Catching up

Wow I have been doing a lot of stuff lately and haven't been able to update. I don't even remember where I left off last time. Didn't do much Wednesday night, looked at the pictures and saw a really nice cop car. Did anyone know that they are all BMWs here? Shouldn't expect less with all the Ferraris, Aston Martins, and Porsches driving around this place. Then I went to Hyde park and gawked at the swans in the lake. They really sound like Dinosaurs! I wanted to touch one but I remembered a video I saw of a swan chasing a newly wed bride around and thought better of it. Then we went to a student bar on a campus of all places. Apparently they can serve and sell alcohol on school property. It was the cheapest of anywhere so far too. I almost want to see if I could do something like that at A&M...
Thursday we all got up early and toured around St. Paul's cathedral. It was massive! I think I liked it even better than Westminster Abbey. Like most of the good places around here, I couldn't take pictures inside of it either. Then we went on a guided tour walking around the financial district of the city and saw some  skyscrapers. Didn't have any time in between before we had to go to our lecture. After lecture, I took a much needed nap. Then it was time to go. That night was really fun because all of the AIFS students got tickets to ride a boat down the Thames river. We went past the London Eye, Big Ben, Tower of London, and I was scared as we went under the London Bridge. Luckily, it didn't fall down. The drinks on board were very expensive and watered down to boot. But where else was there to go? It was a really fun 'Booze Cruise' as everyone called it. A great indication of how gone people were was when the boat swayed you could see just how many would stumble. Nobody fell overboard... that I know of. There was even a dance floor and a DJ. It really pissed me off that they only played American music! I came to London to hear British music, not the crap I can get back home! Although, everyone went crazy when he played "I'm on a Boat". It was great overall.
Yesterday, I was pretty museum-ed out. My feet were just killing me at the end of the day. We went out early to the Tate Modern which has many modern paintings, mostly abstract ones with a lot of distortioned styles. Really impressionist works. They had Picasso and that style, they had paintings, sculptures, and even a light show that reminded me a lot of Tron.  My head hurt looking at all of it, or maybe it was from the night before haha. There really were some amazing pieces, though. After that, we went to the Victoria and Albert museum which had Reliquaries, old furniture, sculptures, pieces of walls and old staircases, swords, shields, gold and silver serving dishes and cutlery, and the whole place looked like a huge estate anyway. It was so big that we got lost several times trying to find the scavenger hunt style rooms that were on our homework assignment. The size of the collection was phenomenal. By that time I had my fill of looking at anything else, but I just had to go next door and check out the Natural Science museum. They had some of Darwin's original specimens and writings there. In fact, they had a Lincoln memorial style sculpture of him at the top of the main staircase. To think, earlier this week I walked over his grave. They had many exhibits of animals, dinosaurs, and the biggest collection of rocks I have ever seen. They must have had every known kind of rock in that place. They also had a great gem vault. We wanted to explore more but they were starting to close the museum one section at a time. I feel like they literally kicked us out. We then rode a very crowded subway under London back to the hotel. Last thing I did was meet up at a pub called the Greyhound with my professor of all people. Earlier he had invited us all out for a great English tradition. "A pint on a Friday night". What a great place! Only half of us showed up there, however because some people actually managed to swing tickets to the Killers concert at Hyde Park. That would have been great to go to, they said there were thousands of people there and it lasted most of the night. From the pub we went to the bar at the college again. We were thinking about going to a club since nobody had really gone yet. We started heading that way through the streets, but me and two others got separated from the two leading the way. So we just went back to the hotel.
I had a great sleep and woke up at 11 this morning. Today I have got a lot of catching up to do. I have laundry and homework that are in desperate need of doing. Homework is due tomorrow morning before we take our two bus rides and an eight hour ferry so I've got to get after it. That's all for now. Might not be until Monday that I post anything else but stay tuned.