Saturday, January 16th

Got off to a very late start today. Set my alarm for 10:10am, but was awoken around 10am by Allyson’s alarm clock falling on my face when she tried to turn it off. One of the many joys of sleeping on the bottom bunk. I actually would much rather live on the bottom bunk though, so ……

STOP NEWS FLASH! Just now as I am writing about how I like being on the bottom bunk… Allyson climbs up the ladder to her top bunk and drops her water bottle on me; getting me, my pajamas, and my bed completely soaked. Maybe I should move.’

So much for living on the bottom bunk. Anyways… I got up around noon today. Had a nice big lunch (Fish and chips leftovers from dinner the night before). Around three Allyson and I left the centre and made our way to Trafalgar Square. We decided today would be the day we would get some homework done. Haha like that’ll happen… We went to the National Gallery to start on an assignment for our mythology class. For the assignment we have to identify certain paintings that have to do with mythology, and then write about them. We identified a lot of them, now we just have to write. We stayed in the gallery for about 2 hours, and still have a lot more work ahead of us.

After the NatGal we were planning on running a few quick errands to get some school supplies, etc. We stopped by Covent Garden to go to this store called Lush. It is fantastic! Smells so good. It is a soap/bath product store. Really cool. We bought some awesome things… shampoo bars for backpacking (one bar lets you wash your hair about 80 times, and you don’t have to worry about liquid with going through customs), lotion, and I bought two presents for my mummy dearest! It was a lot of fun. While there, this one sales guy was helping us out and we got talking with him. He was born in the UK, but moved to California when he was young. Upon graduating high school in the States, he chose to move back to London. He is our age. He was very nice. As we were leaving he told us he got off work in an hour, and asked if we wanted to grab a drink after. We spent the next hour wandering around Covent Garden. We went to Ben’s Cookies, a cookie store that a lot of the girls at the Centre have been raving about. I didn’t find them as great as they said they were. They were good, not great. Just an overpriced cookie if you ask me. We then met Kevin back at Lush and we walked around the city. We went to a pub/bar to grab dinner. It was a much different pub/bar than the ones we had previously gone to. It had a more modern feel to it. I had the best veggie burger! After dinner we walked around the city. He said he really liked playing tour guide, so we all had a lot of fun. We walked along the river. It is beautiful at night. Everything has lights, but the fog gives it some misty edge that is lovely. I couldn’t help thinking of the movie Taken when we walked under a dark bridge. It only made me laugh out loud for a moment, before the thought left my head. We came back to the centre later in the evening. Had a great day. We got Kevin’s information, so we may hang out again. It’s nice to have “local” friends. I don’t like to play “tourist”.