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.