Day 2

Classes:

Today was our first day of classes. I forgot I was going to be here taking classes... We only had class for an hour today and went over our syllabus. There is quite a bit of reading. I am going to be reading on the tube, in the bus, anywhere I can. We only have class eight or nine times over the semester, but each time we have it it is three hours long! A lot of our assignments are going and seeing things which is great! 

St. Paul's Cathedral:

We went to St. Paul's today which was so amazing! It is a huge building! I had no idea how big it would be. It has one large dome roof and three others further down. It almost looks like the building is cut in half. Half of the building is just white pillars and white carvings. The other half was "bejeweled" and was all different colors. I was so sad that I couldn't take pictures inside because it was so incredible!! 

One thing that I thought was interesting was that the architect, Christopher Wren was an astronomer and a mathematician. He was only 23 when he became a professor at Oxford. The first thing that they showed us was this spiral staircase which they called a geometric staircase because each stair was completed supported by the one underneath it. It was pretty incredible. It was the staircase used in the Harry Potter movies whenever they had a spiral staircase. They spent 10 days filming it and only used a couple minutes of it in the movie. The building was incredible!! It was so detailed. I would look it up so you can see what I am talking about! I was so tempted to pull out my camera and take pictures... 

In the cathedral they also have a chapel just for the American soldiers who died in World War II. They have stained glass windows with each state's flag on it. It was funny to see our beehive on stained glass window in one of the most famous buildings in London! They had tons of memorials all over in the cathedral. One memorial took longer than the cathedral to make. After I had seen the cathedral I had no idea why it would take so long to build one memorial because the cathedral was so impressive. 

During WWII they had people who put out bombs that fell on the building. One they missed and when it dropped it raised the largest dome which ways 65,000 tons six inches! It fell perfectly back into place. 

It was an amazing building! Tomorrow is the tower of London and we don't have class again till Monday :)

Random things...

Today I realized just how loud we are as we were walking around! Even in groups of two or three we are so loud! People just look at us and shake their heads. British people are just so much quieter when they talk.

The sinks in the bathroom are super weird. It has two knobs, one hot and one cold, just like here except it has two faucets also... So if you want warm water you just have to switch your hands back and forth between the two faucets in the sink. I don't really understand why you would do that...

Still getting over the jet-lag! Jet-lag makes the sleep deprivation I got over the school year feel like nothing...

I sat on the steps that are in Marry Poppins during the "Feed the Birds" song!

I am on dishcrew right now which means we prepare dinner and clean up after dinner. I had no idea how many dishes it takes to make food for and feed 50 people!