Monday

Monday mornings always seem to come too quickly. To be honest everyday sort of feels like the weekend here though. I was really tired throughout the entire day but it was still a really fun day. In the morning we went on a tour of Parliament. We learned all about it last Monday so it was interesting to see where everything we had talked about takes place. The inside of the building was really pretty. The way the tour was set up was so that we did the same walk through Parliament that the Queen does at the opening of Parliament once a year. I found it pretty interesting and actually seeing the building helped me to understand how Parliament works.

After our tour of Parliament Elena and I went to our second store that was not opened yesterday to get the rest of the items on our shopping task list. It didn’t take long at all so we were able to go back to our flat for lunch. We had to meet back at the college at 1:00 to begin our afternoon session. In our session we talked about this week’s events and then we got to talking about our shopping experiences. We compared all of our different locations and then we got to try the food we purchased. Some of us were braver than others when trying the food. My shopping buddy Elena was particularly brave and tried the blood pudding. If you want to know what it is you can look it up, but she is the only one in the history of this program that has actually tried it. We also had another first in our group when one of the boys ate one of the OXO cubes. An OXO cube is a chicken broth cube…he was not too excited after he put it in his mouth. We all got a really good laugh out of that one! As we ate the food we went through the questions about the food we had for homework. It was pretty interesting and a pretty nice way to spend the afternoon in the classroom.

Once class was over it was time for our fitness walk. We went to Hyde Park today. Hyde Park is gigantic. I had no clue how big it really was before we started walking around. It’s always nice to see a place like Hyde Park in the middle of London….gives you an escape from the city scene for a bit. I will probably be going back…especially because there were dogs all over the place (not on leashes like normal here)!!! By the time we were done walking I was totally exhausted. Getting back home was so nice. Jeana and I made some quesadillas for dinner right away so we could just relax the rest of the night. We have started making our plans for our weekend trips and are pretty excited about them!!!

Lots in store for this week so I’m preparing myself by sleeping in a little in the morning :) I really wanted to go to the Tate Modern with the Art History class in the morning but I think I’m going to have to venture there on my own sometime because I need some sleep. Tomorrow evening we are going to a football match followed by cycling on Monday morning bright and early! I’ve been looking forward to cycling since the beginning of the trip so I can’t wait!