettably I couldn't snap a photo of it. After we finished exploring the Cathedral we made our way to a famous pub called Haunch of Venison. It was in this very pub that Churchill and Eisenhower met to make plans for D-day. I thought that was pretty cool. It's just amazing how much history we traipse across here. After dinner (back in London) we decided to search out Foyle's, the largest bookstore in Europe. It was a book lover's dream. Five stories packed wall to wall with every sort of book imaginable. I left with the British version of Harry Potter translated to Latin. That's right Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. It was translated by a latin scholar living in Windsor. After we left the bookstore my pal Bo wanted to check out the Covent Gardens, he didn't know what was there and we all agreed to go simply for the reason that our professors said it was neat. As we were wandering around we were approached by a homeless man. He said he was only 60 pence short of a cheeseburger at McDonalds. For a split second I think we were all stumped, searching our minds for the best reaction. All of us except for my friend Emily, who cheerfully responded that she didn't have the change but would take him to the Subway down the street if he'd like. The look that came over the man's face was pure shock followed by a broad smile and acceptance of her offer. As we stood in line at Subway we learned that his name was Tom and that he'd been living in London for 50 years. Tom was very interested to hear about America and especially Texas. He couldn't believe he was meeting people from "real cowboy country". Once it was time for Tom to order he had no clue how to and we had to help. I've never seen a man so awed by sandwich options or so grateful for anything. I thought we was going to cry as he thanked Emily. Meeting him really made me think. It's ridiculous... I know... that I would have to come all the way to London to realize how blessed I am. I mean I'm surrounded by the homeless in Waco but I'd never spoken to any of them. I guess I just learned to look the other way, then donate to Mission Waco and let them worry about it; I suppose I just never realllllly mulled it over. And you know the strangest part? Tom thought himself lucky. Lucky to live in London rather than somewhere hotter, lucky to be healthy enough to get around, and lucky to have a sandwich in his hand. His genuine gratefulness for the things I take for granted really put some things into perspective. Had I not only hours ago complained about British food? On one hand I felt a bit ashamed and on the other I felt a rush of gratitude for the life I live. Suddenly all of my problems and worries seemed trivial compared to his. I hope I never forget our meeting with Tom.

Real Texans Sign Here

So the last couple of days have been devoted to simple exploration of the city and hitting up some of London's most famous weekend markets. That's meant lots of walking, busing, and tubing and most importantly seeing lots of the city! Yesterday we went to Knotting Hill for the Portobello market. It was absolutely packed with people and interesting things to look at. It seemed to go on forever, we were to exhausted to go the whole way. After the market we found ourselves outside of the London Hardrock Cafe and figured we should go in. Did you know that it's the original Hardrock? Not bad for my first one. Once night rolled around we decided to go out in search of some fun. Guess what we found... The Texas Embassy! It was a restaurant that served real Texas food, had a wall for "real Texans" to sign and had flags and memorabilia from every Texas University. Country from the 90s was playing and they even served Dr. Pepper. It was like the mother ship calling us home, we had to eat there. It was really fun too. Live music started after a while and I made friends with the guitarist so that we could make request. I have to say that British renditions of country and southern rock are a bit different but they were definitely good.
Today we decided to start out in Hyde Park. I love that place and I hope I can find the time to wander around it a bit more. Since it was Sunday folks were speaking at Speakers Corner, now that was an experience. The day before we had talked to Dr. Dunn about our plan to go and he warned us to keep our mouths shut, no matter what. He said we'd regret it if we spoke out, partly because we'd be quickly identified as Americans. To be honest his advice confused us. What could possibly make us want to speak out? and What's so wrong with being pegged American? Well, we found out. Several people come to speakers corner with their step stools so folks can choose who to go listen to. We headed straight for the largest crowd. The man was talking about Christianity, and mostly how he thinks that the Christians need to rise to the challenges of the world. Nothing radical. Then the hecklers started in on him. They called God a figment of his imagination, called him a gullible twit, and took some below the belt hits. They asked condescending questions and were just plain mean. The guy kept his cool though, he was even able to give real answers backed up by scripture to questions they thought would stump him. However, they always interrupted his answer. I feel like I should clarify that these hecklers clearly were not the sort of people who had checked out Christianity for themselves and decided to disagree, their arguments were never intelligent and they demonstrated very poor knowledge of the Bible and basic church structure/history. It escalated pretty quickly and after awhile we noticed that the ENTIRE crowd seemed to be vehemently against this guy. That's when it was hard to keep our mouths shut. We wanted to lend him some support and we wanted to (lovingly, not harshly) try to explain some things to some members of the crowd. But we all reminded each other to heed Dr. Dunns warning (there had been some anti-American expressions) and kept our support down to some affirmative nods and a couple of amens. I have to say I've never been more grateful to live in the USA especially in the Bible belt area. I've never had my faith made fun of or challenged so extremely or with so much... well I feel like I can only call it hatred. I wonder why all of those people feel that way. Have they had bad experiences with Christians? Have they just been taught that way? and what was their problem with America? I mean I know that they have their little stereotypes of us (some of which are a right) but at the end of the day I thought we were buddies...
After getting all worked up in the park we made our way to a couple more markets, then we came to Spitalfield's Market. That was the best one yet. If you ever come here just hit that one and Portobello. Everything at Spitalfield's was really creative and artsy. It was really fun just to walk around and look at it all.

