London and Other Recent Adventures

As I was recently reminded by a good friend and apparently fairly frequent blog-checker, I have not posted in a while. This is true, but not unexpected, since I accurately predicted this would happen in my last post. But anyway, my final project is turned in, my review is tomorrow, and I have free time again!

So what have I been up to that kept me so busy in the last two weeks? Well...I went to London for the weekend of Thanksgiving. Our flight left at 6:30 am on Thursday, but we had to start the traveling process at about 3:45, when we left to take a bus to another bus stop with the bus to the airport...I think I've mentioned before that it always seems like traveling takes alot of steps. On the bus to the airport, we met another American student who went to prom with my friend Katie's good friend from ND. Small world, I guess.

When we got to London, we took a bus from the airport to the center of the city (via Baker Street. If you know why that's so cool, then you're cool). We walked around for awhile and saw some important things, like Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square (with St. Martins-in-the-Fields, THE precedent for most of the Protestant churches in the U.S. I was surprised to find that it was there; I guess I always pictured it being in a field somewhere or something). In the evening we headed over to the flats where the ND students studying in London live, and ate Thanksgiving dinner with some of them. It was delicious. We had a typical American feast--turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, gravy, cranberry sauce, pastry things...and three kinds of pie for dessert. It was was good. It was weird spending a holiday away from home...and I know Christmas will be even weirder.

Friday was another sightseeing day. Among other things, we went to a Christmas festival in Hyde Park, and saw St. Paul's Cathedral. We went to an Evening Prayer Service there, and it really confused me--they had readings from the Book of Revelation that included things I had never heard in that book before and sounded kind of sketch, but then at one point they also said the Apostles Creed, all of it, including the part about believing in the Holy Catholic Church. So I suppose I don't really understand the Anglican Church's relationship to the Catholic Church. And I guess even if I did, I'd have to relearn it soon anyway when it changes...we also went to a Starbucks, where I was able to get one of those huge, soft chocolate chip cookies. Soft cookies are probably one of the foods I miss most here. We also walked to the Globe, but got there right after it closed, so we couldn't go in. We did get to see the outside, though. It was smaller than I imagined it to be, but still cool. After that we went to Modern Art museum right next door, but ended up not really looking at any exhibits and instead spending all our time in the gift shop. They had alot of good art and architecture books there. When we walked back outside we realized that the bridge across the river right there is the one that was destroyed at the beginning of the 6th Harry Potter movie! So we walked across it of course. We had fish and chips for dinner (except I didn't have the fish, I got something else).

Saturday was probably my favorite day in London. We started it off right by going to see Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross Station! Seriously. We also went to the London Tower, which is the old castle fortress thing. It seemed very pleasant--pretty walls, green grass, right by the river...it was kind of hard to convince myself that so many bloody things had happened there in the past. For instance, I saw the tower where St. Thomas More and Ann Boleyn and others were held before they were executed...

Saturday afternoon, we saw Wicked! We got fairly cheap student tickets. It was very cool. It was dark when it was over, because it gets dark in London at approxamately 4:30 pm. No joke. And it not like that's when the sun sets--that's when it's DARK. It was also raining. We wandered around for a little while and finally got dinner at an Irish pub. Then we went to the ND flats for a bit. Things got interesting at midnight. We had another 6 am flight with 3:30 bus situation, so we didn't want to pay for a hostel that night. But, we weren't allowed in the flats after midnight. So we were essentially homeless, wandering the streets of London in the dark and cold. We took a bus to the train station our bus was leaving from in the hopes there'd be an inside place we could wait, but no luck. So we wandered some more. We found a McDonalds that was open til 2. That's possibly the most thankful I've ever been to go to a Mickey D's. At 2, we walked back to the train station. We stood outside for awhile, and bought a pasty to share, and then went to the actual bus stop. We found a place we could at least sit down in, and waited. In retrospect, it was quite a humorous situation, but it the time it was fairly miserable. But even though I was miserable, I knew that it WOULD make a good story eventually, so that actually made it a little better. 3:30 finally came, and we started the journey home. We got back to Rome at about 10. I showered, went to studio, and didn't leave much for the next week or so...

So that was London, and that last sentence pretty much sums up my last week, too. I was in studio. We did take a few breaks, I guess. On Friday we went to a pub for a little while. When we walked in I was surprised that it was so crowded, and then I remembered, oh yeah--it's Friday night! I kind of lose track of the days right before a project is due. Also, yesterday I took a longer mass break than usual. My friend Evan and I went to S. Maria Maggiore. That's where the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception actually happened, if I heard right in the Italian homily. So cool! We also took another break in the afternoon to go see a ceremony at the Spanish steps where the Pope presented a special wreath to the statue of Mary there. Unfortunately, we got there just a bit late and missed the main part of the ceremony...but we did see him drive away in the Pope-mobile:-) There were tons of people there. Apparently the Immaculate Conception in Italy is a holiday equivilant in importance to Thanksgiving in America, and Rome is the place to be for it. Christmas decorations are going up all over the city,too, like lights, and trees...and it's starting to seem more like Christmas! We listened to alot of Christmas music in studio, too. I love it!

Last night I finished my final project. I sat in on reviews all day today, and will do the same tomorrow (including my own). I have a small history assignment to do, and a history final on Friday, and then I'm done for the semester! Crazy. I also realized recently that this is the first semester in quite a long time that I haven't written a single paper. Kind of weird...good thing I have things like this blog to keep me from completely forgetting how to express myself in written form.