LEAVING FOR ADVENTURETIMES.

I'm currently exhausted but this is going to be so awesome. :)

I make awesome decisions in bike stores...

PSYCH. I actually make awesome decisions in souvenir shops. It's Kanye who makes them in bike stores.

Much love and cheers!

Another Week, Another Milne Post

I decided to post last week's quotes before this week's class. "Why?" You might ask. One: Don't question, just be grateful you're getting post, dang it. Two: Because...because it's letting me procrastinate. :( I ran today in an effort to procrastinate, it seems like putting up a few pictures and quotations in an effort to procrastinate was probably the easier thing to do. So now I'm doing it. My legs are too sore for another run. These quotes come to you from the week that the wonderful Sameera was visiting. This is important because of all the winning that occurred in class due to her presence.

Winning? Hellz yeah, BI-WINNING. For those of you who have never seen a television in your lives, Charlie Sheen has gone completely mad. Whether this is a for realzies madness or attention madness, I won't pretend to know. However, his utter insanity has birthed some gems. Warlock gems. One of these is his concept of winning. Duh. And it has proven to be an absolute inspiration in the Archaeology Class Game. Archaeology Class Game? (Shhhhh, I'm asking myself a lot of questions...don't worry about it) The Archeology Class Game is a variation of the Direction Switching Game introduced to me by David I. on the Jack the Ripper tour. You win the Direction Switching Game by being closest to the tour guide when you all switch directions after you are done looking at whatever you happen to be learning about at the time. Winning the Archeology Class Game involves being the closest person to Gustav Milne at all times, in order to better hear what he's saying (he has a propensity to speak rather softly even when he's trying to be loudish and we are touring around a bustling city) and because that's how you win THE GAME (Dear David, I haven't done that recently enough, consider YOUR GAME LOST). Now, it isn't terribly difficult to win the Archeology Class Game. Milne walks briskly and the other students in the class tend to walk rather slowly. So you really just have to capable of a moderately quick pace and the occasional bit of people weaving.

This is relevant because Sameera and I won the Archeology Class Game pretty much the entire day last Tuesday. Sameera took to the game like a flipping pro and we were ABSOLUTE CHAMPS. So that was pretty cool.

Ok.

Onto the pictures and quotes. We walked around Southwark today, which is south of the river. We were quite close to the river for the entire lecture. It was a pretty gray day (ugh, that's a painful little rhyme) but there were lots of boats on the river! Including a bunch of military-type things that were cruising pretty fast.

We went to the Tower Bridge Station via the...I don't remember which tube line. Via the tube. And immediately exited next to dun dun dun....The London Dungeon! Scary! Umm, my impression of the place was that if you were lactose intolerant but craving some cheese, here would be the best place to get your fill. Get it? It was cheesy. Super super cheesy. Like the way I described it was...

There were lots of questionable characters advertising the place. They kept trying to hand us flyers. Oh, and when I say "questionable" I mean "definitely the undead." It's ok though, we weren't too scared because Milne was quite reassuring...

"There are a few zombies. Don't worry, they're relatively harmless."

(For the record, he said to save your money instead of visiting the Dungeons. So...save your money. Be smart.)

We next walked away from there and near the river and just around. Uhhhh. I don't have a picture for this part. My bad. However, we were all of the sudden asked the question:

"Who's head would you have been able to see in 1535 dripping gently on a spike?"

Ummmmmmm, dripping gently? WHAT? The answer:

"Thomas Moore...you would have been able to wave to it dripping gently."

Again, dripping gently? Ok...

We next passed the London Bridge. A lot of you may be under the impression that this is the London Bridge.

This picture does not belong to me. I did not take it. It belongs to...Wikipedia? That's where I found it.

This is a lie. A total lie. YOU ARE WRONG (I'm so sorry, I'm feeling a touch obnoxious at the moment). That is actually a picture of the Tower Bridge. The Tower Bridge is the sexy bridge. It's the one that shows up in something like 90+% of pictures when you google image "London Bridge" because it is what you think of when you think of "London" and "Bridge."

The London Bridge actually looks like this.

Once again, thank you wikipedia

Disappointed? Don't be, the Tower Bridge still exists. And the London Bridge is fully functional. Interesting a version of the London Bridge was created in place of the medieval bridge in the 1870s. What, that's not interesting? Ok, guess where that bridge currently resides. Guess.

You've guessed?

