Father's Day Fun Doings!

Well, the past few days my metaphorical cup of things to do has been overflowing. We went to Colchester, the Kew Gardens, the National Gallery, the Courtland Gallery, the British Museum, Trafalgar Square, the London Bridge Experience, Covent Garden, Oxford Street... For a more in depth view of what happened you can visit my father’s blog. So, I’ll try to find some highlights instead. Firstly, my sister arrived a few days ago, so the family is together in its entire zany, somewhat frightening glory.
Yes, I think we’re related.

On the way to pick up my sister my mom and I stopped at Kew Gardens. We stayed for about 13 minutes because we were late to pick her up. (We ended up getting to the airport five minutes before she walked out of customs. Our timing was impeccable!) During that glorious 15 minutes we saw lovely and interesting flora.

Here’s a pineapple. Two words describe my feeling about this: Hokey Pete! I mean, wow! That’s a sight and a half, eh?

Today we went to Windsor Castle. That was really cool. Here are two things that stood out especially:

1. We went to the room where the queen knights people during the tour of Windsor Castle. My brother and I took turns kneeling to “tie our shoes” (I had a harder time as I was wearing sandals) while the other hit the one tying shoes on the head with a coke bottle. We have thus been knighted, however messily, in the official knighting room!

2. We went to Evensong at St. George’s Cathedral. This blew St. Paul’s Evensong out of the water, to use some nautical wordage. The queen definitely knows how to run a church. The choir was great, the organist was amazing, and the whole service was flabbergastingly lovely.

By way, St. George is the patron saint of England. They even have a holiday in his honor. Why is he their patron saint, you may wonder. He’s pretty famous for slaying a dragon (yes, a dragon) and so, if you see dragons around England they’re probably in honor of St. George. He’s also mentioned in Shakespeare, and it seems like he was sainted because everyone thought he was so darn cool, chivalrous, and brave. (He did, after all, kill a dragon.)

Tomorrow is the last day for sight-seeing in London, so I have to get a good night’s sleep. I hope everyone had a good Father’s Day! (Especially the fathers!)

'N Now: News News News!

Well, the past few weeks have been mind-numbingly wonderful. But you’ll have to trust me on that because I am having so much fun now that I don’t have time to recap about my previous experiences in detail. I did go to London twice, I got a root canal, jumped in a fountain in Trafalgar square, asked random people for pennies to see if they'd give random girls pennies, fed an elephant and giraffe, and *gasp* went to a school-wide party which around 2,000 people went to, went to the school’s Summer Ball (which had carnival rides), stayed up for a few sunrises, played chess, trivial pursuit, Cranium, Scattergories, Monolpoly, Snooker, English pool and tennis and watched some James Bond movies. Etc.

So. Yesterday was my birthday. I left the University of Essex and said goodbye to my new and wonderful friends after an astounding fry up and a nice lunch by the lakes. I got to London to find my father at the tube station. We then went to see my mother who had found my grandfather and brother. It was great to see everyone after half a year! First we had to find the flat my parents rented. That wasn’t the best part of the trip since we had all our luggage and had to navigate the Underground encumbered. We went to a “Mexican food” place for my birthday dinner and then had Battenburg Cake for a birthday cake. Then John and grandpa passed out from exhaustion. The rest of us didn’t outlast them for long.

Today we went to London. We visited the Courtauld Gallery first, where we saw a lovely Van Gogh, a striking Boticelli and some neat-o Manets. There were even a few Seurats! After a few quick peeks at the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey we went to London Bridge Experience and the London Tombs. These were cute! Afterwards we went to get tea at Southwark Cathedral and listened to the evening prayer while enjoying the Gothic architecture. We strolled by the Thames and decided we were too tired and hungry to do more, so got Cornish Pasties and took the train to our cozy flat. Then we found to our joy and delight that we could use wireless internet here. Hoorah! There should be more adventures tomorrow since we’re heading to Colchester to see where I lived for the past six months!