09/07/08 London! Na na na *theme music from What a Girl Wants*

Me enferma. Me nariz es rojo porque es corre. Yo no feliz, deseo sopa de pollo, te, y agua. En London tengo muchas te y agua.

Did not sleep well at all. Kept waking up, and when I did sleep it was incredibly light. What I mean is that whenever I did sleep I was thinking, having major thought processes. I do believe I was thinking about the day I'd had yesterday. I knew that if I tried to go farther into sleep I'd wake up, so I slept lightly rather than not at all. This sleeping pattern is so strange for me. Normally when I go to sleep I remember nothing, and I don't wake up at all. Had to use the restroom multiple times.

When I finally decided to "wake-up" I rolled out of bed and had to run to the bathroom, my nose was running like crazy. Unfortunately I had used up a good deal of toilet paper on my nose the day before, so I had very little to use. I've used up an entire roll of toilet paper on my nose now. Whenever I sit up straight my back gripes at me. My whole back, my legs, and my head all hurt like crazy. I'm going to take it easy today, as easy as I can considering we're going out to the British Museum and then on a Harry Potter walk. While we're here in our room I'll simply email people. I'm going to drink tons of tea and water and take the lovely decongestant pills I brought with me, maybe I'll feel better later.

Later:

Well towards the end of the day I did start feeling better! That's good news. The bad news is that whenever we went to the British Museum I was miserable. I had on all of my layers. I had my black leggings on, my yellow "long-sleeve" shirt, my white jacket, my raincoat, my multi-colored scarf, my khakis, my toe-socks, and my yellow gloves. Yeah, people around me gave me funny looks as I walked through looking like (this should be fun wording) Rudolph stuffed down into Ralphie's-kid-brothers-wintergear. I was tempted to whine, "I can't put my arms down!" I don't think it would've been greatly appreciated lol. Something you might be wondering is if I'm the one who decided to wear so many layers. The answer is yes. I am the one who decided I wasn't going to get cold at all while we were out. More good news: I didn't get cold. Not so good news: I never felt the need to take off any layers.

The British Museum was huge! I didn't expect it to be so large. The entryway is what took my breath away though, and so did the stairs down to the restrooms. Yeah.... When you drink huge amounts of tea and water you tend to need the bathrooms to be readily accessible. Ahmee and I both agreed that we thought whoever designed the structure in the once-courtyard was a male, and a not very smart one at that. He put the restrooms down a flight of stairs and he put the ladies room farther away from the stairs. If he'd have done it correctly he would've at least made it so that the ladies room was closer.

We had lunch first thing up on the top of the very large concrete cylinder in the main entryway. This restaurant was very expensive and fancy. We took pictures of our meal. Don't laugh! You would've too if you'd have seen the way they had it arranged. I shall have to try and get Poppy to put the pics on the computer.

After lunch we headed into the museum. The guidebook warned us to only hit the things we wanted to see and not try to see the whole museum, and to try not to get too distracted. We kept getting distracted. The farthest we got in the upstairs was the Medieval Europe room where we read about well, medieval Europe. Lots of things read there, would be insane to try and write it all here. I think I'll be insane for two seconds.

In the room before the Medieval Europe room there was information on the ancient Scots, Irish, and English peoples. They were mostly tribes. These tribes were doing very well though I have to say because excavations have brought up jewelry. Only people who are doing well have time to make jewelry: it means that had free time, that they weren't spending all their time surviving. The jewelry was buried in large groups. I have to say that the excavator who finds these groupings of jewels (not too ornate-but still very valuable) would make a fortune.

In the Medieval Europe room there were many different sections, each giving a nice description of the section. Something I was surprised to find was that the Germanic tribes were just about as good at making glass as the Italians were. Something I did notice though was that even at the early stages the Italians had much more colorful glasses than the Germanic peoples. Another thing I noticed was that these Germanic peoples were not invaded by the Romans. The Romans didn't bother with the fierce Germanic tribes, or the bloody Scots. With the Scots they build Hadrian’s Wall and with the Germans they "bought" peace. Lots of trade went on between the Germanic tribes and the Romans. The Roman goods were considered to be top items, that only the elite had.

