I Walk Until My Feet Fall Off

As you may have suspected, we've done a ton since I wrote last time. I swear I've walked more since I've been here than ever before, and I like walking a lot. Also, there are more stairs in London than I have ever seen in my life. My room is on the 4th floor (the 5th floor in America) so I get the priviledge of walking up fifty flights of stairs twenty times a day just in the center. By the time I get to the top my thighs burn like none other. We figure that by the end of the semester we'll all have legs of steel.

Anyways, one of our classes is called the walks of London. It's fantastic because our homework is basically to go out and walk around the city, but it's way intense because these walks are a good two to three hours long and sometimes the directions are a little ambiguous. The adventures are always fun though, and we get to see all sorts of things along the way. On the past couple of walks we did we got to check out a couple of really cool old churches (there are about 5,000 really cool old churches here I've decided. They just keep popping up out of nowhere), play a game of giant chess, see some of the famous sites, and tons of other things. Going on these walks are what I've spent most of my time doing since I last wrote.

Some of the fun non-homework related things I've done:

• the BBC Proms-- BBC has a series of concerts (called Proms) during the summer that are really famous, and we were lucky enough to be able to go to the second to last one of the season. We got to hear the BBC Philharmonic play Beethoven's 9th Symphony live with a full choir for only five pounds. We had to stand at the top, but it was totally worth it. It sounded absolutely incredible. I have to admit that I did zone out a little bit though because I was dead tired and they were just oh so soothing...


• 39 Steps-- Ok, so this was technically homework since we had to write a paper on it, but it was so much fun that I don't care. It's basically the most amazing play I've ever seen (it's also an old Alfred Hitchcock movie). It was a mystery comedy. It doesn't get much better than that! They made fun of the stereotypical spy story and it was fabulous. Go see it.


• Portobello Market-- There's this sweet famous market that's just down the street from where I live every Friday and Saturday, so we had to go to it. It was almost impossible to resist spending my money right then. There were all of these amazing little stands and tons and tons of cool old antiques. We might have to go there every weekend.


• The Thames Festival-- basically it was a party on the south side of the Thames. Love that place.


• Parliament-- We took a tour of the place and it was ridiculous. I don't even know how to describe it. It was designed to be a palace, so the decorations are all intricate and beautiful and old and expensive looking. Then there were all these places that only Lords could sit, and all sorts of crazy things like that. Our tour guide was amazing; I never wanted to leave. When we entered we went into Westminster Hall, which is over 900 years old. So much has happened there that I couldn't even comprehend it. Craziness.
  
• Church-- We went to our new wards for the first time on Sunday, and it was a lot of fun. There are 41 of us in the program, and they split us up into all different wards in the two London stakes so I'm in the ward with three other people from BYU. We're in the Peckham ward, which is on the south side of the Thames. We got really lucky because we can get there really easily on the tube and it doesn't take very long. Some of the other people have to transfer to the train and stuff and it takes them like two hours. Everybody in our ward seems great too; we already met some really nice people. It's also kind of fun because like 80 or 90% of the ward is African. I can't wait to get to know the ward better.
• I'm pretty sure that I did other stuff too, but I really just can't think of anything right now. Feel free to use your imagination to fill in the gaps.

It was really funny, because we packed so much into the first few days we got here that by the time we made it to the weekend we were all dead, and suddenly we all got very boring. Luckily staying boring is very hard in London! The trick is trying to find the balance between school and fun. Last week I think we all kind of forgot about the school part, so we're all trying to make up for it now. I guess that means that I should probably do my reading and stuff too...

Things to look forward to-- we're going on a three day trip to the West starting on Wednesday. We haven't actually heard what we'll be doing yet, but I think that we're going to Devon and Cornwall.

Here's some more pictures for those of you who had a hard time paying attention to my rambling (it's late and I'm avoiding doing my homework so the rambling is inevitable).

Me and the beautiful 27 Palace Court.


Me and Parliament.


Me and the Thames.

Me and Tower Bridge.

Miss ya!