Post Midterm Fun

So I had my history test today, which went well, I wrote a riddiculously long essay and could have carried on writing for a few more pages. Hopefully I put down all the important points she was looking for, but I did know everything on it which is nice. Now that we're half way done, everyone's done their first round of testing and such, except the people like me in Shakespeare class. Our paper is due next week. Tomorrow morning I'm going to Edinburgh for the weekend and won't be back until fairly late on Sunday. I'm really excited about this trip and will surely have lots of pictures to put up and stories to tell. See you Sunday :)

Wah, shoes!

So today, Katy and I ventured out on the town after breakfast. There's an open air market that happens on Wednesday mornings at Gloucester Green, visible from my college. We originally meant to visit a shoe store but we did run through the market first. There were lots of different things there: fruit and veggies, clothes, toys, tools, pretty much everything. We then went to a few different stores and checked out clothes, and the store we originally meant to go to, nothing special and everything expensive. Finally on our way back we stopped at another shoe store just to check out the stock, and there they were... the shoes I'm drooling over right now. Irregular Choice, black and pink kinda chineesy platformy and lacy shoes, on the biggest heel I've ever seen in my entire life. The only problem is that... they're $100... and totally not on sale. The last time I've wanted a pair of shoes were my black BCBG heels and they were NOT that expensive. Anyway, I tried the shoes on (I'm a european size 36-37), strutted around in them, and then gave them back to the nice lady. Room still hot, test still tomorrow, at least the shoes made me happy :) Here they are, except there's no separated heel, just a solid black platform with a higher rise. Way awesome:

Orchard studying

So nothing exciting again today, just some schoolwork. Actually today is St. Veronica's feast day ... and that's your Catholic tidbit for the day. My room is continuing to be unbearably hot and sauna like, I'm keeping all the blinds closed to no avail. I'm considering investing in a room fan. Today I actually studied for the history test I have on Thursday then joined Katy at the college pub for a pint and then to the Kebab Kid in Gloucester Green for some chips and cheese. Steve and I studied in the orchard today and tomorrow I think a few more people from class are going to join us in a final study. The orchard is so very very pretty, in fact I have a picture of it. The shade in the late afternoon was a nice change from the 80 degree weather, plus I was pleasantly surprised that the bugs stayed mostly away. We did distract ourselves by throwing fallen apples around at the other trees and observing the fighting pigeons and the Provost's cat. Anyway, studying more tomorrow, test Thursday and Edinburgh on Friday morning :) I can't wait to go to Scotland!! As promised, the orchard:

The return of the good weather

Today was absolutely boiling and is promising to be like this for the rest of the week. And it so is not helped by the fact that there is no air conditioning in my room, it's almost like sitting in a sauna. I'm still worn out from the weekend, but I've settled into a pretty good routine here, and after two weeks I'm used to waking up in the dorm bed and going to dinner at the same time every day. The highlight of the day is that we booked our hostel for Edinburgh today and I began looking at trips to Paris for the fifth weekend. But honestly after all that fun stuff that happened in the last three days, there's nothing to write about for today since everyone is tired and is in their rooms sleeping or doing homework. So I'm just going to post some pretty pictures from the weekend here for everyone to enjoy and envy ;-)

One of the few pigeons I found in Trafalgar Square. Did you know it's illegal in London to feed the pigeons? Apparently there are so many of them that they're considered pests!

















Me and the girls I went to London with. We're all dressed up because we thought we'd get to go to high tea, but we picked the parade over the teatime, and I think that was the right decision.

















Obviously this is Big Ben, it's very big and impressive and rings very very loudly:






















This is me walking away with a statue outside of the Salisbury Cathedral, and then a shot from the cloisters of the Cathedral. This is one of the only cathedrals in England to have been completed entirely in ONE style. Most other ones are a combination of Norman, Gothic, Romanesque and other things ... this one is entirely Early Gothic and was completed in only 38 years!!






































And finally a FAR better picture of Camilla, Charles and Harry, taken by my friend Chris:

















Enjoy :-D

I saw the QUEEN!

Yes, that's right. Veronica saw the Queen of England in her super awesome parade Land Rover.

This morning some of my roommates along with a few more people, headed out to London to see the parade comemorating the end of WWII. In the morning though, half the girls went shopping. Since I'm not a big fan of shopping whatsoever, I went with Chris and another girl to Hyde Park to see the Speaker's Corner. We listened to some of the biggest verbal diarhea that I've ever heard in my entire life. People were just spouting things about how American's are terrible and how Jesus saves and how everyone is going to hell. This big crowd of tourists kept moving from speaker to speaker laughing and antagonizing, it was a really great time. I can't believe how stupid and closed minded some people are. This guy was talking about how the US invasion of Iraq caused the bombings last Thursday:
















Afterwards, we went through Trafalgar Square again and then to Victoria Station for lunch, and then on to the Mall to line up for the parade. The sun was out in full force and at 3pm I was already feeling it, my shoulders got a bit crisped actually but since I remembered sunscreen on my face, nothing else was affcted. We did get to see a bit of the changing of the guard and then ... came the Queen and Prince Phillip in one carriage, followed by Prince Charles, Camilla with a dead blue bird on her head, and Harry in his military uniform. Sadly for all the girls I went with, William was still in New Zeland. Since I have better and closer pictures of the Queen and Prince Phillip from later, here are the pictures I took of Charles, Camilla and Harry from accross the ENTIRE Buckingham Square. In the first one, Harry's circled in yellow and Camilla in purple. In the second it's Charles circled in purple (he was being obstructed by the dead condor on Camilla's head) and Harry again in yellow.






























Needless to say this was all very exciting. There was an hour and a half long show about WWII complete with singers and dancers and excerpts from speeches and radio broadcasts. Finally the Queen with Prince Phillip, followed by a band and honored veterans holding the 200+ standards carried during the war, made a procession back up the Mall to the Palace for a military flyover by English and American planes used in WWII. I got some excellent shots of the Queen in her Land Rover, here's just one of them:
















One of the airplanes at the end dropped paper poppies to commemorate the war, and thankfully one of the batches of poppies flew right down to where we were standing, so I managed to get one to take home with me. Here's a picture of the flyover and the poppy drop:

















After the parade we didn't do anything really special, just headed out to dinner and then back home on the train. I was so tired I totally passed out and slept the entire way back to Oxford, standing in the sun for about two and a half hours will definitely take it out of you. Well that concludes my super exciting weekend, even though I'm still sad William wasn't there, but hey... how many people can say they've seen the Queen that close up :)