Monday
A smaller group of us went to Kensington High Street to visit some of the charity shops (basically a small step above thrift shops), other shops, and just see the area. We got there and found out it seemed like "Tourist City" with shops EVERYWHERE. There was everything from H&M to the Top Shop, and also "American Apparel", (Which, by the way, is NOT what we wear as Americans, just a few t-shirts and things for about 20 pounds more than it should be). I really liked one smaller church we walked past. It was really pretty, had a big stain-glass window, but it had a little flower shop next to it that I think I liked most, that and it was covered in green moss/lichens.
Eventually, we got ourselves all the way over to Kensington Gardens which was so pretty and so green! As we were walking through, we saw a big pond with an absolute ton of swans around it. Back home, you barely ever seen swans and there were probably 20-30 of them all just hanging out by the pond! A little bit later, we found the Kensington Palace, and that you have to pay to get in and decided to wait and see if we'd go there for class.Being completely 'shopped out' Andrew and I decided to head back home to the flat. On the way home, we saw a coffee shop called "Caffe Nero". We figured it's basically another Starbucks. Untrue. It was awesome -we got a "Vanilla Frappe Milkshake" which was basically like drinking vanilla frosting.
Later that night, we decided to check out Piccadilly Circus. We found out, too, that it was Chinese New Year and found ourselves walking through Chinatown. There were Chinese red lanterns everywhere.
Absolutely exhausted we went home and shortly thereafter... bed. Tuesday
Tuesday was a little simpler. We were less like chickens without heads, and more like somewhat sane human beings for a while... until the bus ride. Let me explain.
We decided that we would go to this place called Covant Gardens - where (on sundays) they have a large market, and I hear it is absolutely insane. Also, George wanted to find a club to go to. So, he found us a bus that went that way, and none of us had ever ridden the bus before, so we figured that he knew best. He did, but we just got on the wrong bus. Instead of taking a bus going east, we took one going west. We ended up by Wimbledon. WAY the heck south of london, south of the Thames. It was a pretty area, and it was really nice to see, but... well... it was FAR from where we wanted to be. We were on the top deck (of course) of the double decker bus, and it was pretty sweet. The bus drivers are crazy awesome and get within centimeters of other cars and buses... and bikers.
We visited Covant Gardens, and it was a cool area, and decided to go back to it later that night, at the club that George found. When we went back, we had issues finding it, but when we got in there... it... umm... wasn't really the place we wanted to be in. I felt as though I went back in time about... say... 35 years. It was... interesting, so we grabbed the 8-handled door, and left. After walking around town, we decided go go back. Good day. Wednesday Today was the first day of our London as a visual text course. We met our instructor, Sarah, in the classroom in the backyard and headed out. She had warned us right off the bat that she walks pretty quickly. It only gets to be a challenge when you get stuck behind everyone else -in short, the catch-up game is impossible. During the day we saw everything from the York Water Gate (which has no water), the London Bridge (which is the one most people think is the tower bridge, but it's not), and part of the London Wall (which is not much of a wall anymore... more like bunch of rocks and bricks).Tonight we saw our first play, "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" which is a Stoppard play (amazingly only an hour) about politics, so I (Jess) was a little less than enthused at first. The set was really minimal an entire orchestra onstage, a simple white 'tile' zig-zag across the stage which was a revolve and two separate playing areas for the two locations in the play. Jess is a nerd (Andy). The play was pretty good but we were both confused by the ending which never resolved much of anything. Everybody else seemed to really like the play though. Afterward, we took a walk by the river and got to see Parliament, Big Ben and the Eye all lit up for the night. We got to see just how HUGE the Eye really is and by how little it seems to be supported by.
Thursday Today was pretty much hum-drum, but we were visited, again, by the cute little kitty from nextdoor. His name is Scandal, but before we knew this we went up to him and asked him his name, and he licked his butt, so we called him butt-licker. That was seriously the most exciting thing going on that day. Oh, we had class too, and took a picture of Andrew's 2 pound coin with DeoxyriboNucleicAcid engraved on it. 
FridayClass, again with Sarah this morning. We met back by the London wall, and from there headed to the Museum of London. Had some issues getting there, with someone getting lost-ish in the tube station, and then some of the group falling really far behind. At one point Sarah just stopped to wait and said, "Well, it is the first week still". While we were walking (quickly), I (Andy) asked Sarah whether it was really obvious that we were form out of town. (Begin mental english accent here) Without hesitation she said, "Yes". She followed it up quckly with, "Don't feel bad about it. As long as you keep your mouth shut, no one can really tell." I'm not too sure what to think about that, but she did say that with more time (more than just a week) the rougher edges begin to wear away, and you'll be fine. When we were first leaving the museum, Sarah stopped and warned "We're going to start walking quickly now" to which Andrew and I tried to scoot to the front of the group so we wouldn't get stuck behind people.
After the museum, we were walking to an open-air market in Southwark. On the way, Sarah was nice enough to try and walk us past a neat spot for a picture of St. Paul's Cathedral but we all got a laugh when we found what would have been an amazing photo, but it was covered in scaffolding as they were cleaning the building. The market was... interesting. Full and overflowing with people and smells. Had to do the typical zip up my purse and make sure everything valuable was secured. I guess a few people saw signs saying to watch out for pick-pockets. The smells were either really good or quite horrifying. When we first got there it was amazing and smelled like herbs and fresh veggies, but as we walked through the middle of the market we got stuck by a meat and cheese store which smelled quite foul. The entire thing was really cool, but kind of over-stimulating and slightly claustraphobic with people everywhere.
After dinner, we were trying to pick a tube stop to travel to and decided to head to Buckingham. It was pretty cold by now, but we managed to walk around the block before completely freezing. We took a bunch of pictures of the front of the palace and the huge statue that was infront of it. Used the toby for a few group shops. On the walk back to the tube, it was amazing to see how many memorials to various other countries there were. I think the overall favorite was the Austrailian war memorial. Tired of walking, but not wanting to go to bed or sit at home, we went to "The Earl's Court Tavern" and hung out with a few friends before going home and to bed.
We'll catch you up on the weekend after today's adventures and seeing WICKED!
