"Touristy"

London has stolen my heart.  The architecture and life here is picturesque.  I literally feel like I am in a dream that I don’t ever want to wake up from.   This morning I woke up to a gentleman singing opera outside my window.  Normally I think that would have driven me insane, but for some reason I found myself to enjoy it today. 

This morning a bunch of us woke up to go to the local farmers market, which we assumed to be like the ones back home.  We arrived right at 9am when it started, but there was hardly anything set up and any people around, so we decided to get some coffee and then return.  We went back to find that nothing had changed, so we walked through it.  There was one vegetable stand, which was insanely overpriced and every other stand was either people selling meat they were cooking and/or ridiculously overpriced homemade bakery.  We all laughed as we walked through this 10 tent farmers market and asked ourselves why we woke up and got ready so early just for that?!  Apparently this is what farmers markets are usually like here.  However, there is supposed to be an excellent one about 20 minutes away and our director is going to take some of us there Saturday morning.  Hopefully I can find some great produce!  After that interesting adventure, Anna, Ryan, and I made our way to Oxford Circus.  For those of you who don’t know, Oxford is basically the “fashion street” of the UK.  If you want to go shopping, this is the place you need to go to! Craziness! I may find myself here daily…… (:  The rest of the day was a bit “touristy” as you can see from the pictures below.  I went to the National History Museum as well at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was seriously one of THE most gorgeous places I have ever seen in my life!  I am defiantly going to have to make a trip back again!  I also rode on a double-decker bus today and made a call from inside a telephone booth, which yes they really do have these on every street corner here.

A few side notes:

-My fellow classmates here who are mostly from Iowa, Texas, California, and New York have pointed out my Wisconsin/Minnesotan accent numerous times..... 

-For those of you who saw my facebook status yesterday about how I was having cheese withdrawals… good news!  I found some decent looking cheese today!  However the label said ‘mild cheddar’, but it tasted like parmesan… oh well… at least I got to eat some cheese (:

-And I remembered something interesting I forgot to add to the list to share with you all about London… Buildings do not start with floor 1 as the lowest level.  The first level is called G or ground and the second is 1.

Hope all is well back home!

-Brittany