Now I'm done with the two seconds of insanity. I have to mention that when I was in the museum my eyes would sometimes play tricks on me. My headache caused my eyes to water, making the words get very blurry. This was a pain for me whenever I was trying to read the signs.

After the Medieval Europe room we needed to head downstairs to find the Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian Room. The Stone was about the size of two classroom desks pushed together and each language had about one foot by two three feet of room on the stone, maybe a little less. It was hard to get close enough to see it. Its fame makes it very popular and there was simply not enough room for everyone to see it. I got to check it out for maybe 15 seconds before we needed to run. We passed under the eyes of Pharaoh Ramses (2?), through the Greek Room, and into a room that was lined with stone carvings. These stone carvings were from the Parthenon in Greece. The thing about these stones is that they were "discovered" by an Englishman and they were brought back to Briton and placed in the British museum. Greece wants them back because they feel that such an important cultural symbol should stay in Greece. I don't blame them. The British Museum isn't giving it back to them though. I can't blame the Greeks, those stones display a major part of their history, they should have a say in where they should be. I thought that the British Museum was jam-packed with all sorts of important items. It was pretty much a treasure-trove.

Perhaps less is more. Perhaps more words on the subject, and less materials would be better. At least the book store in the British Museum had loads of books in it. Shame we didn't get any (too expensive-my decision, not Ahmee's and Poppy's).

Before we left the British Museum I took some more meds and we headed out. We took another subway over to the place where we were going to meet up with a group for the Harry Potter walk. By the way, recently we've been taking a lot of subways. I love them. I just disliked being so sick on them. I feel like I'm spreading this nasty cold all over England by using the rail.

Once we were at the right stop we went up and grabbed some beverages at a cafe. As we sat there (Poppy and I-Ahmee went shopping) we sipped our drinks, me tea, Poppy coffee, and people-watched. I'd like to include a nice warning here.

WARNING: THOSE PEOPLE WHO'RE WALKING PAST ANY CAFE OR RESTAURANT WHERE PEOPLE ARE ABLE TO SIT NEAR A WINDOW, YOU'D BETTER STAND UP STRAIGHT AND WALK WITH PRIDE, BECAUSE YOU'RE BEING WATCHED AND ANALYZED BY THOSE EATING/DRINKING.

I had a good time looking at the general styles in London. Something I noticed was that so many women wear black. The younger women wear leggings, flats, a nice dress, a cute jacket, a scarf, a nice belt (normally bigger), and have their hair pulled up to show off earrings. Sometimes you can substitute boots for the flats. The older women tend to wear looser outfits, but they look just as classy as the younger women. I have to say that the men dress up more than those in the US. Let me put it this way, Gunnar's clothing style is very prevalent. I saw one particular guy, he was wearing skinny jeans, a nice tee-shirt with some sort of design on it, a jacket over his shoulder, a leather bag next to him, and a hat-with long, curly bangs protruding out from underneath it. This isn't the first I've seen of guys like this, however I must say that not all guys in Europe dress like this, it just happens more often. Maybe it's London, maybe not. I'll be sure to let you know. Something I do remember reading back whenever we first started this trip was an article that talked about how men were beginning to pay as much attention to themselves and their apparel as women have in the past.