Lost

So Thursday was another really easy going day for the most part. We traveled to Downe to visit Charles Darwin's house. The Origins of the Origin of Species I suppose. It was interesting to walk around the house and stroll through his gardens knowing that he walked the same paths as he worked on his theory. We had to walk a good ways from the road to get to the house and we got caught in a pretty good rain when were were walking back up into town. Once back in town we had to catch a bus to the train station. While on the bus... I was mistaken for a local. An elderly man got onto the bus and since it was so full I got up and offered him my seat. He refused and laughing told me that he was tired of being asked to sit because of his age (granted he was a little more colorful in that expression than I have given him credit for). Anyway, he decided to stick around a chat with me, I thought he'd had me pegged as American until he said "So what's a girl like you hanging around this town for? I hope your not just looking to marry. What you ought to do is go to America, that's a better place for the girls." I was dumbfounded. Then he was dumbfounded when I told him that I was American, he even got all excited when I told him I was from Texas. The whole thing was pretty wild. I guess I'm getting really good at blending... or he just couldn't see me very well and couldn't hear well enough to pick up my twang... Later Thursday night we went to see Chicago. It was really good, In fact I've still be walking around with some of the songs in my head.
Friday was quite the adventure. We decided to make a day trip to Brighton beach after class. We figured we'd just stay all day then catch the 11:15 train home and be back around midnight. That's not what happened though. We got to Brighton and had a good time exploring the beach area and the town. The beach there isn't sand, its all pebbles, and we got a kick out of that. We had diner at a little place overlooking the ocean then went to "check out the nightlife" we were looking for a place to karaoke... probably because Bo and I had been singing the Eagles all day and the rest of the gang wanted to get it out of our systems. Anyway we got directions to a place... which turned out to be a gay place, we didn't stay long. We decided to head back to the train station to get an earlier train home but something was amiss. The poster of regular trains must have been wrong or we read it wrong or something, because there were no more trains going back to London Victoria station. In fact the only train going to London at all was going to London Bridge which is in an area we're not familiar with and is pretty far from our dorms. We decided to go for it though... I mean, we needed to get back to London. So after about an hour, in which we all completely passed out on the train, we woke up to try and get to the tube on time. Just as we were swiping our oyster cards in we hear an announcement " you have two minutes to reach the final trains to..." and the announcement listed our desired stop. We burst into a dead sprint right along with everyone else in the underground. It was insane. We were running up escalators, through people, and for what felt like forever. We made that tube though. What's to bad is that we didn't make the next one. After another dash through another station we learned that we had just missed it. So we went up to the street to grab a bus. We grabbed the wrong the bus. And weren't able to correct ourselves till almost 1:15am. We got on a new bus that would take us really close to home. It was just us on that bus until we went through Piccadilly Circus, when we were joined by an odd fellow who just sat right down next to Bo and began this spill: "I'm with Joe Bo Johnson KING OF THE ROAD! Look at those crains, they're funny and the girls find them amusing" then he would slap himself. He just kept repeating those phrases and slapping himself across the face. While he kept going, some obviously American girls got on the bus followed by a pair of Australian guys. Somehow they got into a huge political argument in which all of the typical stereotypes came out. Sadly for Americans, these girls were terrible ambassadors for us... they were rude and knew less about their own government than the Aussies. As the bus filled up the argument had escalated to full on yelling. All the while this man next to us keeps shouting about the king of the road and slapping himself. By this point we were about to snap, so since we were a good deal closer to home we hailed a cab and made it back to Imperial at about 3am. It wasn't so fun when it was happening but by the time we all were safe in our dorms we just couldn't stop laughing about it. I suppose it was about time for us to get lost.

