My friend Nancy and I had a picnic on her roof. It was very nice, because there was sun! Sun! In June! Who could have imagined. Nancy is wonderful, I owe her one hell of a thanks before I go, for making sure I'm well fed/cultured/hugged.
The next day (it was a busy weekend for me) I met my friend Natalie and we bummed around central London. Natalie is from Australia. We misunderstood each other's accents with incredible ease and generally had an awesome time. We ate ice cream! Because it was, again, sunny!
That's from the roof of a church on the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. On Sunday I went with our event to Greenwich. We split them into patrols and then we ran about with them, making scavenger hunts for the other patrols. It was great! It was very sunny and definitely something I might not have done other wise. The College is beautiful, very magnificent. My patrol was great - I could not have asked for a sweeter, more democratic group. And we saw some weird modern dance on the quad on of the college, which the girls are sure to remember for the rest of their lives. The dancers were dressed as butterflies, for one. When they weren't on leashes. Madness. There is some culture I will never be able to understand.
For our candle walk, after we got back from Greenwich, we made a sort of maze through conference room to the back garden. Like a scout's own, but we call it a candle walk. There were lots of tears, because I do think the girls went through some powerful introspection during the event. We are a girl guiding hostel after all - if you come for London Experience, you're not here as a tourist for a vacation. You're here as a girl scout. And I think many of the girls did come to understand that by the end of the week, and so it did mean something to them.
The event closed last night. By luck of the draw, I worked eight of the nine days of the event, so I got to know some of them well. I am, however, completely knacked. Everything hurts! Oh well. One more day and then I can sleep in properly.
And my goodness! I've nearly forgotten one of the more "London!" things I've done - last Saturday, on my day off, I met up with Nancy again. We went to the Natural History Museum (amazing - stuffed animals are amazing. whales are amazing.) but it turned out that the entire area around the Natural History Museum was putting on a mini-festival called "Sites and Sound" celebrating architecture and music. That's right. A festival entirely devoted to architecture and music. Oh, London. It was so brilliant! We saw a drum corps in the street and they were amazing, made me want to pick up the drums. At the V&A we went to a lecture about buildings and bridges and engineering! It was well cool. Bridges are so great! We went a bit through the V&A and I started to feel very small because everything in that museum is gigantic. At the French Institute we saw an acoustic set by a French lady-singer who was pretty good. Back in the street in front of the V&A we saw an awesome brass jazz band called "Bad-Ass Brass." They were so great, they made me want to dance. And then in the evening, it was back to the Natural History Museum where one of Nancy's favorite bands (and one band that I regard pretty highly) was playing in one of the auditoriums. British Sea Power! It was very appropriate, I thought, having to walk through the hall with the birds into a darkened theatre. It was a good day. But it made me want to create big things. Like whales, or columns, or bridges, or music. Big things!
And that's a short, well long now, update of what I've been up to. The coming weeks include a visit from my friend Nell, a fourth/sixth/ninth of July celebration, and goodness knows what else. I never know what's happening to me until I'm right in the middle of it, and even then, I rarely understand it all. I've been here four months now. One month to go. Ridiculous.
