Day Two from Melissa

It turns out I am incapable of sleeping an even eight hours. I woke up bright and early at 5:30, and dozed for another hour and a half.

Finally getting up, I had breakfast. 

The yogurt on the left is a mix-your-own type of thing. The strawberry is on one side of the carton, and you scoop it out and mix it in. Not bad at all. 

It is forty-six steps to our room. If you run up to grab something, come down, forget something and run back up (like I did), it's like climbing the Richards Building stairs. 

This is taken from my landing. There are other girls rooms above us - we're in the second lowest room. 

This is a very rough floor plan of our room. 

After breakfast, we had orientation. Our classroom is a big room on the second floor. Well, actually they call it the first floor here, as opposed to the ground floor. 

We met our chef Thais (pronounced Tai-ees), and her husband Alvaro. They are LDS members from Brazil, and have worked in the London center for five years. Also we had a lot of business talk regarding expectations and rules and staples.

"I walked in, and there were staples in the printer!" Alvaro told us, "And I said, 'What happened?  Did somebody do an alleluia of staples?'"

We laughed our fool heads off at that.  I think everybody was tired.  At the time it was roughly 4:00 am in Provo, and a lot of people have jet lag.  I'm okay so far.  Now I have images stuck in my head of people shouting "Alleluia!" and throwing staples.

The building we are in is from the Victorian time period - mid 1800's. The molding and fireplaces reflect that. 

Our landing

The front entry 

Looking down the stairs toward the front door. Dining area is on the right, front room is barely visible in the middle, and the kitchen is behind me, under the stairs I'm standing on. 

This is the kitchen. I don't know if you can see the molding, but it's quite intricate. 

It's been remodeled of course, but most of the paneling and molding is original. No sneaking around here!  The stairs groan when you step on them. 

Anyway, after class, Miriam and I did a walk. We have a book of maps, and are required to do a certain amount of walks following the book. The book has interesting info to read as you go along. 

So we came up out of the train station and I thought, "wow, what a gorgeous gothic building..." And then I realized what it was. 

Miriam had her nose in a guidebook or something, so I kept telling her, "look up, Miriam. Look up, look up, look up. Then she looked up and was struck dumb for a minute or so. 

We'd come up right across the street from Big Ben. The picture doesn't do it justice, sorry. It is stunningly detailed and has all kinds of gold and green trimmings. I got a better one later.

So, dazzled by Big Ben, we got lost and wandered a little, trying to figure out way our map faced. No mountains here to judge directions by. Indeed, no compass on the map at all!  

There were statues all over the place, and I looked ahead and commented to Miriam, "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say that was Abraham Lincoln."  We laughed, and then she saw the statue too. "You know, if I didn't know better, I would think that was Abraham Lincoln too!  

Well guess what?  It was!

I have no idea what he was doing there - vacationing maybe?

Then we passed a fabulous old church with a window that was build for King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and things got even more surreal.

When we finally got oriented, and realized we'd walked in a big loop, we got back on track, turned a corner, and came face-to-hooves with a statue I've been waiting to see ever since I found out she was one of my friend's heroes.  She was an amazing lady.  I had a little geek moment, and tried to get a picture over the intervening traffic.

This is a statue of Queen Boadicea and her daughters.  She was an early queen in Britain, and fought against the Romans.  You can see her two daughters on the back of the chariot, holding her dress.

And this is the back of the statue, where you can really see both daughters a little better.

Other stuff we saw on our walk:

Statue of Lord Nelson. 

Monument for soldiers lost in WWI. The black and red wreath on the side was placed by Queen Elizabeth a couple days ago. 

Then we ran back to get to the center in time for our meeting and dinner. Miriam conducts it, and we were blessed to get there just in time!

After dinner, we went out to get cookies and explore. The cookies were good - mine was chocolate chip and candied orange - but it was almost more fun to look at the places around us. 

The entryway to a church. It closed as we got there, but it was really great and old. 

Striped building!  Also, the top half of a red double decker bus. 

So that was our day. And then I came home, sat down to write this, and woke up fifteen minutes later, facedown on the bench. I think I startled some of my fellow students. 

I guess I might be sleepy. Maybe I'm jet lagged after all. 

Bye folks!