Winter Wonderland

I begin this post with a tale of woe that evolved into something quite wonderful. As I've written in the past, I'm taking an Architecture of London class. We have a paper coming up where we have to write our observations on a structure from a list we've been given. I've chosen the Albert Memorial, and decided to head out yesterday (Sunday) to take pictures and notes at the memorial. I left around 11 AM on the tube for the half hour journey to High Street Kensington. Upon arrival, I discovered that the wind had picked up considerably, and the day was quite cold. Any part of me that wasn't bundled up (mainly my face) had essentially lost all feeling by the time I completed the ten minute walk to the memorial, during which I had to put my head down and walk at an angle into the wind to make any progress. I battled the wind and cold as I took my pictures and notes. Here are a couple of the dozens I took for my paper:

This is the representation of Europe on one corner of the memorial. There are four such statues, one each for America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.



Of course, just when I thought the weather couldn't get much worse (don't let that blue sky fool you, as you can see in the top picture, clouds are gathering, and at a rate you wouldn't believe) it starts to snow:

I finished my notetaking and hurried on home to warmth in my apartment. I didn't pay much attention to the snow initially, as it snowed during my first week and barely left a trace. When I glanced out my window after doing some homework, I noticed that it was actually coming down kind of hard.

Still within a few hours, the ground was still only lightly covered, and as you can see, didn't cover the whole ground, so I shrugged and left with friends to go see Slumdog Millionaire at the local cinema. When we came outside after the movie, the ground had a decent couple of inches of snow.


A couple dozen students were outside when we came back to campus engaged in a snowball fight. For the safety of my camera, there are sadly no pictures of the event, but it was quite epic for a girl who'd never been in a snowball fight in her life. I also made my first snow angel and built my first snowman (getting that ball started is hardwork!) and overall had an amazing time. I'll post more pictures if some of my friends post them online later.

FYI, here's a Telegraph article about the snowfall. Hmm....I wonder if I have class today......

UPDATE: It's official--SNOW DAY!