Feb 14, 2010

First off, happy valentines day! <3 you all and i'm missing you all here in Paris.

The London trip was really fun, and really tiring. The trip to the train station thursday morning was unbearably cold. my hand that was dragging my suitcase behind me was about to break off it was so cold. Then we had problems finding the gate that we were supposed to meet at. bad omens for one disaster after another. First off, Ariel forgot her passport. she wasn't ever around to hear the announcements because they were during classes she wasn't and her computer isn't getting internet. luckily she had a photo copy of it with her and we were able to get here there and back. I don't blame her for not remembering because if i hadn't been thinking about it randomly one night i would have forgotten without the announcements. The next bad thing to hit was that our train was a good 4-5 hours late leaving. everyone was pretty bummed to have basically one less day in London, but it was ok.

the trian ride was fun. i sat by Ariel. I was able to sleep for a little. When we came out of the tunnel in England i was actually really excited. i felt like i was coming home which i didn't expect.

We get there and i end up rooming with Haley which is one of my best friends here so that was really nice. When we got in, a lot of kids dropped out of going to Midsummer nights dream so i jumped on the chance to go. since we got there late, we really had to run for it. idk why, but when things start to not run smoothly, things start to get fun. we were running everywhere and it was really ridiculous. Since we payed for the cheapest seats, we got extremely limited views of the stage. It was so fun to see Dame Judi Dench on stage though! she looks great in real life. I loved hearing her voice. the play didn't drag on too much (which midsummer nights dream does for me quite often) so that was really nice. Afterward, we got hamburgers and had to hurry on the train home before it shut down for the night. We decided to dub ourselves the midsummer clique.

On the train home, Sister Ricks was talking about how there's so much teasing in schools in the states and not so much in Europe. She and a couple other kids agreed that it's cause of extra curricular activities in american school systems. Later that night, Haley and i discussed how we actually think extra curricular activities are good things. it gave us stuff to do whereas we would have been sitting at home doing nothing. also, we discussed how there's really nothing wrong with cliques. everyone has different interests so of course they would hang out with other kids with same interests. It's ok that the shoppers only hang out with each other. I am not that interested in shopping so i don't feel excluded. not to mention, the only time i had an issue with bullying was in england when those huge 5th graders would chase me (i was five at the time, so yes, they were huge). i'm also not quite as sensitive to what others may perceive as teasing.

I like having sister ricks around because she adds some matronly feel around when it's seriously lacking. it's not overbearing or anything, but it's there.

The next day, hanging out in London was pretty fine. none of us really planned that well what we were going to do. I was just tagging along because i honestly didn't care that much what we decided to do. The girls decided to buy tour bus tickets which i went along with. Haley and i ended up being kind of mad that we did because we really could have just taken the metro everywhere which was already payed for. I was pretty glad for it when it was raining so i could see a bit of london without having to go outside. It rained on us pretty hard and i got wet so the rest of the day was really miserable for me. being wet is not fun at all. First, we went to see big ben, the parliament building and the Abbey all in one stop. it was pretty cool i guess. as cool as looking at random buildings can be. we ran into the boys there so i chilled with them for some time but Courtney, angela, and i lost the rest of the girls so we ended up being by ourselves the whole day. we went to the tower of london to look at the jewels and hung out there for a while. i was still miserably cold. after that, we went to an english pub right in town to have some fish and chips. it was so yummy. This one guy held the door open for us to get in and then he joked about how we all owed him a pint. the guy who took my order at the pub was really cute. he asked where i was from and asked if there is any good american football there. when i said no he said "oh sorry..." and i laughed about that because why would he be sorry about that? it was fun being there

that night we headed to the opera. we saw Cosi Fan Tutte which is a comedy. Honestly if we saw an opera that was a tragedy or just not a comedy, i would have been bored to tears. as much as i want to sound cultured and say that i was enthralled by it... i wasn't. thankfully, because it was a comedy, i wasn't too bored. it is amazing what they can do with their voices, no doubt about that. I thought the men singing sounded much better than the women singing. and i'm also glad wooing women isn't actually like it was portrayed in that play. "i'm going to stab myself i love you so much even though i have only known you after a day." it was really funny and over the top. The ending of the opera seemed like it should have been light hearted because the last song was all "we have to learn how to laugh at life" sort of thing but the director made it seem serious and depressing which didn't sit well with me. of course in real life, that story would have ended not happy but it just seemed really off in that performance.

