alright, so i'll try to write all the luscious details from monday. at 10:00 in the morning we had an orientation on the other side of london that they let us figure out how to get to. luckily i was with a guy who was a lot more bold with figuring out stuff, and we managed to make it.
they gave us tons of information about everything. blah blah blah.
then they let us get in groups and sent us on a day-long scavenger hunt around the city. that was fun! we didn't really care about the points involved, but it gave us a direction to go. and we just wandered off if something else caught our interest. i joined up with 4 people from ua that i don't know and don't really know each other. turns out, though, that one guy graduated from sparkman in 04 and played soccer there. so i went through that list with him and we knew a lot of the same people. i also found out later he worked at macaroni grill with jessie waite. so anyway, we spent all day wondering around london as we casually looked for the pieces we needed to find. we walked all through hyde park which is huge and beautiful. we saw a lot of statues and memorials along the way. we even randomly ran into buckingham palace. i know that's a strange thing to do randomly but we were just wandering along a nice road and there it was. the guards weren't usual though, they looked indian and had a different uniform on. don't know what that was about. we ended the hunt by all meeting at a bar on a boat at 5:30. and guess what... i found someone else who doesn't drink! i was rather amazed. it's pretty much woven into some of the activities coming up.
my group all cooked and ate dinner together later and that's pretty much the last detail of the day.
THINGS THAT MADE MY DAY:
1. a rather small car was sputtering up a hill next to us and died. so another guy from my group and i just grabbed it and started pushing it up until he was able to get it started again. there was no asking for help or thank you's involved. it was all just kind of a matter-of-fact deal.
2. having an australian guy ask me, an american, to take his picture in front of buckingham palace.
3. seeing school kids all dressed up in uniforms lining up to get on the tube. think chronicles of narnia...
i've taken several pictures just bc i really like the architecture.
very elaborate statue of prince albert. surrounded by 8 statues, 4 of which are different animals... hence the eliphant below.
a statue of peter pan
a WWI monument. i liked the way they bolded the names of the soldiers to make the names of the countries. interesting note, the US was not listed as one of the countries. not sure why.
they're everywhere.
not sure what this further building is but, again, i like the architecture.
buckingham palace. not nearly as impressive as i would've expected. the gate looked a lot nicer than the building.
big ben from the boat.
lord nelson... interestingly, with both arms in tact.
4 comments:
sorry for the super-weird formating. it wouldn't do what i wanted it to do.
Becky will probably give you hints with formatting but I know one thing that helps with me is if I load my pictures in as centered and then put the writing below the pics. If a picture is in the wrong spot I click on it, hit control x and then paste it somewhere else with control v.
Even with the formating problems it's great to see your pictures and hear about your experience. :) Mindy (Chad's wife)
Dang, Tom. I want to visit now. Funny about the car. It reminded me of men having a conversation through grunts rather than words.
I enjoyed the pictures, and I found out that clicking on them makes them bigger...so that really IS you in the phone booth with the concerned look on you face!
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