Two in One!

I'm going to write about two days in one post! Because I'm exhausted and a feeling a little lazy :)

SUNDAY:

We woke up ridiculously early. Well, ridiculously early for me. I'm talking 6 o'clock London time. So  guess that would be... 11:00 pm SLC time. Aka I woke up when I should have been going to bed! I got ready so that I could make it to church on time (9:00 church) but it's roughly an hour and a half by train from where I live so... it winds up being quite the early morning! After a lot of different tube connections and one train ride, we finally arrived at the ward. Everyone goes to different wards so I only went with 2 other girls to church. But we made it safe and sound and received callings and everything! You are looking at a new Relief Society Teacher! It looks like they REALLY needed a teacher otherwise I'm sure they would have called someone else.... perhaps more.... qualified? The ward is so cute! Very small. But the little kids are probably my favorite so far. They have the cutest little accents, I'm tempted to take them home with me! The little girl that I really bonded with was Nannette. She loved playing "hide the toy tiger down Megan's shirt and tell others to search for it" game. QUITE the scandalous game for church!

After church we walked down to the towns Farmer's Market that they have on Sunday's. And let me tell you. They have the BEST food. All locally grown and truly the best. If I keep going back to that place I will most likely be fat when I come home. Just warning you all. A couple bus rides later we arrived back home. I took Kim (Kelsie Greenhalgh's old roommate, therefore my friend too) out for lunch because she finally arrived from JFK, we got shwarma's (again...don't judge) and I gave her a tour of Hyde Park. We went home, and studied for our FIRST test that we had Monday... or today...? Confusing. Then I went on a hunt for a notebook. Because apparently I forgot that I was going to school and would have to be taking notes. Silly me! But did you know that Utah isn't the only place that shuts down on Sundays?? Apparently the phenomenon has spread, and fast! It's already hit the UK! After finally tracking a place down, I went home for dinner.

So dinner... we had this BIG, STEAMING, MUSHY, NEON GREEN bowl of pea soup. It was weird. I was so hungry though that I ate some of it. Then loaded up on rolls because I could only stomach so much of the sewage waste they served us.

We had something really cool next though, that I really liked. We had a guest professor from the London Theatre Study Abroad give us a lecture on the arts. He is staying with us for a little over a week and giving a couple more lectures. I am really liking this because as you all know.... I'm a theatre nut! So I'm kind of getting a two in one deal!

Studied some more.... tried to skype with the fam. Realized the internet sucked. Gave up. And fell into bed. END OF DAY TWO!

MONDAY:

Oh what a day!

I woke up, ate breakfast, went to class from 9:00-12:00. Not super eventful. Though fun, and interesting to learn about all of the places we will be visit for our classes.

We were all STARVING so some of us went on a hunt for Indian food, because London has some great stuff! After walking for (what it seemed like) miles, we stumbled upon a place called Masala....something... it was another foreign word (boy I'm helpful!) Got take out. And inhaled our food. It was delicious. And super spicy. So I had milk to stop the burning.

After lunch a small group of us decided to visit the famous Harrod's!!! Now this is probably the first and last time that I will ever be going to Harrod's because everything there is so out of my price range it isn't even funny. They had special "silver rooms", "purse rooms", "pet fashion", etc. In the "plate room" they had just ONE place setting that cost about 30,000 in pounds. So roughly a little less than $60,000! It had real diamonds inlaid into it. And a ton of stuff was that expensive. Harrod's literally went on for about 1.5 miles radius. It was huge! They were a little stingy with the picture taking there because it was so fancy that they didn't want to us to bug the rich people that were shopping. But I said "Screw the rules!!! I'm taking pictures." And therefore I did. So here are some:

The grocery store part of Harrods... because Walmart totally has these too.

Toy section with bestie Sarah. I bought one for the flight home! (Only kidding Mom and Dad)

Afterwards, we made sure to make it back home for dinner because who doesn't love free food? And guess what we had?? Indian. Yup. Basically we walked a mile to get it a couple hours earlier and it was just in our kitchen the whole time! After dinner we were lucky enough to have tickets to go to St. Paul's Cathedral and see the London Orchestra in a special performance. First of all, that cathedral is breath taking. I've never seen such beautiful, old, historic buildings in my life! It was so grand you couldn't even see the very top of it! The music was simply lovely, and the London Choir performed special prayers in Latin. It was almost too perfect to even be real. I didn't want it to end.

St. Paul

 

At St. Paul's with Kim my bunk-mate! See how lovely it is???

 But alas it did. We walked over to a bridge that was right next door to the cathedral and guess what?? It's the Millennium Bridge from Harry Potter where the death eaters fly around it and destroy it! Yeah. I'm a nerd I know. We were all so excited about it though. We decided it was about time to head home, getting pretty dark, a little shifty. So we took the tube back to Nottinghill. And that's where the adventure began.

On Millennium Bridge, St. Paul's in the background!

We got terribly lost. As in. Where the heck am I.... am I even still in London??? (That's pretty lost folks.) We walked forever, realized our mistake in walking the wrong direction. And had to walk ALL the way back! We finally stumbled home. Walked up 4 flights of stairs, and CRASHED in bed. End of day THREE!