My journey began with the 9 hour flight from Dallas to London. They were playing the movie, Arthur, and thanks to how terrible it was, I was able to sleep almost the entirety of the flight. Once I got off the plane, I was fortunate enough to stand in a two hour line with my parents to get my student visitor status completed. After that, to The Tube we went. Just on the Tube ride to our hotel, we got to see lots of London that isn't the normal tourist scene. All of the houses we saw looked so English, and I guess for good reason.
The next day, I left to join my fellow study abroad program participants at the Umi Hotel in western London. This was where I got to meet several students that were studying in the United Kingdom including ten that would be studying at my University, Queen Mary. The first night, our program introduced us, for better or worse, to pub cuisine. If there is one thing that British people do best, it is putting meat into a pie crust and calling it good food. They were offering us pork pies, but I was not brave enough to try it, nor were the majority of the other students sitting around me. Their fish and chips were really good though, on the other hand as were their onion rings.
The next day, we ventured out to the Tower of London. The history of the building was impressive with it dating back several hundred years. It has been home to many different things over the centuries and it included a place where they would torture prisoners with a device called The Rack. It's not quite the same as the torturous device of the same name that is used in drumlines, but similar in effect. It was also home to the Crown Jewels, and they were pretty alright.
The following day, we did a walking tour of London that included several sights from the Harry Potter movies. We got to see different sights like Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and from afar, Buckingham Palace. It was really cool to get to see so many different sights in such a short span of time. After having a Turkish dinner, we made our way over to the newly rebuild Globe Theater to see Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. We stood in the peasant's section and had a great view of all of the actors and the stage itself. It was a great day all in all.
So after pretty much seeing everything there is to see (not really), the following day I departed with my parents to move into my
-Jeremy
P.S. If you're wondering if I will be finishing the blog posts about the book When Christians Get It Wrong, don't you worry. I will find time over the next month to complete my last posts regarding the last three topics.
