London

Very excited/lame with our French diplomas.

Bon soir tout le monde!

Before hopping across the pond to London, I had the DELF B1 language exam. In English, DELF stands for a diploma in French studies, and B1 is the 3rd our of 6 levels of exams. It was sort of broken down like the S.A.T's in terms of the reading comprehension and writing, but there was also listening and oral exercises. The listening exercises were très difficile and threw me for a loop. Although the acutal exam time was relatively short, we had a nice 6 hour break between the written part of the exam and the oral part. Luckily we were in the booming town of Amboise, France so it was easy to pass the time. The exam ended up being much much harder than anticpated, but we all passed so that was magnifique.

Just acting like locals in London.

The Tower of London

Emma, Maeve and I reunited in London!!

SO after a nice long day of exams, I woke up and headed to London on Saturday! It was my first time travelling alone so I was a smidge nervous but I navigated the Paris metro like a pro and made it to Gare du Nord for my train to London. I did cause a minor security breach in the Paris metro when I ran back through a 'no entry' zone, but fortunately those military men pacing the train station with machine guns weren't there to see it. After going through security to get on my train for London, I thought it would be a splendid idea to tear up my train ticket I used to get from Tours to Paris, seeing as it had my French address and such on it. Unfortunately, I tore up the train ticket I needed to get to London. SO I got to go digging through the trash in the middle of the train station to the amusment of some onlookers. Luckily, the conducter did not seem to mind that my ticket was in shreds so I was on my merry way.

My train took me right to King's Cross, the station one would use to get to Hogwarts. The London undergound was a little hard to navigate, but luckily my friend Brian had given me some great directions so I met up with the group in no time. It was a nice big reunion of camp friends: Katie, Nicole, Lee and Maeve, and Emma, Ben, Brian, and Ryan Ward were there as well to make us a nice big group of tourists. We started just by walking about, seeing Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, Parliament, etc. and then went inside the Tower of London. It was pretty cool although I have to say I have seen nicer castles in my day. There was a fun part where they talked about all of the different conspiracy theories around the deaths of the sons of Edward IV. At the end, you got to vote on which theory you believed. It was a bit morbid but I voted all the same (it was totally Richard of Gloucester!). My favorite part is when we got to see the royal jewels. I never even thought diamonds this big existed. At the exhibit of the jewels, they played footage on loop of Elizabeth II becoming queen in 1952. It was sort of bizarre to see this young, 27 year old, girl becoming queen and to think that ceremonies that involve wearing a literal crown still go on. I must admit that I was pretty jealous, although I still don't really understand what being queen entails. We finished the day at Buckingham Palace, which was a little underwhelming. You couldn't even get close enough to make the guards laugh! All of those movie montages had lied to me and I was dissapointed to say the least. Although not for long! Thanks to Ryan having a real job, he was able to take us out to dinner and for the night on his company credit card (I didn't think those things actually existed). It was a wonderful way to end the day.

The next day, Ben took us to the Brick Lane market. It was a huge indoor/outdoor market that was full of independent artists, clothing designers, jewelers, etc. selling their things. It was très chouette and my favorite part about London. It was a very hip and artisitc neighborhood, but was still ten times less obnoxious or pretentious than any American hipster scene. It was also an area full of ethnic restaurants so we got to enjoy some wonderful Indian food. The rest of the afternoon was basically Ben giving us a walking tour of the city, which included Trafalgar square, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, and his favorite graffiti spot. As has been the theme for most of my city visits thus far, it was obscenely cold and we were overjoyed to have a cozy dinner in a pub in Covent Garden. We dragged ourselves back to Ben's in East London, where we slept 5 to a 12 foot by 9 foot space. Emma and Maeve had to leave for the aiport about 5 hours after we returned and the weekend began to wind down.

I did not really have many things on my list of must-sees in London, so I just sort of went with the flow. Lee, Katie, and I visited the Tate Museum of Modern Art, which was pretty great. It had both Andy Warhol and Keith Haring pieces which reaffirmed Pittsburgh's greatness. We went on a walking tour of the Globe theare and the other theatres Shakespear used, including the excavated Rose theatre. We also got to volunteer Lee to be dressed as Ophelia to demonstrate the clothing worn during Shakespearean times, which was enjoyable for all parties involved. After crossing the London Bridge (which is really quite unimpressive) we went to see Harrod's which is one of the scariest places I have ever been. It is approximately the size of a small city and full of obscenely expensive clothing, food, and literally anything else you could imagine. Lee and I tout suited it out of there to go see the Billy Elliot musical. It was great, although I kind of still like the movie more. We met back up with Ben, said our goodbyes to Katie and Brian, and then headed on back to Ben's for the night to hang.

Now the whole one hour ahead time change from London to France had really thrown me off the whole weekend and I could never remember that it existed. Lee and I had an 8am flight from an airport about an hour from Ben's apartment, so we had to leave his apartment at 5am. We went to bed around 3am, which was great to begin with, BUT I similarly forgot about this time change when I set my alarm. Thus, we woke up at 3:50am, and got to the train station to get to the airport by 4:15am, where we finally realized my error. It was horrible. Luckily I only had 5 hours of class when we got back to Tours.

Overall, I found London to be very cool but not very different. Maybe it was because everyone spoke English, but it really did not feel much different to me than being in New York, or another big US city. I think maybe I needed to spend a little more time there. Lee came back to Tours with me, which was so so nice. Although we did not do much because I had class most of the day Tuesday and Wednesday, it was nice to have someone from home here. She also liked it a lot which sort of helped to reaffirm me liking it. My host family was very welcoming and it was all in all a great little trip.

Sorry this post is so boring. I'm super sleepy. Anyhoo I am off to Normandy in the morning for the weekend so I will have much to write about for next time and I will post better pictures from London as well!!

À bientôt!
Annie O.