green nail polish is the impetus of everything

Thursday's trip to London was quite fun. (Random side note: quite means "kind of" or "okay" here, rather than "very," which is how I always use it. I digress.) We got on a coach around 9:30am and got to London a couple hours later. We wandered around the Imperial War Museum, which was really cool. Trish and I managed to avoid all of the really depressing parts and skipped to the espionage, WWI and WWII exhibits, as well as the Ian Fleming/James Bond exhibit. I got Mom a "For Your Eyes Only" t-shirt and a vintage-style poster for Raf.

Parliament was awesome. Granted, we couldn't take as many photos as we could at the museum, but it was still great. We watched a debate in the House of Commons about a resolution concerning Israel and the Gaza strip. Pertinent and exciting. The House of Lords wasn't half as cool to watch. One lord was completely and visibly passed out. I would've been too, if I had to debate about ombudsmen and other things like that. And if my colleagues had the "mumbly jumbly" kind of British accents like another lord had. Gah. Haha.

Once we got home, we had to get ready for the reception that Keble College hosted for us. Some Keble students were there and three Dartmouth students crashed it, too. Haha. They're actually living in the dorm on campus. The man who's in charge of the dining hall services kind of looks like a clown because of his crazy hair. But it turns out, he's not as much of a Nazi as we thought; he was nice. A few of us went to the on-campus bar to hang out before writing our papers.

The paper-writing took all night. I was up until 7AM, when I finally had finished revisions and hit save. Granted, I took an hour power nap around 4AM. But still. Nothing out of the ordinary. After our last British Politics class, Kate and I headed to Blackwell's to get the book for our E.U. seminar. I've decided that Blackwell's is the most fantastic bookstore on earth. It looks like a tiny shop on the outside, but it's actually four or five floors with books about everything.

After lunch at the Eagle & Child with Trish and David, Kate & Trish had a meeting with their don. Kelli was already home by the time I got home and we accidentally napped. Haha. Once the other girls got back, all of us took a taxi to the train station and had a hilarious time trying to figure out how to get onto another train to get to Stratford-upon-Avon.

Romeo & Juliet was amazing. We watched a minimalist, Jazz Age/mafia interpretation of it at The Courtyard Theatre, since the main Royal Shakespeare Company's theater is under construction until a year & a half from now. We walked around town on Saturday after passing out at The Stratford hotel. (One of the coolest things about our hotel was that we had to put one of our hotel key cards into a slot on the wall to turn on the lights.) We got to see Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church and his birthplace. We also got awesome souvenirs at a few cool shops.

Once we got back, we made dinner and relaxed. I had every intention of staying in, but then Kelli painted my nails green and played Kings of Leon's "Sex on Fire" and suddenly, we were pregaming to go out. To the Turtle, of course, since it's sketch and we love it. Haha. I wingmanned like Barney from How I Met Your Mother and it completely worked. Yay for that. There are further details that I'll just have to email or message people about, haha.

Today has been pretty unproductive. I've done the reading for International Law but I still haven't written the paper. It's due in 10 1/2 hours. I'll crank it out. Then I'm going to the Summertown clinic and use the British national healthcare system. Haha. My eczema hasn't been this bad in forever. Probably since summer when I got sun poisoning. Ugh.

Seriously, though. We've been listening to "Sex on Fire" a lot. Every club or bar we go into plays it. Actually, they play it in random stores, too. The Brits love some Kings of Leon. Haha. Everyone goes crazy in clubs when it comes on. It's probably going to be a theme song of sorts for this study abroad trip.

I'm having a fantastic time. In spite of the insane workloads that are about to come, I don't really care because we're still making time to have fun. Kelli and I are going to join the Dance Sport club at Keble, which is like their ballroom dancing/salsa dancing club. They're meeting tomorrow night, which should be fun. After my tutorial on Tuesday and a meeting with the International Organizations don, we're going to a luau-themed party at Juice to celebrate Obama's inauguration. Yay! So exciting.