Super tourist powers

Today was wonderful. I gave my presentation in class and it went really well so that was a relief. I also had a readings class today and it was pretty interesting stuff. After class we tore off to Harrod's in an effort to see Jeniffer Aniston and guess what!? WE DID! It was really fun, she was there to promote her new perfume but we got there to late to get in line to buy some and have her sign it. After our brush with greatness we went to Windsor Castle. This was, in my opinion, the best castle yet. It was straight out of a fairy tale. We liked it so much we even decided to be ultra touristy and get the little headphones to listen to while we walked around. After a mad dash back to London we made it to the Proms and got to listen to some beautiful music. It was really just a nice, easy going day.

P.S. I'm finally caught up on pictures so there's lots of new stuff in the gallery

Whoa. Mind The Gap!

So I've been in England for a good while now. Let me catch you up. Our first night here was pretty uneventful... just class meetings and trying to get all settled. On our first full day we toured the city, poured over maps, and mastered the tube. Once we had the lay of the land we set out to find platform 9 and 3/4 at Kings Cross Station (there's a fake platform there with half a cart sticking out of the wall). It wasn't in plain sight and we getting pressed for time... so.... we had to walk up to a worker and ask them where platform nine and three quarters was. It was hilarious! but I think it helped us all to identify a little better with Harry's confusion in finding the place. Later that night we tried to go check out Big Ben and Parliament but got derailed by a peace rally which was broken up today.
On our second day in London we decided to take a weekend away (weird I know, but we only get 2 free weekends to travel and this was one of them). In the morning we boarded a train the the Lake District, its a beautiful national park with lots of historic sights, neat little towns, and outdoor adventure right smack in the middle of hundreds of lakes and amazing mountains. We completely winged the trip. No reservations for anything and absolutely no clue where we might stay. When we got to the lake district we chose a little town called Windermere and were lucky enough to get the last two rooms at one of the inns. It was all amazing. Our innkeeper was a sweet little old man named Andy and was very interesting to talk to. The town was so beautiful that I wasn't sure which way to look until I almost ran into a swan that is. There are tons of very bold swans in this place, they walk right up to people and around the streets. Our second day in the Lake District was all hiking to a waterfall. The falls were astounding and inspired us to get brave and climb some rocks around them to get a better view. My friend Brad was so inspired that he stripped down to his basketball shorts (in the 40 degree weather) and swam beneath the falls. All in all the Lake District was quite an adventure.
On Sunday we got up and went to church at Westminster Abby. The service was nothing like a Baptist service back home but it was very pretty, especially the choir singing. After lunch we decided to visit Harrod's. Most of us literally got lost in there. That place is huge and incredibly extravagant. There was even a live opera singer there to entertain folks on the escalators. We spent Sunday night at a local comedy club. It was one of our best nights so far! The MC asked who was from out of town and while most of the gang didn't plan to admit my friend Bo, with his thick Texas twang spoke up... needless to say the comics really enjoyed interacting with us for the rest of the evening.
Yesterday I went to check out the Tower of London. That was pretty awesome. I used to read about that place when I was younger and it felt surreal to actually be standing in the midst of all those stories. After the tower we went on a scavenger hunt our prof gave us for the science museum. It was all about the history of medicine and it was really interesting. There's just so much to look at in there that I think I'll have to go back. After dinner we thought It'd be nice to go wander around Parliament while it was all lit up. What actually happened was we found our we could go in to watch the evenings debate. We spent about about an hour watching these guys go at it in the House of Commons over the Academies Bill. It was really cool to watch and gave us a glimpse in the their government and concerns. By the end we had all taken a side on what the Brits ought to do, I side with the opposition myself.
Today we went to Cambridge, University of C.S. Lewis and the 1st man to climb Everest. It was beautiful, maybe I'll see what they offer for graduate work...haha joking... kinda. Anyway, the thing to do at Cambridge is to Punt the Cam, Punting being something like rowing with a giant stick and the Cam being the river that runs through the University. We all took a turn and it was great. Brad zig-zaged us the whole way, Julian crashed us into bridges and a few willows, Nicole lost the stick (lucky for us another boat was able to grab it after a bit), and I just spun us in circles for a while before I got the hang steering the boat and stopping the boat. All in all it's been great. I love London and I'm feeling pretty comfortable here. Hopefully now that things have calmed down some I'll be able to do a better job on this blog. In the meantime, I apologize and I'll have pictures up as soon as I can.

