To Do List: Pool, St. Patrick's Day, Study, Masquerade, Study.....

This week has been an interesting dichotomy of zany fun and tiresome paper writing, but luckily I've just about wrapped up my last paper! Only two small finals next week and I am done with the school part of study abroad! Well, aside from that pesky two-hour Medieval Europe final in May...but we'll ignore that for now.

I've finally put up an album for the Tower of London. Enjoy the photos at your leisure.

So aside from slaving over my computer, what have I been up to? Monday and Tuesday nights were devoted to showing Stephanie and Caitlin M. around some of the local spots near campus, including an obligatory trip to Brick Lane and the Hayfield on Monday night. Tuesday night was on St. Patrick's Day. We hopped on the tube to Leicester Square to see just how seriously England takes this Irish holiday. Apparently, they take it fairly seriously. Nearly every single pub had a line of 50-100+ people waiting to get inside. After taking a gander at the lines we decided it wasn't worth it to stick around very long, but it was still fun to see what the heart of London was like on a national drinking holiday.

Wednesday was fairly dull and studious, as my guests dashed off to Paris for a few days and I had to actually do work, but my architecture class did take a trip to London's City Hall to look at the architecture, which was fun. I've actually shown you a picture of City Hall before, only I didn't know what it was at the time. Here's a refresher:



Strange, isn't it? Let me assure you it's just as strange inside. This is City Hall Council Chambers. You can see the walkway that encircles the building about half way down the picture. There are two corkscrewing walkways to get to all the offices and what not. The Council itself is in a completely glass-walled room, to give the sense of the government being open and above-board in its dealings--apparently they even broadcast the council sessions on loudspeakers throughout the building.


Thursday night was much more fun than Wednesday. One of the on-campus groups hosted a masquerade dance at Draper's, the student on-campus bar, to raise money for charity. The Group went and had a good time--quite by chance, we all owned rather nice looking masks from Venice, so we went to the party in style. They had a professional photographer there, so we had our pictures taken. Here is the end result below (I apologize if it is a bit blurry, but it's a photo of a photo). Can you guess which one is me?


Friday was EXTREMELY dull as I was literally glued to my chair to write my last paper, which is thankfully all but wrapped up. Steph and Caitlin get back tonight, so hopefully we can get up to some fun tomorrow before they leave on Sunday.

Cheers!