the next day, haley and i went off by ourselves because we didn't really want to do the river cruise. we went to get our little english breakfast which was so good. It was nice to have some protein in my breakfast and to actually be filled! French food never fills me, and i think that's why i always eat here. it's super annoying. :(. but i had some good beans on toast. suhweet. after that we made our way to the Museum of London. It ended up that tons of tube stops, especially the ones we needed, were closed down for the weekend. we managed to find a buss that would take us where we needed to go but it took a while. the museum of london is balling! I liked that it wasn't another art museum, which although they are cool, that's all i have been going to in paris. It was just artifacts and reconstructed stuff from different aras in london. I also liked that it was child friendly because it just made it more interesting, fun, and relaxed. the fact that it was free was also a big plus. everything in london seems to cost money. Notre Dame is free to go into but westminster abbey is not. everything costs. I told the Ricks that they should go there next time they were in London because as interesting as the national gallery of portraits is, i'm sure their kids would have way more fun at the other place. After that, Haley and i tried to go to one of the market places in london. i forget which one. It was pretty fun but i was completely overwhelmed and couldn't find anything i wanted to buy. it was too crowded and too much stuff. i stink at shopping i guess.

the entire time i was in London, i couldn't help but compare the londoners to parisians. Londoners are just more friendly. i like how they actually joke, laugh, and smile. if i walked into a museum or store, they didn't make me feel unwelcome. Parisians always act like they just can't wait for us to leave. Londoners are much much better looking than parisians. Londoners also dress better i think. they had color in their clothing. I always thought of english people as dressing dark and not being super open and friendly OR good looking. after having to be with parisians all the time, i have changed my views. I couldn't help but resent parisians after that trip. I also liked the tube system. it was WAAAY cleaner than the metro, and not as many sketchy people there either. the fact that the tube was closed down was really annoying though. I feel like paris itself is a more interesting city and cheaper so i'm glad to be here.

our train was late for the trip home, but not as bad. i was sleeping peacefully until i woke up to garret shoving a bit of sandwich in my mouth and about six pairs of eyes looking at me and laughter. A french lady saw the whole thing and laughed a little bit. it was pretty classic. Because we were so late, i missed the valentines dance which actually really depressed me. We decided that that trip ended up being kind of useless. it was fun, though. because of all the delays, we got 1 1/2 two way tickets to london for free, so that's lucky! :) i want to do stuff outside of london though. i've never been a huge fan of the city there. we also all decided that if we go back we need to plan it way way better than we did. it was interesting, though. very fun.

church was ok, but i was extremely tired so it dragged on a bit. a boy named Miro invited me to go to a baptism but i told him i had no where to hang out between church and the baptism so he invited me and a few other kids to his house to eat between the two. I found out he's spanish from malaga and i told him that i was there but i couldn't remember where all we went while there. i was surprised because i thought he was american, his english is so good. Somehow Barcelona came up and Miro was all "i hate barthelona. i hate Catelonians. they want independence from spain." it was amusing, and i didn't know that. The baptism was ok, i was still super tired. It was two Iranian girls who got baptized. their dad is in prison in Iran because he converted to the church before it was a law to be muslim there and he didn't give up the religion. The girls found the missionaries when they came to france. The missionaries had a hard time at first to get the girls to be baptized because they aren't usually allowed to teach muslims (which i guess they used to be). it was interesting. I had fun chatting with the elders while i was there. I miss american boys so much. they were just being super cute and acting like silly boys. i liked it.

I had dinner today. nothing spectacular happened. we had some sort of yummy green soup. They asked what i did today and i told them i had food with an american boy and a spanish boy not from our group. Tristan made this "woooo" noise and lauren explained that it's a big deal to have a date on valentine's day. I said it wasn't a date and then the mom said "look out for the spaniard." haha.

After dinner, Courtney got hymes from the internet and she played them on the piano upstairs and we sang. My voice was all messed up from the massive nap i took before dinner so i didn't sound that great. it was really fun to just play some music and Lidwin and the mom enjoyed it. they even stood around for a little bit to listen. it was nice to be able to sing like that again.