Elonians Visit London Town!

So I decided to make a more hastily updated blog this week, and only waited four days since my last entry to post up some more news. Since last Thursday, lots has gone in London, as many things happen everyday, but particularly in my life I’m quite busy here. First off, on Friday I went through my daily routine of waking up, cleaning up the penthouse, doing dishes, making lunch, going for a run along the canals of Little Venice, and prepping for the day. Friday was particularly exciting because some of my friends from Elon actually were coming to visit us for the weekend! This was especially exciting, since they’ve spent their semester in Perugia, Italy and haven’t ever come to London before either!

So in the afternoon, I went down to Westminster Abbey/Big Ben and picked up the girls. Kat Merrill, Abbey Remein, Emily Sanner, and Sharon Rice were all tired from flying, but arrived safely, and I wasted no time but to take their pictures in front of the church and clock tower as they stepped off the tube. After escorting the lovely ladies back to our flat so they could meet up with their sorority sisters, everyone dropped off their bags, rested a few, and caught up, since it’s basically been about 6 months since I’ve seen many other Elon students at all! Nevertheless, Friday we all got to hang out and eventually showed the girls some of London’s nightlife, and did the Josh Tate All-In-One-Supreme-London-Tour (trademarked J) in one day on Saturday. Basically, Saturday was a great time because not only did we get up early, but I myself got to experience a number of different things that I hadn’t even done in London in the past month. We started the morning with a “Traditional English Breakfast,” which consists of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and tons of toast…all of which I hadn’t gotten before while I was here and then we took a quick walk (10 minutes from our flat) to the famous Abbey Road, where the Beatles had their cover photo taken, and proceeded to take 45 minutes trying to recreate the album cover, just during lunchtime traffic hour, so despite the honking and angry cab drivers, the photos turned out pretty well. Fun Fact: You can google “visit abbey road” and actually look at a webcam of the street/zebra crosswalk, and watch people try to get the right stance for a picture lol.

Anyways, after Abbey Road, we found a tube and took the girls to Buckingham Palace, there they got more traditional Londoner Photo Ops, and we also walked down toward famous Trafalgar Square so that the girls could see the National Gallery and another great view of Big Ben. Along the way, we stopped and had our photos taken with some of the British Royal Guards, in traditional red uniforms with black hats, which was amusing (I hadn’t done that yet either), and then we all sort of split up and did a number of different things. Some went into the National Gallery for a bit, some went to Camden Market, and Kat and I ended up taking a walk along the Thames to catch up on our life stories, which was a personal highlight for me. After packing back up and resting a bit, all of the Elon students hung out in the Penthouse for the evening and then went their separate ways throughout the city.

On Sunday, my flatmates and I had a lazy and relaxing day. A day of laundry, cleaning, homework, resting, and to end the evening a huge game of Phase 10 (my grandparents would be proud). I’ve more or less got my flatmates and some of the other students addicted to the card game, so it’s pretty amusing that we played a number of times since it was a rather muggy and rainy day yesterday. Nevertheless, we all had internships this morning, so we all went to bed eventually and are back in the workforce of course. This week should be pretty exciting, I hope to not only finish a lot of my homework, with intentions of getting ahead, but also finish up interning for the week, and this weekend I’ll be heading with a group of friends to Edinburgh, Scotland for a weekend of bag piping and kilt-wearing. Hopefully there will be plenty of pictures after this weekend of course, more than enough to probably make a mother proud of her Scottish son, but regardless, I’m really excited to see the Scottish highlands, the infamous Loch Ness, and also of course, see beautiful Edinburgh. I’m travelling by train this time, so hopefully I’ll see a big of the lovely London countryside as well, since I’ve seen basically just a bit of it, and more of the big city instead. Nevertheless, keep the updates coming from the states, I love to hear about what’s going on, but this is Tater signing out and saying, Cheers!