Kobenhaven

I think it's time to talk about Copenhagen or Kobenhaven as the Danes spell it. This place was completely crazy. I mean two days here made for more crazy than I've experienced in my life thus far. I had expected it to be almost just like Stockholm... I was wrong. City wise this was like a level up. It was bigger, less safe, and there was more bustle about it. The night we arrived was the night of the World Cup final so people were everywhere (even though it was 2am) running around in capes and face paint. We watched this while we waited for our bus to come shuttle us to the hotel. While waiting we also saw a drunk man who kept undressing and the ladies of the night competing for attention on their corners. We couldn't believe it. I mean this is stuff that I've seen in movies but never so much as thought about happening in the real world. As this was going on our profs warned us to avoid certain parts of the city... they didn't have to do that when we were in Stockholm so to be honest it kinda put me on edge...
On our first day we toured the city and learned about their government. Our tour guide kept insisting that they weren't socialist but it all sounded like socialism to me. Then (like almost every European I've talked to) she kinda bashed America then asked for our opinion on both Bush and Obama and ended with "we liked Clinton". It's unbelievable how many times I've had that same conversation here. Anyway, on the tour we saw the changing of the guard then took off on our own to find food. The day was incredibly hot, humid 90s due to a heat wave, so we were all sweatin it out in our fall wear we had packed. We pushed through though and gave the city a thorough exploring. We even located a hippie village (almost commune) called Christiania. It's a self proclaimed freetown that Denmark tolerates, it does not consider itself part of the EU. I felt like I was at Woodstock the whole time. A woman we met on the train had suggested the place and told is it would be like time travel back to 1969 America. She was dead right. This place was unreal , I don't have any pictures though. There are two rules in Christiania and as long as you don't break them your fine. 1. No pictures inside, if they catch you they take your camera and smash it 2. No running. I know that sounds super sketch but the people we talked to about it told us those rules and assured us we would be fine, plus we were in a group of 11 that day. It was an amazing thing to see and even though I was reluctant at first I'm so glad I did it.
On our second day we spent most of our time outside the city touring castles and learning about Danish history. The castles were beautiful! It was a really nice day doing that. Later that night we decided to go shoot some pool. It was a Tuesday night so for a long time it was just us at the pool hall along with our Russian friend that we met at dinner who had come along. Then things changed, a few Danes came in and challenged our guys to a game. They were wild. One kept singing into his pool stick and dancing with it... until he decided to dance with me that is. This guy just came right up got me around the waist and before I knew he was spinning me all over the the place. It was fun... I mean he was a decent dancer and all... but it was weird. Later the other guy Yalum (that's a pronunciation spelling... I have no idea how he might spell it) started talking to me about life in the states and comparing it to life in Denmark. It was really interesting but got a little uncomfortable when he turned to politics. I'm really shocked at what a negative view so many Europeans have of us... it wasn't easy trying to politely explain the American way without offending him and worsening his view of us.
All in all Copenhagen made for a very interesting experience and I'm glad I got to have it. However I must admit that I liked Stockholm quite a lot better and with the excitement of London ahead I wasn't to sad to leave Denmark.

It's unbelievable... but it's true

Ok. going back in time here. The last night in Stockholm was... a cultural experience. We went out to a really swank restaurant because we all had lots of Kroner left and it's barely worth converting. We were really enjoying ourselves until we realized the menu was only available in Swedish. Lucky for us (sarcasm) our waiter decided to help by explaining each dish. I ordered what she called "several circles of beef with mozzarella cheese all over the top and special seasoning" I suppose that's an accurate description... she just left out that none of it is cooked. Yep, completely raw meat. Still mooing. I tried a bite but there was no way I was gonna eat it. When the chef saw that I wasn't eating he came to see what my problem was, I told him I was surprised that it was raw, he criticized my tastes, and the whole thing was embarrassing. Oh well, now it's kind of a funny story I suppose.
The next morning we got up to take the train to Copenhagen. I was excited because Denmark had been on my list of places to see. To bad I didn't see it that day. Our 3.5 hour train ride turned into a 14 hour definition of Murphy's Law. Everything imaginable, and some unimaginable, went wrong. First our train was delayed 1.5 hours. No biggie. Then, not long after we all noticed the train wasn't going as fast as we thought it should we were informed that it was not safe to take it across the 8 mile bridge to Denmark and that we would switch trains right before the bridge. This wasn't huge... but it didn't sound good. Next we came to a town that had lost power and apparently that keeps the trains from going through the station. We spent about 2.5 hours there. Next, our engine broke and we had to wait for it to be fixed. After it was fixed we got caught behind a "slow freighter". At this point it was already late, we were annoyed, and with each new bit of bad news our conductor sounded more and more like he was having to tell us someone had died. Then it came, our train stopped, the conductors voice came over the intercom and said "Ladies and Gentlemen... you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you... the train has been struck by lightning... " He explained some of the damage apologized then concluded with "It's unbelievable... but it's true". As soon as he was done howls of laughter erupted from the most of us. At that point the whole thing was just funny. Our next delay came at the train switch, the conductor for the new train was running about 1 hour late. So to pass the time we chatted with a young Danish couple and their son in our compartment. The man could speak German, French, Danish, Spanish, and English. The Woman spoke Danish and English, and their little boy understood Danish and Spanish. We had a good time talking to them about their lives and how different our counties are. High School Spanish even came in handy for talking to their adorable son. We finally arrived to Copenhagen at about 2am and made it to our hotel by 3am.

