Londres!

Well I guess I've waited long enough to update my blog. Sorry guys it's just that here in London I'm much less busy doing sightseeing so there's less to talk about. So we've been having lcass 3 times a week all morning and also attending some "briefings" which are poli sci or economics oriented, so I'm generally lost when we go to these places. So these are gonna be brief. We went to the Bank of England, watched a rich dramatic documentary about a girl starting a juice stand and I got to lift a brick of gold. Actually a lot more heavy than I thought it would be. We went to the Commonwealth Secretariat which basically used to be the British Empire's colonies minus America. Worst part of that--that mean lady put me on the spot first asking me what I knew about the Commonwealth Secretariat. I told her I had no idea what the Commonwealth was. Done.

Last Thursday night (I think it was) we went to see a production of "Mother Courage and Her Children" at the National Theatre. It was crazy! First of all it starred Fiona Shaw and Harry Melling who play Aunt Petunia and Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter!

Btw Dudley is hot now. So the play is really an anti war play written by Brecht in the 1940s during WWII. Here starts the confusion it was written in the 1940s about that time, set in the 30 years war in the 1600s, but with modern costumes, uniforms, etc. Whew! It was staged magnificently. I won't bore you with too many details, but it really felt more like a rock concert or at least a rock musical.

There was a band up there called "Duke Special and His Band" that played all the music throughout as well as sang with the characters. They were really good.

Best part-afterward me and another Harry Potter fanatic Alison Reeder went to the stage door and got autographs from both Aunt Petunia and Dudley! They were very nice. We decided not to mention Harry Potter so we wouldn't look completely insane. Harry Melling was so nice! He stopped and talked to us for a few minutes about the theatre he's doing. So cool!

At some point I went to the British Museum. Um it's enormous. It's about five minutes from our hotel so one day when we had a spare hour I just spent some time walking around in there. It's very hard to focus because there's just so much stuff! I did see the Rosetta stone.

I've been to some shows too which I'm doing a separate post about later. Sorry but you know how much I love theatre! Or if you didn't know you will figure it out soon!

One day we ventured out to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. It's so beautiful.

One of the more famous things there besides Kensington Palace is the Peter Pan Statue. Also they had this awesome pirate themed playground with like a ship in the middle of it. BUT you couldn't go in if you were over 12 and didn't have a kid with you. We were all very mad about that.

This week we went to the London Metals Exchange for a briefing. Sounds boring right? Actually not so much. This is the place where they set prices for metals to be traded around the world. Each metal gets 5 minutes and there is a group of about 8 people representing all the major buyers and sellers of metals in the Western World. They have clerks behind them and more people on phones with their customers, etc. Some metals aren't exciting, but for some the last minute or the selling time turns into a shouting match with people screaming prices and making deals among each other. It was like an old school stock market. Also it gets so loud in there that they have hand signals to motion to each other the prices, bids and offers. It was really neat.

The other day we visited the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. There are many famous artists represented there including Michelangelo, Raphael, Monet, etc. We then visited Trafalgar square.