So i'm a few days behind on blogging! Sorry! :) I'll try to catch ya'll up on the goings-on the past few days! Thursday was a class day. We had my Central classes in the morning. Well one of them because Mark was sick. Then I had my first seminar for my "Events Industry" class. I was super nervous because it was in another part of London Met and I was by myself. Anyway, i went like 2 1/2 hours early to find where my class was and i had to talk with the lecturer about getting the material i missed. Finding the room took quite a bit but eventually a really nice lady could tell i was lost and directed me in the right direction. Then i still had about 1 1/2 hours til seminar so i found a little cafe place in the student union place and read my book til it was time to go. In seminar, we were all split into groups because we have to do a group presentation in Week 6 or 7 or something. There was a music, arts, sports, charity and one other group i can't think of at the moment. I am the Charity Event group with 3 other girls, 2 of which were in seminar that day. They both live in London and I'm excited to get to know the more! At night Jackie, Erica and I decided we had waited long enough - it was time to go see Valentine's Day! It was a great girl's night out movie!
Friday- my first full day at my internship! 10-6:30! Kiley and I did alot of computer stuff. The major accomplishment was finishing our info leaflets on the Hoxton Trust. Then Karina took us out for lunch at one of the "greasy spoons." We would call them cafes. It was very reasonably priced and very tasty! Then we went back to work and worked up a bunch of interview quesions. Next week we are going to interview the current ESOL (English as 2nd language class that the Trust provides) ladies in hopes of finding out the impact the class has on them. It should be very interesting! I didn't get home til 7:30ish so the it was a pretty laid back night. Erica, Fonzy and myself decided on watching Leap Year cuz Erica and I had to be up early the next morning.
This morning we had a day tour on a bus to Windsor Castle, Stonehendge and Bath! We had to board the coach at 8 where we were then dropped off at another point where we waited in line for 1/2 hour until our coach arrived. We went to Windsor first which was about 1/2 hour drive out of London. It is one of the queen's favorite castle and was used as a fortress back in the day. Our crazy tour guide led us through the entrance and told us a whole lot of information about the castle. For example, back then there were a lot of superstitions like witches being able come through the mortar between the bricks. So when the castle was built, smaller stones were stuck into the mortar to keep the witches out. She also informed us that most moats did not have water in them, just earthen ditches because of the gravitational advantages or something like that. Only castles right next to a water source was filled up with water. Interesting huh?
The round tower, the highest point, had a flagpole at the top and when the Queen is onsite, the flag is put up and quess what? She was there! We obviously didn't get to see her but apparantly she likes to spend the weekends at Windsor. We then moved on to check out the State Apartments. There were chandeliers everywhere sparkling up the rooms! Definetly my favorite! Even over the gold that was everywhere! We saw a lot of famous drawings/ paintings of past kings, the King/Queens bedrooms, drawing rooms, and many other rooms that had huge paintings, lots of gold and other castle-like items. We got to walk through a room where "Queen Mary's doll house" was. It was a little over 23 feet tall and included replica items from Windsor Castle itself. It was created by a host of top artists and architechs during the 1920's and all items were created on a 1:12 ratio. It was really cool and very detailed! We finished our time at Windsor with a speed tour through the chapel where most of the late Kings and Queens were buried. If we had more time, we would have spend a lot more time here but we were already cutting the time close to make it back to the bus in time.
From Windsor we had about an hour drive to Stonehendge where our crazy tour guide talked the whole time about the history of Stonehendge and different theories about how and why it was created. I didn't really catch alot of it because i was looking out the window in serious awe of the countryside! I am in love - no doubt about it! There is an artillery training facility quite close to Stonehendge so there were signs on the side of the road that said "Tank crossing." We never saw any tanks cross the road, but it was cool to see them. We got about 45 mins to spend at Stonehendge. Most of this time was spent taking really sweet pictures (we thought so anyway! We got a few funny looks and even a few laughs. But then a lot of people joined in!) Check them out on facebook if you are interested! There were also random mounds scattered throughout the country. They are called boroughs, but our guide called them "green pimples" at one time we thats the name we picked. They are burial mounds where 6 people were buried in a borough during the Roman times.
After Stonehendge, we had another hour or so bus ride to Bath, again the guide filling us in on historical information and also random facts about the land, culture, even other useless stuff. We appreciated her knowledge, but her continuous talking was a little overbearing :S In order to get to bath, you have to pass through the most beautiful valley I've seen yet, Avon Valley I believe it was called. I could't get a picture because of all the trees, but it was gorgeous! Plus we had blue skies, so it made it even better! Then we arrived in Bath...(insert WOW here!) So awsome! One of the founders wanted to make it look like Rome, even though he had never been to Rome. So most of the building are built with the Georgian archetecture and look very similar! It was very cool! We made our way to the Roman Baths, where the English Romans bathed and believed it had healing power because of the hot springs throughout the whole year. It was not like I expected at all, but it was really sweet nonetheless! There were numerous baths including the Great Bath, East Baths and West Baths (i think one was for guys and one for ladies?) I was hoping to get into the Pump Room, where the water is pumped out (who would thought?!) and we could taste the water. But by the time we got out of there, it was closed because there was some event going on in there tonight. Bummer! We got some great pictures!
We left Bath at sunset and exited the city with a very beautiful view of a sunse behind the city skyline. We had a 3 hour bus ride back to London where our guide finally gave our brains a rest and enjoyed the silence. It was a long day, but very well worth the time and money! Maybe we will have to head back to Bath so we can spend more time exploring the actual city!
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