The Log Island

Whoa. That was a lot of travel and I'm certainly glad to be out of the air for a while. I'm at my first stop, Stockholm (which means "the log island" see Swedish history for details) When we arrived at the airport (which kinda looked like an Ikea) we were greeted by the word "valkommen" which means welcome in english... but to us it meant "welcome, to your first language barrier". We can't read any of the signs and nothing is pronounced the way it looks. But that's fine, a good deal of people here know some english and they seem to enjoy using the language with us and we enjoy trying to understand them. Another barrier has been a physical one... the revolving door. Just imagine 50 some odd exhausted students with about 100 pounds of luggage each, trying to get through these things while trying to politely avoid the Swedes darting in and out. It's been quite comical.
Once we had dragged all of our bags into the hotel we were turned loose to explore. You can walk just about anywhere in Stockholm in about 30 minutes. Armed with maps (written in Swedish) we found our way to what its called the "Old Town" It's the most historic part of Stockholm and its absolutely breathtaking. There, we looked at monuments, enjoyed some street performers, and found a street cafe where we had actual Swedish meatballs.
Today was the first full day in Stockholm. We started bright and early with a guided tour of the city and learned a lot more about Swedish history. We also saw the Vasa museum, the Vasa is a warship that sat at the bottom of the Baltic for over three centuries and was raised. It's in near perfect condition thanks to the salt and fresh water mixture. We also found our way to the beach today. The water was really cold but it was totally worth it. We met lots of locals and one of my friends got a salsa dancing lesson from a guy from Chile.
Overall it's been great so far and I'm really looking forward to getting back out into the city tomorrow. The people here are quite friendly and laid back but not in the southern way that I'm used to. Sweden is nothing like the the U.S.A and its been really interesting to see those differences play out.

Leaving is a process

In just four days I will be in Stockholm, Sweden (pictured right) staying at the Radisson Royal Viking Hotel. This will be the first stop on the Baylor in Great Britain (BGB) European escapades. In the next four days I'll be frantically packing and finishing up homework for the classes I'm taking while I'm abroad. I will then embark on what I'm sure will be the most epic travel day of my life. I'll be flying out of DFW, spending a ball park 10 hours in the air, then landing at Heathrow to send half of my luggage ahead of me to Imperial College. Then it's back in the air and straight to Stockholm. I'm planning on becoming an airport pro. I will fly more on the first day of this trip than I have in my entire life. Wow. Once settled into Sweden I'll get to become familiar with my first new currency, the Swedish krona. Today one U.S. dollar is equal to 7.66 krona. I'll deal in five currencies on this trip... so converting has become a new matter of interest to me. While in Sweden I plan to see a few palaces and check out the Vasa, a warship that sunk in 1628 and has been revived. Other than that, I'm open to suggestion.
It's strange to think that I'll be overseas in just four days... honestly I can't seem to wrap my head around it. The next blog I write will be in a foreign country (I really have no time for more while I'm at home). I'm excited. I find myself wondering about who all I'll meet and what all there is to see, more than I can imagine I'm sure. This is going to be the trip of a lifetime and I know that I'm incredibly blessed to be getting to go. Thanks to Mom, Dad, Papa, and Nana. And thanks to my church home FBC Roscoe, and to all of my other wonderful friends for all the prayers and support. I'll be thinking of yall while I'm abroad and get ready because I plan to come home with some stories worth telling.