'Afternoon

     5/8/13
     Woke up this morning to the chirping of birds and crisp, cool wind. Oh London, you are treating me well. I can hear a bit of the traffic too, but it's more if an undertone. The birds are more prominent. The sky is overcast and completely gray but i honestly don't mind. I like it.
     So today was my first day of class. In "British Contemporary Theatre" we talked a lot about why we do theatre, or what theatre does rather, which is to put it simply bring out truth. It was neat because our discussion was deeper than most conversations in school settings, and it reassured me that every thought and feeling of mine about the theatre I've had previously has been spot on; but I kind of felt like my little secret was told to everyone. Ah well. It was never my secret to begin with. Shakespeare class was interesting - it was a quick little history overview of Shakespeare's life. I really didn't know jack squat about Shakespeare. That will change very quickly I imagine!
     After class my roommates and I ended up joining up with another trio of three and went to Westminster. I stepped out of the tube and this was literally the first thing I saw.

How fun is that! I kept looking up at the hands of the clock, trying to see if it were proportionally possible for Peter, Wendy, John, etc to fit up on the hands. After some deducing - it is. I also got to hear the clock chime several times; the half hour, the quarter till, and the hour which was exciting. But I think maybe my favorite part of the day was what happened right after this. This strip of side walk I was standing on to take this picture is of course the place where EVERYONE takes their picture, so naturally my group decided to take pictures too. Much more than I did. (I wanted more obscure and creative pictures than the one you could go buy as a poster from the tourist shop. That and I don't like looking like a tourist.) So instead I ended up just soaking everything in and observing what was around me. There was a traffic light right ahead of this picture, to the left, and the road came right up beside us. There was a group of men in a car stopped right in front of us, and I saw they were in uniform. As I was looking to see whether they were American or English, I hear "'Afternoon" in the most lovely and most thick of Northern accents. It was the guy in the passenger seat of the car. I of course said good afternoon back. Then we got into a nice little conversation, where he asked how long we were staying and 'isn't this a lovely city' to which I emphatically agreed. He said I'd love it and to enjoy my stay and fall in love with the city (which of course I have already have) and I told him to have a good day as he drove off. It was fairly short and spur of the moment but it was one of the highlights of my day. He was so very delightful and happy - and he had an absolutely fantastic accent. And yay for me not being too shy! I can do this traveling thing! haha

   After everyone was done taking their pictures, we went out on the London Bridge and took more pictures/looked around. It was quite windy, quite cold, quite gray, and had quite a lot of pigeons around, but I couldn't have loved it more. I thought it was beautiful. I took a few pictures but like I said, it was a very gray day so when I go back to ride the London Eye I will take more. (FYI - I will be posting all of my pictures on facebook and just put a small sampling here on the blog. So go to facebook, to the album with this same name, to see everything.)

      I'm excited to go back. It was still very lovely. I just love the wind and the water. (The water is not very clear or clean, but I just love rivers in general.) After we walked around a bit, we broke off with the girls who wanted to go to the Aquarium and walked by Westminster Abbey, which was quite lovely. I plan to attend a mass or evensong there at some point. We decided to try and get tickets to a show and so we headed off to the West End for the first time. We did a LOT of walking to the Victoria tube stop (we why didn't use Westminster's I still don't know) but eventually we made it and went. West End reminds me much more of NYC; it has more of that big city feel that I was expecting. We didn't end up getting any tickets that night, so we instead went to have... linner. It was around 4 30 when we ate and we having not had lunch and little breakfast, we were starving. We went to a lovely Italian restaurant called "Bella Italia" where I got parmasean and lemon encrusted chicken with spaghetti. It was delightful. It's funny - all of our waiters have been French so far and none of them understand the context that goes with the word "thank you." It is in fact not necessarily an appropriate response after every statement. Just so they know.
   At this point we were very exhausted but I needed good walking shoes so we went back to South Kensington, or where we live. I found a great pair of black oxford shoes. They aren't too bulky but they're sturdy and cute. And they were cheaper than a pair of Toms. Nailed it! And now - utterly exhausted, it's time for some shut eye.

Till tomorrow my beautiful London!