ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥ - you suhprice I aspeak you langagee?

So, I'm supposed to be spending my first night in Rome tonight. Instead, I'm still in the London Center in...you guessed it...London. You've heard about it, Eyjafjallajökull...the Icelandic (Icelandish?) volcano spewing ash all over the place, keeping planes on the ground. Mother Earth is alive and well, my friends. We all knew as earthquake after earthquake hit other parts of the world, it was only a matter of time before something happened over here. This just happened at a really inconvenient time. Everyone else on the program not traveling after the program was supposed to be flying home to the U.S. today.
Well, what can you do?
Oh wait, I'm still in London, one of the most exciting cities on the planet.

ok, I'm cool with that. At least for now.

So yeah, we're still having a good time, enjoying the absolutely beautiful spring weather. No signs of ash here.

On Thursday, I only had two finals. I took one in the morning, and then went out with Michelle. We went to Borough Market (just can't get enough) and then took a walk down to Tower Bridge, crossed it, and walked back along the Thames. We came upon a WWI and WWII memorial for the Navy. It had names of all of the UK men and women lost at sea during both wars.

We came home, took our last final, and then had a little show before dinner. Professor Macfarlane sang his own rendition of "The Wizard and I" from Wicked...one of those things that you really can't appreciate unless you saw it yourself. It certainly helped to clear the cloud of stress that had been around for the past few days with finals. We then had a pizza party dinner with Ben's cookies. Yum.


Front stoop picture

Seeing as we were still planning on this being one of our last days here, a bunch of us went to Les Miserables. My second time seeing it in London. The lady sitting next to me sobbed throughout the entire show. Most of the cast was the same as the first time, with a few changes. The new Jean Valjean was absolutely incredible, I couldn't believe how good he was. It's still one of my favorite shows.

Yesterday we took it pretty easy. Another trip to Borough for lunch, a nice afternoon nap, and a walk through Hyde Park summed up most of the day. Then a bunch of us decided to go see "Dear John", another movie that's been out in the U.S. for a while but just recently came out here. I really, really did not like that movie. The last movie I did not enjoy as much as that one was probable "The Family Stone"...remember that one? You don't? Well, it was bad.

Today my cold that I've been denying I have finally took it's toll on my body, and I couldn't really get out of bed until noon. Luckily, Michelle came back a couple hours later to check on me, and we went out for most of the afternoon. The big event in London today was the Tulip Festival at Trafalgar Square. Basically it's just a big celebration of Holland and beer and everyone wears Orange. We walked all the way there, and then had fun people watching and listening to music.


Where's Waldo? ope...there he is.



Oh, and Abby. I finally went to The Spaghetti House tonight, upon your recommendation. It was very good. A nice substitute for the Italian dinner I would have had in Rome tonight.