Leg It!!

As promised, I am putting up some pictures from Wednesday's day-trip. I guess they are pretty self-explanatory? Hopefully.















At the beginning of our Culture and Community class this semester, we learned about culture shock. There's about five stages:
1. Honeymoon
2. Blue/Hermit
3. Irritation
4. Acceptance
5. Bi-cultural
Last week I convinced myself that I was in the hermit stage. I was fine with staying inside, and didn't feel all that motivated to go out and do things (of course I still did things, I just wasn't the one to initiate it). Lucky for me, I'm pretty sure that yesterday (Friday) pushed me out of the hermit stage straight on into the irritation stage!!! YAY! No yeah, but seriously. Ya know?

5 February was a wonderful day. Definitely makes my top three favorite days here.
We always have a group outing on Fridays. This week we were going to the Banquet Hall and The British Museum. We were told that the Banquet House wasn't very impressive, and I had already been to The British Museum three times. Needless to say, I woke up a little less than motivated. How foolish I was.
We all arrived at the Banquet House at 10 AM, but there had been a military party the night before and the cleanup wasn't finished...i.e. we couldn't go in yet. With and hour left to kill before meeting back up again, Michelle, Brittany, Kira and I headed over to St. James' Park and Buckingham Palace. The morning sun had burned the clouds away, and it was a gorgeous day. The morning got better and better as we fed the squirrels peanuts, watched the ducks, and walked closer to Buckingham Palace.





I didn't really have a picture in my head of what the Palace looked like, but once I saw it, I was very impressed. I couldn't help but think of that scene in "Cool Runnings" where Yul Brenner has a picture of Buckingham Palace, his dream home.








Anyway.
The Banquet House was...neat. Big room, cool ceiling, good party venue. We laid down in the middle of the Hall and played the "Ha" game.





A bunch of us went to Pret a Manger for lunch. I had spinach and nutmeg soup, and the best banana I have ever had. I'm not kidding. This was one delectable banana.
We were about to head down into the tube and over to the British Museum, but we had a bit of time and the sun was out. So what did we do? Climbed on the lions at Trafalgar Square, of course! Once we made a complete spectacle of ourselves (and had random people taking pictures of us...wierd) we got off and headed to the British Museum.




My fourth time in this museum was splendid. There's tons of stuff there, and I'm sure I'll be back again at least once or twice before I go home.



As I said, the sun was out, and some would say it was even warm outside. So I went for a nice run around Hyde Park. I feel like I've finally been able to get back into running since coming here. For some reason, last Fall I sort of fell out of my usual running routine. But now I'm getting excited for my second round of the Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage this July. I've been making my training schedule already, and looking up other races to get me prepared. I even got Leslie (my lovely roommate that looks like Emma Watson, or Hermione) to agree to run a half-marathon at the end of the summer with me. One of these days I might be crazy enough to try a full marathon, but that day has not yet come.
Yes, well.
The rest of the afternoon was good, and then that evening almost everyone in the Center headed over to the Hyde Park Chapel for a YSA Dance. Oh my, it was so fun. Picture 30+ American girls dancing like crazy in the middle of the dance floor, and everyone else sort of dancing around the sides. My favorite was when "Party in the USA" (Miley Cyrus) and "Empire Sate of Mind" (Jay-Z) came on. I'm sure we looked completely ridiculous.
So that was yesterday...

And I know I'm in the irritation stage of culture shock because today I was very angry with the public transportation systems. From now on, I prefer to leg it.