July 15- Westminster, the London Eye, and sleep.

So after a lengthy flight, an hour and a half in the passport line, and a quick train ride (that cost us $40), we arrive at Victoria station in downtown London. I can't tell you how excited I was. I just about flipped out when I realized we were riding over the Thames. I've been a fan of English Lit for some time, so for me coming to England is like a kid who loves Peter Pan finding himself on a trip to Never-Never Land. The accents, the double-decker buses, the quaint country side, it's all magic to me.

After a quick ride on the Underground we arrived at Baker Street Station. A 5 minute walk takes us past the fictional home of Sherlock Homes and Madame Tussauds wax museum and we arrive at Regent's College, our home for the next 2 weeks. Just a few minutes before arriving it started raining, a pleasant, light, Hawaiin-type mist. By the time we reached the college it was much harder, and we walked into the reception area completely wet, as illustrated in the adjoining picture. The man you see is Doug, an English professor in Colorado and one heck of a nice man.

I got to tell you, these Brits love their parks. Regent's College is placed, quite appropriately, in the middle of Regent's Park, an enormous stretch of open land that seems out of place in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. Sure it's not uncommon for a city to have a gigantic park--New York has Central Park and Tokyo has Yoyogi Koen--but London has Regent's Park, Hyde Park, and Green Park all within a short distance.

One thing that immediately stood out to me was the diversity of London. I've never seen such a variety of people and cultures together. British, American, Middle-Easterners, Indians (you know, from India), Muslims with their head shawls, French, Germans, and other Europeans, you name it. It's awesome to see so many different people together.

Running on 4 hours of crappy airplane sleep, we then made our way to Westminster station for the London Eye, a giant ferris wheel that overlooks all of London. I guess "ferris wheel" isn't the right term, they call it a "Millenium observation wheel" because it sounds more sophisticated. Kind of like garbage men wanting to be called "Sanitation Engineers" or Hogi Yogi employees being called "Sandwich Artists". Anyways, here's some pics.

This is one of the compartments. They can fit about 30 people I think. Here's a group shot. I think this compartment may have been bigger than mine and Amy's first apartment...

View of Big Ben, Parliament, Thames.

Us.

This thing is GINORMOUS!

We spent most of the day in a stupor brought on from jet-lag and lack of sleep but were told to stay up as late as possible or it would mess up our schedule. Amy and I made a goal to stay up until 7:00. We made it to 6:30.

June 29th- Traveling

We left Cedar City around 3:30 in the morning and took a school van to Vegas. From there it was a 4 hour flight to Cincinnatti, a three hour layover, then another 10 hours to Gatwick airport south of London.

Long flights have never really bothered me and it wasn't too bad. I think Amy got a little bored though, as evidenced by this picture she took.

The in-flight movie from Las Vegas to Cincinnatti was Robots. The in-flight movies from Cincinnatti to London were Hitch and Robots. And sure enough, the in-flight movie coming back from London was...Robots. Not a bad movie, at least not the first time...