Odds and Ends

Hello Readers! I'm sorry it's been a while, but my head is still spinning from all this activity. I spend maybe 8 hours per 24 in my room and most of that is spent sleeping. This is crazy!

One thing I miss very much about America is our beautiful tap water fortified with fluoride. Because of this, I assume that I can drink whatever comes out of a faucet. This is not true in London. At the Tate Modern, they have to instruct you that the water from the faucets is not meant for drinking. There are no water fountains anywhere! What is that about? It's all very puzzling. While we're on plumbing, I had to pay to use the bathroom at Paddington Station on Friday. It was a trivial amount of 30 pence, but that's not the point. I'm just offended on principle. If I have to pay to relieve my bladder, there damn well better be some sort of musical entertainment. Or the seats better be heated. Make my experience so fantastic that I won't take umbrage at the fact that you charged me. Frankly, that makes me really consider just skulking off to take care of my business anywhere I choose. But I am a lady so take your 30 pence, you thieves!

But we were at Paddington Station to travel to Bath for the day. Here's a picture of me with Paddington Bear.

Pinkies up!

Bath is amazing! I looked up from my reading on the train ride over, and all of a sudden the hills were lined with these gorgeous row-houses of matching limestone. It was really cool to walk around a structure from 70 AD (or so, the tour guide bored me so I just started snapping pictures. I mean, I get how a bath works by now. Olive oil, strigils, naked Romans). The highlight for me was tea in the famous Pump Room. So many characters in English novels flirt and go to Bath for its healing dimension. I'm a Jane Austen fan, and to be drinking tea in the same room where Catherine Morland and her stupid friend Isabella gossiped was pretty cool. I hammed it up with my tea because I'm not a tea drinker (or coffee...I'm such a child) so it felt a wee bit pretentious to me but I had fun. I also drank some pump water. It had a weird sulfuric and metallic tang to it. Awful. Why did people think it had a medicinal purpose?

I should also mention that I have seen the Queen. It was her birthday last Saturday so a few of my classmates and I went to the Pall Mall near Buckingham Palace around 10AM to watch the festivities. First a marching band of the Palace Guards marched by. Finally the Blues and Royals rolled in on their matching horses to pick up the Royal party from the palace. They looked so sharp! Their horses were all so elegant and the same dark chestnut color. The most helpful element of this expedition was that there was a man standing behind me explaining all the events to his young son perched atop his shoulders. I found out that the silly hats the guards wear used to be made of bear fur.

That's the Queen in the carriage in blue. As you can tell, I wasn't that close.

Speaking of silly hats, Camilla's was ridiculous! It was this peach atrocity that honestly looked like a wedding cake sitting on her head. Yikes.

I'll kill Dobby if this doesn't work

We went to King's Cross Station to get to Cambridge last Friday and guess what kind of photo-ops happened? That's right: HARRY POTTER! Soak up my awesome adventure. Try not to get too jealous. We staged a Harry, Ron, and Hermoine picture, and the group determined that I should be Hermoine. It made my day, if not week. I tried to assume a pensive, intellectually fierce look. I hope I pulled it off. The man playing Ron is one of our program administrators. And that's Cale playing Harry. Someone actually drew a lightning bolt scar on his forehead with pen. My classmates are awesome.

Wands at the ready!

But today was incredibly enjoyable. I'll devote a new blog post to it because I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Bard deserves a post of his own. In the meantime: Mom, Dad, I'm still alive. Sorry I haven't contacted you in like a week. Call me tomorrow through your magic internet phone ways?