pictures! finally

i'll give you three guesses to what this is.



glynnis cronin: sheep whisperer



the great roman baths; water has been flowing into this place for almost 2000 years, nonstop.

stonehenge and roman baths

okay, so for the last five days i have been trying to upload my pictures from stonehenge and the roman baths up to my blog and to facebook, but for some stupid reason they won't load. i am so frusterated! but i haven't posted for like, a week, so i guess i shall be good and post anyway, pictures or no.

wednesday morning at 8:15, we departed from just outside the british museum on a sketchy bus with a sketchy bus driver (who happened to be finishing ramadan...so yeah you can imagine what his driving must have been like), but what really saved the trip was our amazing tour guide. i don't know what it is, whether it's the actual country that breeds this kind of people, but so far all our tour guides have been just amazing. our tour guide for this trek was an older lady named maria. one of the first things she said to us as we were leaving the city was "ladies, this is for you. there is a bilboard on our right with a very lovely picture of a man that i just adore...do you know anything about 'abercrombie and fitch?'" of course, all the girls (and andrew) let out a huge sigh of...i don't know, hormones? either way, we knew it was going to be a good trip then.

the english countryside was just gorgeous. it reminded me a lot of vermont, but instead of mountains there are countless rolling hills, covered in fields and sheep for as far as the eye can see. after living in a city for almost a month, seeing grass and trees was a breath of fresh air. when we arrived at stonehenge, collected our tickets, and walked through the tunnel under the road, i found myself in front of the massive stone structure, surrounded by fields and fields of sheep. i was surprised we were allowed to get as close as we did. stonehenge was subtly bound off by a low rope, in a circle. in this way, we got a full 360 view of the entire thing. afterwards, some of us walked up to the burial grounds just over the hill, and the rest of us wandered into the fields of sheep, which are really fun to harass, by the way.

after stonehenge, we spent another hour driving into bath, a city with some of the best preserved ancient roman baths in the world. i had mixed feelings about it, simply because it was in a museum, and a lot of it was plastered off. even so, there was a lot of cool ancient artifacts, and just being there and thinking about the fact that there have been millions of gallons of hot water circulating through that place for almost two thousand years...it was all quite fascinating. actually, being in the presence of these ancient relics was unreal unto itself. you think about the things humans build now, steel and plaster and concrete, but four thousand years from now, they will be dust.

thinking about it makes my head hurt. i will put up pictures the moment i have the chance. i'm going to make my dinner now, so until i update again...

ciao!

the one where i go to camden

along with emily littler, a high school chum i later went on to college with, i took the underground into camden town for the second day in a row. however, it was not, as many would assume, to shop around and people watch. it was to visit our (other) friend from high school, kelsey, whom neither of us had seen in several years. we were fifteen minutes late, and as we scrambled out of the tube exit, we were afraid that she had left. but sure enough, as we rounded the courner, there she was, towering over the rest of the crowd. we both hugged her, and proceeded to browse through many of the shops and vendors, catching up with the times and all that jazz. i wasn't surprised to see that she was exactly the same person i graduated with. we ate in camden, and happened across tori and monica, and shared our lunch with them on the ground, because it was too crowded to get a seat. at the end of the day, we dropped kels off at her dorm, which happened to be just down the road from where we take classes, and took the tube back to our flats. now, i'm sitting here, eating pasta and trying to decide if it's worth taking a nap or not.
it's funny how a nice little reunion with an old friend can make one feel. i'm feeling nastalgic, but refreshed. later, i might get sushi. but now, since i have nothing to report, i will probably just go outside on the stoop and do a little drawing in my sketchpad. no pictures today :( my camera's dead.

weee

so i finally arrived in london a few weeks ago. i've mostly been spending my time situating myself, finding my way around and all that jazz. i think we've all become pretty comfortable in our flat, as we have our stuff EVERYWHERE. i've got to clean it soon though. it's beginning to drive me crazy.


the living room (not so clean now)

we have a really nice cleaning lady. she's got this lovely chocolate skin and a red head scarf. she's so nice, she even does our dishes. makes me guilty sometimes. someday, i'm going to leave her brownies or something, just as a thank you. it's an insult here to leave tips, did you know that?

anyway, over the last few weeks we've been doing A LOT. so much, that i feel almost like we've been here for months. we've toured london, gone to like, five festivals (all which rocked hardcore), shopped at markets, and my favorite, toured st. paul's. i still can't wrap my head around it's size. it's kind of like when you are at the base of a HUGE mountain, after being around the green mountains most of your life, and you just look up, and up, and up...that's how it is. we couldn't take pictures inside, sadly, but i took pictures from the outside and from the very top (after climbing 528 stairs!).

so yeah, been a pleasure, but i am going to enjoy my weekend off :) i'll update later, perhaps tonight, more likely tomorrow. i will leave you with some pictures to look at!



st. pauls



tower of london (where anne boleyn was kept and murdered)



borough market -- huge stack of cheese



hahahaha oh caleb....