Quite a Busy Time!

That is my random trivia for the day; the English say the word ‘quite’ quite a lot. In an average day I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve heard the word quite… and how did I come to this observation? I’ve realized that when I am talking to people I’ve started to use the word ‘quite’ a lot more. It’s as if we cannot commit to a definite feeling- it’s either quite sunny or quite cloudy, she seemed quite nice, I was quite hungry, he was quite distant, this food is quite nice….. and sometimes when you think, there is no possible way the word ‘quite’ could fit into this sentence, it has quite a way of sneaking in between quite a lot of words! Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with the word ‘quite,’ I just think it was quite an interesting observation that I have made about my life here in England.

So the past few weeks have been super busy but at least the weather here in London has been amazing!! Sunny days for a week and a half- it’s amazing how many people were out and about and in the parks. As one person in my programme told me, his friends used to joke that all of the pretty girls in London are ‘solar powered’ – that all of a sudden they emerge when it is sunny out. It does seems as if Spring has happened overnight, and I am definitely not complaining. I had my intensive week for my course, which I was dreading, but it actually turned out to be not so bad and my group worked really well together so there was no major ‘intensive week’ drama for us. The whole week is about working in small groups to devise a workshop to deliver, and so I can definitely see how if personalities clashed it could indeed be a very intensive experience. It was exhausting, but luckily there were sunny skies and we worked outside a lot (now mind you, it was still in the 60’s Fahrenheit, but people were lathering up on sunscreen and saying how they didn’t know how anyone could function in this heat… I recommended that they didn’t consider moving to South Carolina). The other thing that kept my intensive week from being so ‘intensive’ was that Mark came to visit! He had to work on his dissertation so no doubt my room was filled with the sounds of seal calls all day while I was out but it made such a difference to have him to come home to after my intensive week. He did manage to clear out my fridge, but I loved having him here. J

This is going to be an especially long blog post as I had another group of visitors arrive on Sunday for a whirlwind visit to London- my parents and the shrimp! I never realized how exhausting being a tourist can be! I also have a newfound respect for Margaret and her itineraries- it’s hard work! We hit almost all of the heavy hitters in London and I think I wore my family (and Mark and I!) out with all of the walking across London. In a span of Sunday to Thursday we managed to… visit Kensington gardens and Kensington palace, explore the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum (these three were while I was at work), have fish and chips at a local dive, visit Covent Garden, walk around all of London in a search for food, eat an English breakfast, see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace (way too many people!), wander through St. James’s Park, see the main attractions in Westminster (including all the set-up for the Royal wedding), take the Thames clipper along the river to Greenwich, visit the (closed- itinerary fail  L ) Greenwich Market, see the National Maritime Museum,  visit Greenwich Park and the view from the Royal Observatory, see Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square (and visit the Waterstone’s book store), visit Notting Hill and eat Hummingbird cupcakes in the Portobello Road Market, visit the British Museum, the National Gallery and of course, marvel at Harrod’s  department store, and finally round out the trip with a trip to the amazing Windsor castle.  And that incredibly long run-on sentence is about how exhausting the week was, but lots of fun! Here are some picture I swiped from the Shrimp of the visit!  No signs of royalty or celebrities (other then when I almost literally ran into my c-list celebrity neighbor) but a successful trip… now as the city prepares for the Royal Wedding of the century, I’ll have to decide how to celebrate…

Shrimp and I breaking in to Kensington Palace

Kensington and blue skies!

Spring!

Family's hotel

My mum likes all of these floewers on the railings

Looking for somewhere to eat... and talking to mark on the phone

Natural History Museum

V&A

We happened across the changing of the guards at Buckingham- too many tourists!



Shrimp and I at Buckingham



The girls

St. James's Park

My mum with daisies in her hair

Shrimp enjoying London

Westminster Abbey... where the Royal Wedding will unfold

On the Thamesclipper along the river

Passing by the Tower of London

Passing under the bridge

National Maritime Museum in Greenwich

Royal Naval College

Christmas card...Mark is a bit taller than us though

Much better! Sorry for leaving you out of the Christmas card, Joey

the 'rents

Greenwich park and view from the observatory

Imagining life as a tall person

Notting Hill

British museum

The shrimp wanted to show the scale of this fist, hence my fist

Rosetta Stone

Mummies in the Brtish Museum

Guy playing a flaming Tuba in Trafalgar Square after visiting the National Gallery

Amazing doll house in Harrod's that we wanted... that is until we saw the even more amazing one in Windsor castle!

Windsor Castle!!

My parents a little unsure of where we were leading them...

Ta da!

crooked restaurant

And there you have it, quite a nice visit! The next couple of months for me will be very busy as I am moving out of my halls here and heading up to Scotland and Northern Ireland for a little bit with Mark, hopefully squeezing in a trip to France to see my friend Lauren, going to the graduation ball with Mark, and heading back to South Carolina at the end of June to do my final project for my course... and doing a lot of work between now and then... yikes!