Alright, it's already 10pm and I haven't started my reading for tomorrow, so I'm really keeping this one short. It was a very long, but great day! Our group took a river cruise down the Thames to Greenwich for our London tour of the week. It began at Westminster, where we boarded the ferry, then meandered toward the sea. We saw all of London on either side of us - what a view! But my favorite part was seeing the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, since those were the two biggest sites of London that I hadn't seen yet. The Tower Bridge did not disappoint - it was absolutely magnificent... and blue! I didn't know that it was painted such a beautiful color on the sides, but I loved it. We got to Greenwich around noon, and Angie showed as around what used to be the naval academy, but is now a university. Built originally as a palace by Christopher Wren, the famous architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, it's a fantastic building, split in two to allow the Queen's House, a very old building built for Queen Ann, a view of the Thames. The whole complex is very beautiful, with a great green quad in the middle. One side of the building is the "Painted Hall" with beautiful paintings on the walls and ceiling, while the other half is a chapel. After this little tour, we ate lunch nearby, and got ice cream, of course. We then met back up to climb the hill through Greenwich Park. The park was full of people enjoying an absolutely perfect day out in the sunshine. At the top of the hill is "the birthplace of time," or the Prime Meridian Line for which Greenwich is famous (Greenwich Mean Time = GMT). There's an actual line on the ground, and you can straddle it and say that you're standing in both the eastern and western hemisphere. Pretty cool, yea? We took a bunch of photos, as well as some snapshots of the amazing city view we got from up there. We learned a little bit about how the Prime Meridian Line was found (by a very poor man under King George III, who spent his entire life creating devices that could measure time at sea), then took a tour of the discoverer's home. It was a very interesting experience and I certainly learned a lot about longitude! The afternoon came to a close with one of my favorite moments of this whole trip. Sarah and I decided to go sit in the park for a while to rest up and enjoy the amazing weather. After choosing our spot, we began to make our way there, when something caught my eye. As I looked at the grass beneath my feet, in this park so far from home, I saw something very familiar. I picked it up, and sure enough, there it was… a Buckeye. A real Buckeye nut! To all you non-Ohioans out there, this may seem quite silly, but to me it was incredible to find such a rare memento of home in somewhere so very far away. I couldn't find any others, and there were no Buckeye trees in sight, so I took it as a sign that I was meant to find this little nut, as a reminder that home is always with me. :)
What a great day it has been, and as I look over at my little nut on my dresser, I'm reminded of how lucky I am to be all the way over here, having such incredible experiences every day. It's always hard to be far from home, and there are many people that I miss terribly, but I know that home will always be there, and I have my Buckeye to remind me when I forget!
Love!
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