Arizona. Yeah. Britain shipped the London Bridge over to Arizona where it is currently located. Why? Let's ask Milne:

"I don't know why, it wasn't my fault."

Oh. Ok. Nevermind. Yeah, I guess it's one of those "ummmm...really guys?" moments that history frequently throws our way. Apparently there is a bit of an urban legend in London that we silly Americans thought that we were getting the Tower Bridge in the deal because we made the mistake that I mentioned in the above section.

Our next stop was yet another Church thing. I don't remember much about this history of this, to be perfectly honest. Note to self: I should have made this post a little under a week ago. Sorry.

I do know that the section of wall here that is exposed within the church has sections that come from some different times. The red placard on the left reads "Early English Arch: Late 12th Century" and the one on the right says "Norman Priory apse: Early 12th Century."

I have not pictures of the proper inside of the church. How come?

"Because they charge so much money to visit the church, we're just going to run through it."

What, you might say, that quote is not terribly funny. Imagine it being said, by your badass archeology professor in a SUPER SKETCHY manner. Then tell me it's not funny. Next tip of the day:

"If anyone asks you for money, speak French...we don't speak English."

We hurried through the interior and got a slightly scandalized look from the church people inside who made a quip about not expecting a group but then we were gone. Like ninjas. Like a large pack of archeology ninjas.

The side of the church that we exited was so pretty. I love all the cherry trees in England. Gorgeous. We walked around a bit more. We passed this ship reconstruction. It's what a ship kind of what a ship would have looked like in Tudor England. If you squint. Or at night, as Milne said. The port was a REALLY big deal at the time. Apparently customs officials made quite a tidy sum on everything. This ship is available for parties so if you feel like hosting a Fairly Close Approximation of a Tudor Era Ship Party anytime soon you know where to go! Did I say "if?" I totally meant "when."

Let's see...this next picture is Winchester Palace belonging to the Bishop of Winchester. Or rather, what remains of it. Not only was the Bishop rolling in dough, he also apparently owned some brothels. And his prostitutes were called his "geese." Rawr. Err...honk?

Next we decided to track down The Globe Theatre, home to the original performances William Shakespeare's plays.

"You all know who William Shakespeare was, I suppose. He was a chap...who wrote plays."

You know, just some chap. You've probably heard of him.

Oh! That looks promising...a sign saying the Globe (that my AWESOME picture skillz reduced to "GLOB"...not really the same...). So where is the actual theatre?

Uhhhh, yeah, it's a parking lot now. Poor Shakespeare. But they've made a lovely reconstruction a little ways off from the original site. There was another theatre close to the original Globe which also did not survive into the modern day. It was called, I believe, The Rose. And when a company wanted to make a building over the site of the theatre, they had to completely redesign the building to preserve what little remained of the foundations. We didn't get to see them. Because they are being preserved in what we was told a pool to protect them. I don't think it's open to the public. I'm not sure that this is a loss to the public. Why did this happen?

"Because people like Dustin Hoffman, if you believe, gently sat in front of bulldozers and said *Raises hand* NO."

Again with the gently. In all seriousness though, this raises an interesting question about the importance of preservation. I mean, I tend to believe that we should preserve the CRAP out of what remains to us, but are there some things that maybe aren't worth making a huge fuss about?

At this point in the lecture a car tried to run us all over. We were standing in the middle of a little side street/alley thing that looked more like a drive way than anything else and a car started backing up towards us. To it's credit there was not a single pedestrian casualty despite our rather slow response. It took our dear group a while to move. Milne's response:

"Go away! Can't you see I'm talking!"

Just to make sure I'm not giving you the wrong impression, that statement was to us. Not to the driver in the car. No fights ensued. It was not confrontational. I've seen shouting matches between drivers and pedestrians here. This was not that. At all.

Our last stop was the reconstructed Globe Theatre. It was disappointingly non-globe like. But that doesn't mean I'm not crazy excited to see a play there at the end of the year! Woo!!!

Ok. I need to go back to reading the decision issued in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education and looking at the definition of science used in court cases involving evolution.

Ta darlings!

Much love and cheers!

Hello :)

I made this the day Sameera left. But had a difficult time figuring out how to upload the video. Surprised? Neither am I.

I apologize for the weird face framing. My forehead was not cut-off when I recorded this but somehow making it into a proper movie thingy did just that. I'm to lazy to try again or fix it so WHATEVA.

Cheers and much love as always!

