Catch Up...not Ketchup!

Right, so I've been lazy and not updating this so now none of you know what I have been up to and, in fact, I had to go back through my pictures to remember what I have been up to. But now I will enlighten you.

Last Saturday, we went to Westfield. Westfield is the largest mall in Europe. It's very American, except that the stores were like Prada, Dolce and Gabana, Louis Vioutton (yeah, I'm sure I've butchered spellings), etc. The had an entire Crocs store and an entire Ugg boots store (umm, yeah, there was a security guard, in a suit, monitoring the number of people allowed into that store). There was a full on Apple store, a whole Nike store, a whole Adidas store, and some crystalythings hanging from the ceiling. There was a Hollister. It had a line that wrapped around the store of people waiting to get in side. Yeah. Anyways, we had some really expensive milkshakes while we were there from this store called Shakeabout or something like that. It was cool though because they let us pick from this giant selection of candy bars to put in it!!

Sunday was Chinese New Year, and London happens to have a large Asian so there was a big celebration! There were Chinese dances and singing and Chinese food and paper lanterns everywhere. Following our walk through the mad house that was China town, we walked through London down to Buckingham Palace and up through Green Park to get hot chocolate (which was amazing, despite being expensive). Anyways, then we went back to China town for the fireworks. The fireworks were phenomenal, not because they were big and up in the sky and beautiful, but because they were hand lit, in your face, loud, and bright! I have never been so close to fire works in my life! I felt like I was in a war zone or something! We all left coughing and brushing bits of fireworks off of ouselves. And oh yeah, I bought a little paper dragon named Herman!

Sunday night, we watched the Superbowl. It aired from 11pm-4am ish. The Steelers won, YAY! But I did fall asleep. What was unfortunate, however, is that they didn't show any commercials. BBC broadcasted it the same as NBC, except that since they didn't get any royalties from the ads, everytime they cut to commercials, BBC cut to commentary. That was sad.

Anyways, the next day we woke up to 3 inches of snow (as it had snowed all through the Super bowl and the rest of the night). It was the biggest snow storm in about 2 decades here, and the city had no idea how to deal with it. Pretty much every school had a snow day (including ours), and most adults had a day off work. I saw more snowmen in this city that I have ever seen. But I guess if you only get the chance to make one every decade or so... Anyway, pretty much all public transportation was shut down for two days and generally the situation was just ridiculous. Things are starting to get back to normal now, but they are calling for another light dusting of snow tonight and the newspaper are all predicting more 'treacherous' conditions. Lame. :-)

Wednesday, we went on a Jack the Ripper tour of London and are now all under the impression that the killings of the 5 prostitutes was a conspiracy of the royal family. It's hard to describe; it was fun though! Despite being outside for like 2 hours and freezing our butts off...it was fun.

Yesterday, we went on a random walk through London and the British Museum. It was for a class and our professor gave us random talks about different displays. It was...I just...don't know about that class. Sometimes I think it has no point. Afterwards, we went out for dinner, and had some really good food and dessert! Following that, we went to the Games Workshop where Alan gets his dudes from in America. There we met some other Americans and some British kids, and hung out for a while.

Today we went to the Tower of London. The tour was free because our school paid for it, but we didn't quite have enough time. It was really great fun though. The jewelery was beautiful and I want it. All of it. The 580 k diamond and all!

That's all I have time for, for now, but I'll post pictures later. Talk to you guys later.