Once a huge man walked through our line of vision carrying a broomstick I knew our guide had arrived. I don't know if the man is exactly a tour guide type. Whenever I asked him if he was doing the Harry Potter tour he said quietly, "Yep over on the other side at 5." When he said the other side he meant the other side of the station. I had to run through a small section of the station to catch up with him. This wouldn't be the first time I ended up practically running after him though. He was well over six feet tall. The reason why I don't think he's exactly the tour guide personality is that the tour guide personality is one that's outgoing. I'm not saying he did a bad job, in fact I really enjoyed the tour (knew some of it actually), but I knew it was an act. The man put on a new persona whenever he began the tour. It was very much for entertainment. For example, he had on a vest that was a different color every time we stopped at a new place. He did various "magic" tricks and he had many different wands. Something I noticed at the very beginning was that he knew an awful lot about Dracula. Later he provided an explanation why: he'd been doing a Dracula tour longer than a Harry Potter tour.

On this walk we didn't stop at the literal sets for Harry Potter, we stopped at areas where famous people lived and worked that might've influenced JK Rowling. Also walked down an alleyway that was distinctly similar to Diagon Alley. An example of one of the places we stopped at was just outside a pub, in the past a horrible man drank: he was the living man Voldemort. What I wanted to know was what did the man do that was so strange and evil. While we were at this same bar he talked about another man who drank there. This man was a bit off, he created his own religion and he went around wearing a black cape. He believed that when he wore this black cape he became invisible. He obviously didn't.

Near the end of the walk the tea and water I'd had earlier began to really bother me. I just about peed in my pants. Unfortunately I didn't make it to the restroom in time on the way back to the apartment. I was so embarrassed whenever we got off the subway, I just about ran up the steps to get to a restroom to finish the process and to hide. The station we got off at was Kingsbridge Station, and it didn't have a bathroom inside. We went out and saw just across the road a very fancy hotel. Naturally we went in and got ourselves a seat at the restaurant inside. I rushed to the restroom and was happy to discover that my pink coat covered up enough of me to make it difficult to see the damage. This restaurant was incredibly fancy and most people were very dressed up. Whenever I walked in a lady in a full-length dress asked me if she could have my coat to hang up. Thinking quickly, I told said, "Sorry, but I've just recently caught a cold and even though I know it's probably nice and warm in here, I'm still slightly chilled." She smiled and said that was perfectly fine and took me to the table. To avoid getting the seat wet I simply pulled my coat down a bit and sat on that instead of directly on the seat. I was capable of enjoying the meal this way.

We were surprised to find the table decorated with a live bonsai tree, though I must say we probably shouldn't have been. When we were in Glasgow Iain told us that there were a lot of Middle East people living there, and lots of Asian people. My soup was the only thing that was remotely Chinese (that we three ordered).

When we got back to the apartment I jumped in the shower, stomping out my clothes while I was in there, and then I pulled on my pj's and popped on the computer for a short period of time while I drank some more tea. Before we went to sleep Ahmee, Poppy, and I had a very tense moment. I wanted to check email, but the computer was taking forever to load. It took literally ten minutes to get from one point to the next. Ahmee told me I needed to wrap it up and go to sleep because she didn't want me to be sick in France.

I told her I'd hurry and as soon as I'd checked this email I'd shut down. Like I said, the computer took forever to load. I sat there for ten minutes waiting to get to the point where I could read and then I spent another five waiting (started typing halfway through the loading process) for it to load to the page where I could send a response. During these 15 minutes of waiting I told Ahmee and Poppy to go ahead and go to sleep, and that I'd be shutting down very soon, I even got up and turned off the main light. Ahmee's light was the only one on other than my computer. Poppy had stretched out, but Ahmee was still sitting straight up, looking at me. Halfway through the loading process of the response page coming up I started typing, really wanting to get it done because I didn't want to get into a fight with Ahmee and Poppy over computer usage.

The computer has caused nasty fights in the past, my father has warned Ahmee and Poppy of how I'm such a rude disrespectful child who will do my best to get what I want: that I'm incredibly manipulative. I don't want Ahmee and Poppy to think that. I also don't want to cause tension between us, I mean, we're going to be together for 3 months! So whenever Poppy got out of his sleeping position I knew I was seconds away from getting a major talking-to. I shut down the computer, without responding and rolled over on my cot. I'm so sick of tension over the computer.