Sameera is here. :)

And it is AWESOME. :D Sorry for the lack of posting. I'll post more later.

More Milne

Sorry, I've been rather terrible about updating. But! I have more Milne quotes from the previous week and this week.

1 MARCH 2011

On this day we went around looking at stuff from Medieval London.

"Luckily there's a hole in the wall for us to walk through. Very thoughtful, those medieval wall builders."

In this picture, the convenient hole is unfortunately obscured by an rather inconvenient bush. Clearly modern day builders are much less thoughtful. But please believe me when I say that there is a hole in the wall.

Another wall picture!

Our next stop was the Tower of London, which if you don't know is a rather impressive structure.

*About the Tower of London* "So we must ask ourselves, who was more chicken: the Londoners or the King?"

I'm going to go ahead and say the King. :) Treasonous as that may be.

Speaking of treasonous behavior, this is the Traitor's Gate of the Tower of London. Apparently those who went in rarely came out alive. At this point in the walk Milne said something about people going into defending oneself and only needing marbles to do so, however, I was unfortunately not able to hear the exact quote. Alas.

Our penultimate stop of the day was a very very old church. It was a church dedicated to all of the saints. Unfortunately, it was bombed during the Second World War and much of it had to be rebuilt.

"If you have a church dedicated to all hallows nothing could possibly go wrong... except maybe the occasional bomb."

Our last stop of the day was the river. We walked down to it and heard about the ports and saw Milne walk along the shore picking up random rocks until he found a piece of old tile.

"Say farewell to the river... before it drowns us all."

8 MARCH 2011

This week's class!

"This is called Cowcross Street because it had cross cows. If you were about to be slaughter'd you'd be cross too."

The cows apparently walked down Cowscross Street to this a market that was here, where they were slaughtered and sold as shoes, meat, etc.

As we walked away we got this gem of knowledge...

"Tanning is quite a smelly industry for reasons I won't go into. But it involves urine."

We went to see quite a few old churches/monasteries. I learned that people were buried in and east to west orientation so that they were pointing towards Jerusalem because they believed that on Judgement Day the dead would rise and need to walk to Jerusalem.

The church that we went inside has been used for filming in quite a few movies and TV shows. In fact, when we visited the church people were filming some promos for the new TV show "The Borgias." The inside of the church was quite lovely but I didn't take any pictures. Oops. However, I can say that the church was the last one in "Four Weddings and A Funeral" starring Hugh Grant.

Milne: "Does anybody like Hugh Grant?"

Girl in class: "I do."

Milne: "Oh dear..."

This is the church.

Apparently, Professor Milne was hatin' on actors today. :D

"Most of you know William Wallace from Mel Gibson's overacting."

In all fairness, both probably deserve it. :P

In other news, Sameera comes tomorrow! I'm so so SO EXCITED!

Much love and cheers!

Canterbury Tales

This Saturday I went on the UCL Give It a Go Trip to Canterbury with Kun-Wei, Steven, Rachel E, Rachel L, Marie and quite a few other students. Canterbury is an adorable town, and wandering around it was an absolute delight. :)

There were punting tours offered along the River Stour but it was a bit nippy out and doing anything on water would have been a bit absurd unfortunately. Our first stop once we had gotten into the city centre was the Canterbury Cathedral, home to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Steven, Rachel L, Kun-Wei and I went and grabbed lunch (Cornish pasties-mine was filled with salmon and potatoes), and then went to tour the Cathedral.

This is the entrance to the Cathedral. Everything so ornately carved and beautiful.

Another view, you can see some more details. For those who can't see, Jesus is the big greenish guy in the centre.

This is the actual Cathedral itself. The Cathedral was founded in 607 AD by St. Augustine who had been sent by the Pope as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons of the area. This structure was constructed in 1070 AD. The original cathedral had been ruined by raids.

To state the obvious, the inside is gorgeous. There was stained glass everywhere and vaulted ceilings.

I love stained glass windows so much. Especially the blue glass.

This is the Anglican Compass Rose.

There was a live orchestra playing while we were wandering about. The acoustics in the cathedral were breathtaking.

Man, the inside of the Cathedral is just so beautiful. Building it was a very impressive feat indeed.

I love this little pane of stained glass window. I'm not sure how obvious it is but I really could not get enough of the stained glass. :) I love the little details in it too. This was a very small little bit of a much bigger window.

This is the tomb of a former Archbishop of Canterbury. I forgot who it is.

