Finally at Harlaxton!

Hello all,
It's been a couple days since I posted because I've been so busy! So let's see...
June 15-we went to the British Musical Experience in the morning. Nobody really knew what to expect from it, not even Mike :) It ended up being really really cool. It was a "museum" but it was a very interactive one. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures :( The museum was like a giant timeline. Each room covered about a decade's worth of British musicians and important things that were happening socially and historically. They had several facts about each of the decades that didn't necessarily relate to music. It was really enjoyable. A lot of the displays had clothes of the musicians, instruments and a lot of other things. They had Ringo's grey suit jacket with the black velvet collar :D It was really cool. Since you couldn't take pictures, you could somehow use your ticket on the displays and it would save the information so you can access it through internet. I haven't tried it yet, but I should be able to go to the website and type in my ticket information and it'll pull up all of the exhibits I visited. Pretty cool, right? We spent a couple hours there, but after that we had the rest of the day free. Katia, Anna, and myself went out to lunch at TGIF because it was right by the British Musical Experience. Then we were kind of worn out so we headed back to the hostel and crashed for a bit. Around 5:30ish me, Hannah, Mathea, Anna, Katia, and Cheshire all took the tube to downtown London. We got off at the Wesminister stop and it spit us out right in front of Big Ben :) It was starting to get grey and cloudy outside by then, but I still got some good pictures in. We were also right by the London Eye. That is the huge ferris wheel type thing that you can see all of London from. We didn't go onto it, but we did take a bunch of pictures. After that we wanted to go to Buckingham Palace, so we walked quite a bit down the road and there it was! We got there right as they were finishing up the changing of the guard, so we only got to catch a little of it. It was still neat though. We then decided to go to Hyde Park and try to find the Peter Pan statue....little did we know how far away it actually was. We were probably searching for 2 hours. It was a LONG walk....at least several miles. We FINALLY found it and our feet were killing us so we left to get on the tube and head back. By then it was almost 9PM and Katia and I hadn't eaten yet, so our stomachs were growling. When we got back to Greenwich, the two of us headed straight for the pizza place we had gone to the first night of being there. Everything seems to close so early compared to at home, but thankfully the pizza place was open past 9. We had a very tasty meal there and then came back to the hostel to veg out and go to bed. After we got back a bunch of us played UNO and I braided hair :) Around midnight the really obnoxious fire alarm started going off. It kept going on and off so we were rather confused as to what we were supposed to do. We all went downstairs and sat down there for a while, but everyone at the pub didn't seem to be phased by it. After a little while we just went back upstairs. I still don't know what was going on with the alarm. It also went off early this morning and successfully woke everyone up...grrr.

As for today!
So like I said, we woke up to the fire alarm going off again, but we basically just ignored it. We had to be ready at 9AM to go to Harlaxton, which meant I had to lug my suitcases down that miserable staircase. It was an experience that made me so grateful for elevators. I'm not sure what time our bus ended up leaving, but we got on the bus and stopped shortly after because the bust driver needed a break. There was a Starbucks right by where we stopped so a lot of us went in. I got Hazelnut hot chocolate....it was SO good. We all got back on the bus and were on our way to Harlaxton...again. I fell asleep for basically the rest of the bus ride which was a couple hours. We arrived in Grantham and pulled up to Harlaxton. It is gorgeous, by the way. It seriously looks like a castle. I haven't exploored around much yet, but I am very much looking forward to. We got all our stuff in and they had a very nice meal waiting for us :) We got our keys and stuff and headed up for the rooms. THANKFULLY they have a lift! It's quite small and is like the really old elevators like you see in movies where it has the two gate doors. It's pretty cool. I didn't mind waiting for it because 1) it was sweet looking and 2) there was no way that I was lugging all that junk up 5 flights of stairs. So now here I am in my room at Harlaxton. It's really really nice. It's just like a dorm room, but way better. There are desks here for us, CLOSETS!!!!!, and we even have a sink in our room! I'm loving it so far and I've only been here a couple hours. Later we have an orientation meeting at 5PM and they have dinner for us. Tomorrow we start classes and have the rest of the day free. I'm looking forward to starting the Beatles class and having lectures on my favorite topic :) I'll leave you with a few more pictures from yesterday and today. Cheers!

Big Ben

The London Eye

Big Ben and a cool looking statue...I'm not sure what it's called.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Super cool phone booths

Super cool looking cab

Buckingham Palace

This is as close as I could get :(

This is Harlaxton. This is what we pulled up to today...to LIVE IN for the next two weeks. How awesome is that? That's only a SMALL portion of it too!

When you walk in the door, this is on the left...yes I've already exploded my stuff everywhere. It was such a pleasure to unpack though

This is what you see right when you walk in the door. Two beds, two nightstands and lamps.

This is what you see to the right of the door. Two desks, chairs, and lamps. It's all very very nice :)

And this is our amazing view that we were so blessed with :P (Sarcasm, of course, but with humor)