Mind the Gap

It's way too hard to find time to blog up here. The past couple of weeks have been chocked full of tons of awesome things, but also full of a ton of homework and planning.
Seriously, I think that the Morgans have forgotten that we're here on vacation, not to study! Each week we've been assigned over 300 pages of reading, and we've written 10 pages of various assignments. The upside is that 200 of those pages are from Lord of the Rings, so at least the reading is worthwhile. But I've read LOTR multiple times, and I want to read some of my own stuff... oh well.

I've drank so much tea here.

Where to begin? How about London? London it is. Last Saturday Caleb, Bailey, Lizzy, Ashley, Tanner, Allye, Amara, and I hopped the train to London for the day. This was my first train ride, and it really wasn't that exciting. We got to London and immediately my adventure with the Underground began! I don't know how many tubes we got on and switched, but I felt like a cowboy wranglin' some calves, the way we were just hoppin' on and off like we owned the place. We started off at the British Museum, which is enormous. They have over 7 million items on display. We spent a couple hours, and I feel like we barely made a dent. My personal favorites were the mummies!

It was bitterly cold and drizzly, and we travelers were starving. We ducked into a Mediterranean restaurant because it was the closest place with central heating. It ended up being pretty tasty and I got some Turkish coffee that was delicious. After our meal, we walked by parliament and Big Ben. Big Ben is indeed quite big. It's... Well I'll just let Caleb and Tanner tell you:



It was tough to fight the urge to pull a Guy Fawkes, but overall I think it was wise that no attempts on the destruction of Parliament were made. Real talk though, Parliament and Ben were stunningly beautiful, as is all of the gothic style architecture in England. It never ceases to amaze me how impressive these feats were without all of the modern technology that we have today.

We joined a protest in the streets of London for a while because it was taking up the street on the way to the Underground. That was fun. They were pissed about education cuts, hence their chant, "No ifs! No Buts! No Education Cuts!" Interestingly enough, the more people I talk to, the more I get the feeling that the Brits like to hate on their government as much as American's do.



We wrapped up the day with evensong in St. Paul's Cathedral, which was by far my favorite part of the day. Stay tuned for a post in the near future for more details on Cathederals. After St. Paul, we grabbed some dinner at a bar which is actually a funny story. Here's the thing about London, and really England in general. England is small. It's roughly the size of Texas, but with the population of 50 million. That is roughly twice that of Texas. Therefor London doesn't have a whole lot of room. This has been a cultural adjustment that I've had to make, because in Abilene, Texas, there's always room. Except for a few exceptions, you can always find a seat in a restaurant. But in London, well, the space is small, and the crowd is huge. Every place we went to was packed to the brim, and it was only 7 oclock. So we find this bar that has a lot of empty tables, but they are all reserved. Dejected and hungry, our moody troupe troops out. I however ask the bouncer outside if he knows of any restaurants nearby that can hold all 8 of us. He smiles and says, "Let me see what I can do." He then preceded to go to a table and kick a couple out, telling them that we had a reservation. It was priceless. If I wasn't so hungry, I might have felt bad.

I almost forgot! We also went to Buckingham Palace. Besides sounding like an awful swear word, it is better known as the not so humble abode of the Queen. Or one of the places she calls home. Apparently she has lots of houses. And it would behoove you to know that her last name is not Buckingham, though I'm still skeptical about that. The guards were less than exciting...Yes they stood quite erect and never cracked a smile, but honestly I kind of pitied them. I'd go crazy just standing there.





Only a few days from this London adventure, our entire Oxford group went back to London. We went to the British Library, which was awesome! They had all kinds of original manuscripts such as the Canterbury Tales, ancient bible scripts, and the original Magna Carta. They also had this neat little display:




Later we went to a Candlemas service at West Minster Abby, which was again incredible. Lastly we went to a Premier League Soccer (Football) game, featuring NewCastle and Fulham. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I had a blast standing with the drunk NewCastle fans, cheering and learning all of their chants.

Before the game:


A lot has happened! I must never fall this far behind again. This weekend Amara, Caleb, Bailey, and I are going to Old York, which I'm fairly certain William Wallace sacked, though it's never wise to count on Hollywood history. In a couple of weeks, a huge group of us is taking a bus to Paris. Yes I said bus, and yes I understand that there's a body of water between the UK and France. In a month or so, we're going to Venice, Rome, and Athens for Spring Break. A couple weeks after that our Oxford is going to Ireland for a week, and a couple of weeks after that a few of us are going to Spain and Moracco for a long weekend! Whew! That's alot of traveling.

Goodness we covered a lot of ground. I work too hard for y'all. This wasn't a typical insightful or funny blog, but I just had so much to catch all of you up on! More posts soon-- I promise. Also, prepare yourself for another Stanky Leg in the very near future.