London

This will mostly be throwing some pictures up for the family since I haven´t blogged in forever. Someone in the comp. lab is listening to Pearl Jam. I like it, but others don´t seem to appreciate it so much. It´s 22 degrees and sunny and I´m happy to be here despite the fact that I have loads of work to be doing. I hung out my laundry this morning and am going to miss the ability to do that. When I go home from the lab, I´ll stop on the way and get a loaf of bread for 42 cents. This evening I´ll be running with Jochen again. It´ll be one of the last times since he doesn´t have to take exams (only a certificate of attendance) and will be going home soon. Tomorrow I´m going to check out Zamora with Sonia. It´s not too far and the University of Salamanca has a campus there that she attends. So that´s life in a nutshell. Some days I´m lazy, but today I´m ready to live, read, learn Spanish and run.

So it was great to visit London and see Pearl and David. This was about a month ago now...I think. Though there wasn´t much sun, the weather was nice and didn´t really rain on us ever. I was actually rather unimpressed with Buckingham Palace though the flowers out front were pretty. The gardens in general were impressive and the flowers were in full bloom, so it was gorgeous.

This was the gate to the Palace. I thought the crest was kind of neat. This was probably the most impressive part of the palace, from the outside anyway.
So this is a view of Parliament and Big Ben and the River Thames (pronounced Tems apparently). Pearl and I actually waited and were able to go in and watch some of a meeting of the House of Commons. It was actually a few committees about the government in Northern Ireland. It was interesting and fun to watch how they went back and forth.
Taken from the bridge and looking in the opposite direction I can see the London Eye and the Aquarium. Yes the London Eye is a giant bicycle wheel and it costs 13 pounds to ride it. Kind of neat though.
Also in Westminster (other than the palace) is of course Westminster Abbey. I liked it. This where Kings and Queens, etc. are coronated by the Archbishop of Canterbury whom I believe is otherwise unconnected with this church.
This is just a view of the skyline complete with Pearl´s egg, her landmark for getting home. Apparently, they actually call it the gerkin, but it doesn´t look like a pickle, it looks like an egg.
Most of my time spent in the UK was spent wandering around. I enjoyed it. I now understand the Mind the Gap t-shirts which I´d not even heard of before. I was introduced to authentic British culture such as Pret sandwiches and Fish and Chips. I don´t have pictures of it, but the National Library was impressive. They have an amazingly complete collection of stamps. I also saw the original Alice in Wonderland among other books, and Pearl and I saw Magna Carta. It was strange to be there seeing that. Not your everyday type of activity. Well, I should probably head off and do some work. I think I´ll probably skip bloggin about Cáceres and Plasencia, but that´s alright. They´re in Extremadura, the autonomy south of where I am. They were pretty and I´m glad to have visited them, but there was nothing too amazing. I´ll try and write something about graduation in the near future. I won´t have digested all of that for quite some time. And here´s a picture of the Great White Pelicans in the park in front of Buckingham Palace.