This is a crazy old tomb of Archbishop John Peckham who was Archbishop from 1279-1292 according to the placard next to the tomb. One of the things I love most about England is how mind boggling old much of its things are. I'm constantly blown away by the antiquity.

The next thing we did was visit The Canterbury Tales were we got to wander through and listen to some of the stories from Caucer's Canterbury Tales. We started out at The Tabard Inn and made our way to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket (a martyred archbishop who was assassinated by four knights looking to curry favor with King Henry II).

Steven made friends at the Inn.

I'm not sure how easy it is to see in the pictures but the fake people that were a part of the exhibit were rather creepy. But the stories were entertaining (yet another book to add to my must-read list) and the experience was pretty cool. They even tried to recreate authentic smells, something that we noticed wandering through the exhibit because there were a lot of strange smells that appeared to be changing and was confirmed by a survey I took at the end.

We next decided to go to the Norman Castle, but we stopped in a little park/probable graveyard so that Steven could eat some fish and chips.

I love the vividness of the green here. The grass seems especially vibrant in England.

This picture is not from the little park, but rather from another graveyard near the Norman Castle. The sign near the castle said that it would be open until 5:ooPM but the gate was locked when we got there. :( It was around 3:00PM so we were confused and disappointed.

Even though we didn't get to explore the castle, the outsides were really cool! Once again, the age of so much here blows me away.

This store was clearly leaning, much like I imagine the Weasley's Burrow does. :D So much about Canterbury reminded me of Harry Potter. I almost felt like I was in Honeydukes when we stopped in this little sweet shop in town. This could have been because I listened to the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban audiobook on the 2 hour bus ride up to Canterbury, but I kept half expecting to see people in brightly colored robes wandering around with owls and pointed hats. It made me quite happy. All in all, it was a lovely trip. We ended the day in a little tea shop/restaurant where I enjoyed scones with some strawberry jam and clotted cream. Delicious. And I got to listen to more Harry Potter and closed eyes on the way back to UCL. So magical!

Much love and cheers.

Friday and Sunday

Hello hello.

I've been terrible about updating this week. My bad.

After class on Friday, Kun-Wei and I decided to go to Camden Market and then Regent Park. At first, we walked up to Camden from UCL. At first we passed this spot with a big sign saying "CAMDEN MARKET." We were kind of disappointed. There were quite a few clothes stalls bunched into a pretty small space which were cool but a bit of a letdown from what we had been expecting. Upon walking a little further up the street we found a far larger market place with a lot more incredible stuff. We wandered around food stalls, clothing stalls, jewelry stalls, trinket stalls, etc. We found the Stable Market and looked around a bit. There were more bronze statues of horses than I've ever seen in my life. The Market is very proud of the fact that it was once a stable. Most of the statues were really cool. The GIANT horse head that we passed was a little creepy...but still. Horses. :)

Kun-Wei spotted stand with some jewelry that she thought I might like. She was quite right. :D I got three pairs of earrings for £5. I really like them.

From Camden Market we went to Regent Park. Regent Park is BEAUTIFUL. Seriously beautiful. I love all the green spaces in London.

After Regent Park we went to the British Library. The British Library is AMAZING. Seriously. Amazing. Oh. My. God. The two following pictures were taken of the front of the library, pictures weren't allowed in the exhibits. But we saw the Magna Carta, handwritten lyrics of the Beatles, Jane Austen's writing desk and a handwritten manuscript for one of her novels (I think it's "Mansfield Park" but I'm blanking, sorry), and a bunch of other incredible stuff. Museums are amazing. Libraries are also amazing. Museums and libraries together are AN EXPLOSION OF AMAZING.

On Sunday, Kun-Wei and I went to Kensington Gardens. We were wandered around for a while but then it started raining so we went to the Science Museum and looked at the Psychoanalysis and History of Medicine Exhibits.

Since then, I went to Club Neon on Tuesday. As much as clubbing isn't my thing, dancing with friends is always fun. This Club Neon was a bit creepier than the last one but I suppose it's all part of the experience. We had tutorials for Developmental Neurobiology and Cellular Physiology on Monday and Wednesday respectively. Tomorrow is my last Cell Phys practical! Yay! I'm just not exactly looking forward to the write-up. Oh well. It'll be done. This Saturday I'm doing the Give It a Go trip to Canterbury (through UCL) with a bunch of people. I'm REALLY looking forward to that. :)

That's all for now, much love and cheers!