Kensington, London

London baby. Right now I'm in a hostel with a bunch of shady drunk people, so I'm a little out of it. But here goes..

Today was the start of our three day weekend. So it started out with all of us catching a train from Cambridge to King's Cross station in London.

Waiting in the rain outside Studio Cambridge. Rebecca and Clair.

Laura, Kacie, and Jennifer

Bryan, Ani, Leslie, Deepa, Michelle sporting Cambridge wear.
On the rail we met this guy from Georgia. Turns out, he is in grad school studying economics and plans on moving to Dallas for work in a few months. Nice guy.

So then when we got off the train, we were greeted by a man holding a sign waiting for us. His name was mark, and he was to be our escort for the day. The first place he took us was there in the station. Now King's Cross station is somewhat of a tourist attraction. Some of you may have heard of a certain series of books starring a certain wizard named Harry Potter. So for all you fans out there, here it comes.


Diane really went nuts, she was so excited. Actually everyone was really excited to see it. Everyone except Clair. Apparently she lives inside of a bubble and has never seen or read anythign related to Harry Potter. So while everyone was taking pictures at the wall, she was like, what is the big deal. It was pretty funny.
Jennifer going through the platform to Hogwarts or whatever.
Me. In the words of Clair "Platform 9 and 3/4? Eh, no big d."
Coincidentally we are back in South Kensington, where we stayed our first night. Our first stop was the National History Museum of London.

Outside the museum. Supposedly this tree fossil is over 330 million years old.

Inside the museum.

Our tour guide Mark gave us a brief run down, then set us free to wander for a bit. I really like dinosaurs so I went for the dinosaur exhibit. It was pretty interesting seeing all the excavated bones and fossils. Also, there was a working model of a teenage Tyrannosaurus. This was a little bit scary and brought back childhood nightmares.

Begin anecdote:

So the first Jurassic Park came out in 1993. I was born in 1987. So this makes me about 6 years of age. My parents came up with the brilliant idea of taking my brother and I to go watch Jurassic Park. Seriously.. are you kidding me. Mom and Dad what were you thinking? Basically from the moment the movie started to get scary, I started crying. In fact I kept my eyes closed for so long, that I fell asleep. Crying makes you tired if you didn't know. Anyways so for a lot of my childhood I had nightmares about Velociraptors in my home trying to eat me. These nightmares occured frequently for many years. I even had the best planned escape toue out of my house. I would probably lock myself in my parent's bedroom, then go outside on their upstair balcony. It's a long ways down, but in the face of danger I believe that I woul dmuster up the courage to jump. Then I would sneak into the garage and get my bicycle and ride away to safety. Eat that.
End anecdote.

Anyways, after the dinosaur museum, we went to the human development wing and wandered for a while. I saw some pretty disturbing things.

Giant baby, Ani, Clair, Natalie
After this, I briefly skimmed the bird section of the museum as well as the Earth part of the museum before meeting up with the rest of the group. The museum overall was ok I suppose. The only problem with the museum was that I wasn't really impressed. There was nothing really unique or rare in the museum. Pretty much all the exhibits were copies or molds of real things, so nothing was genuine.

Anyways so then we broke for lunch. Most of us went to a small fish and chips stand. I believe people call it a "chipper"maybe. Whatever. Anyways so in London, it is cheaper to get your food takeawy then eating in the restaurant even though the portion sizes are the same. Maybe to keep the restaurant open to more customers. Anyways we ate our food in a field.

Garrett, Natalie, and Susannah.
Then we headed over to meet Mark again for the Natural Science Museum. This museum was much better, and immensely larger than the history museum. We were able to see the history of medicine from the beginning throughout time. We saw mostly tools. I learned a lot more about how circumcision was conducted in the past then I ever wanted to know. I'm glad i didn't like back then. Anyways, I also saw some exhibits of the practice of medicine throughout time. We also walked through the flight museum and learned about the history of flight and models of aeroplanes. It was interesting to see the types of flying machines some people used in the past. Some of their ideas were pretty outlandish. Needless to say, a lot of them died trying to fly.

So we spent a solid three hours in the museum and I felt like I didn't even make a dent on the stuff that's available for me to see. So after we left the musuem, we headed to Kensington Garden.

Thank you to Lori Otto for telling me to go here. I don't know how you knew about this place, but you were right, it's pretty amazing. Kensington garden is a famous park in the middle of London. It is HUGE. It goes for as you could ever care to walk. At the entrance on the south side is a memorial erected to Prince Albert. It's very intricate and quite beautiful. Queen Victoria commissioned the project to commemorate her husband's life.

Group.

Also their is a huge pond in the middle of the park with swans, ducks, and other various birds. All around us people there were people playing soccer. So we sat there for a while and jsut took it all in. The weather was perfect and the scenery was breathtaking. I honestly was quite captivated by the scene and could have stayed there all night just sitting and watching people. I can see why some celebrities like Keira Knightley (babe) and Jude Law (eh) would want to live in this area. People playing soccer.
So we left to go find our hostel, which is relatively close to the park. So I am staying with 6 other strangers that I've never met before. This is because we has to book the hostel kinda late and it was all that was left. But Kacie, Jennifer, and Laura had their own room, which was nice cause I could keep my stuff there. Also they have a shower in the middle of the room, but more on that later.


So me, Ani, Bryan, Kacie, Diane, and Deepa went out to go find some Chinese food. We eventually found a place called the Gold Mine Chinese Restaurant. Turned out to be pretty good, I haven't had Chinese food in a while.
After dinner, we decided to go back towards the park to watch the sunset. We sat and talked and looked at the stars (except there was only one or two of them). I decided that I want to go up on the roof of the RLM to the obervatory and look at the stars. From what I hear, it's pretty amazing. So as we were trying to leave, we found out that we somehow got locked in. Apparently we were in past visiting hours, so we had to jump the gate. Oops.


Ani hopping the gate.
So after I got back, I took a shower in the girls room. This was extremely awkward. First of all the shower is in the middle of the room. There isn't like a bathroom or anything, just a shower with a curtain in the middle. Whatever, no big deal. It was an interesting experience.
Now I am sitting in the lobby of my hostel with strangers, and they are plastered drunk. There really random conglomeration of people here and it's kind of refreshing in a way. I feel like that's why London is so great.


So tomorrow I'm not sure what we are doing. We are definitely going to the British Museum which is supposed to be amazing. Whenever you encounter an instance where there is a copy or lack of an exhibit in a musuem, chances are the real thing is in the British Museum. I'm excited. Alright, I'm going to bed. Focker Out


P.S.
I would like to give congratulations to Rudy Ortiz, our BME advisor. He just accepted a job at the University of California at San Diego as Assistant Dean of Advising. I would also like to express my deep sadness to see him go. Rudy, if you are reading this, I'm really owe you a lot. Since I got into BME, from the beginning you've been a great advisor, mentor, and friend to me. Thanks for all you've helped me with and the chats from time to time. I regret that I won't be in Austin in time to say goodbye, but I (and everyone else here in England) will miss you very much. I wish you the absolute best at UC San Diego. Thanks Rudy.



-James