Jolly ol' England

WoW, I had a great time in that lovely place. My friend Angela and I went to England just for the weekend which is a common practice for students studying abroad. Angela and I had an agenda, it started with a D and it ends with a cute ending. We saw that Death Cab was coming to Nottingham and hey we are only a few hours away by airplane and i guess if you include all the alternative travel that is included. The thing was that Angela's friend who is studying in London was so confused why we would come to the UK and not come to London. Andrew had a great point and so we incorporated London into the trip agenda, best decision ever. I have no idea what we would have done in Birmingham and Nottingham.
So we got on the train early in the morning and headed off to Pisa which is a big port for cheap airlines to fly out of. Withing hours we were in a place that we had no trouble talking with the workers and being able to find our way to London. The flight over we had this random man start talking to us and he was pretty out there. We wished our passport never fell between the seat because it just gave him and invitation to start conversation with us. He explained how he spoke seven or eight different languages and he said he's lived in over 75 different locations and that he could not tell us what he did for a living. He was so hyper and just kept talking so we listened because it passed the time but then when we arrived to London it just kept going and it got a little creepy. So yeah we had to devise a plan to get rid of him and the Lord helped with that one.
Oh we knew we were in Britain because the first interaction we had with the locals were these kids on the train and one had a fake black baby in their stroller and another had a pregnant belly shirt and another was in a wheelchair and the last one had a video camera. They were all taking on alter-egos and it was hilarious. I love the wittiness, it was a breath of fresh air and we could ask what they were doing, it was glorious.

SO the train ride was great, and I saw really cute sheep along the way and had time to just reflect, I find that to be the hardest but also the most crucial part of traveling. It is like too much time and your mind starts to contemplate life to the fullest extent, it is amazing. So yeah sitting on the train I got through a big part of my book but was distracted by all the conversations I was able to understand, it was crazy. I could understand and it was hard to disregard after several months of only understanding tourist conversations. I couldn't help but listen in because someone meeting a friend to go out and get completely smashed was way more interesting than reflecting on life. And it definitely helped that the accent was so attractive and enjoyable to listen to. English people are very proper and just pleasant people from those that we interacted with, I think it is a large generalization but we found it to be quite pleasant whenever we talked with people. The first people we met were these newspaper men and one of them was a huge music buff and best of all he was all about blues and we talked for a good ten minutes just about Chicago Blues until Andrew met us and swiped us away. '
He was our own little Kiwi tour guide and he took us a good distance to show us his school,
St. Paul's Cathedral, where there was some type of circle being projection on the facade, but mostly we just walked around and got distracted by the buildings and people. He ended our night in the town by taking us to a pub and we met some of his classmates. When we walked by the Tate Modern we passed this instillation for Oxfam and a photographer who took these wonderfully engaging photographs that were displayed in light boxes. The photographer is, Cheka Kidogo, super talented. We had some chips and nachos which did not hit the spot but we headed to his house and we were greeted by his parents with a lovely meal. They were so great and they are missionaries there working at a church in the area but they normally live in New Zealand which explains their beautiful spirits. I would love to go and visit them especially after they showed us
pictures with postcard backgrounds. We were spoiled with a warm house to spend time and the night at. We had a great time connecting and just learning about what we had been up to both before Italy and during our study abroad. They were intrigued by couchsurfing as most people are, and we happily informed them.
The next morning we woke up to a full breakfast with yogurt, fruit of all kinds, cereal, wheatabix, juice, caffe, and more. It was a blessing to just feel like a honored guest and be greeted with so much kindness. We had a full day of sightseeing so we headed off quite early. Andrew had a full plan for us and just took us all over, it was awesome. London is a beautiful city and apparently we might have brought the sunshine with us from Italy because it was a beautiful "sunny" day. It felt so foreign to me to think that the usual is cloudy because I am just used to that weather to description to be a rare occurrence. We saw so much and had a blast interacting with the people and just trying to talk as frequent as possible with people before we had to head back to Italy. I felt awkward and would often forget that I talked the same language so I had to just get used to the feeling and talk with anybody. We of course saw all the usual things, Big Ben, House of Parliament, The Prime Minister's house, Buckingham Palace, ate lunch in St. James Park, and many other sights. The funniest thing was seeing these guards that worked at the Equestrian Club, The Horse Guards Parade. We watched them change and they were quite the drama queens, with these obnoxious boots. They would just walk through the tourists and not stop, like a cannonball coming through. The next guards that we met were way more chill. They were guarding something and they would just do this little routine and so we messed with them of course and we witnessed a little girl get completely freaked out and start crying a ton when she saw them up close. The parents were cute and witty and they scared the kids more by saying the guards were off to go get back children. I missed hearing dialog between families, so sorry if that is useless information but it made some of my day.
It was a whirlwind of touring the city and we were pretty exhausted but we still had the concert to head to for the night.




Sadly we missed our couch bus and had to take the later one which set us off course. Luckily Gill the lay from couchsurfing picked us up from the bus station and took us back to her place for some tea and a nice place to relax for a bit. We wanted to get to know her and assure her that we were legite so with that decision we ended up missing most of the concert which she also brought us to and ended up catching just the encore. Death Cab is an awesome band to watch live and we were happy to just know that we saw them in England, what more can we say. Nottingham is an strange place well not really but at night it got quite wild and we just were so exhausted that it was good just to sit have a kebab and people watch. Gill was the highlight of our Nottingham trip, she had traveled all over the world and she was so sweet just in for the night taking care of her sick daughter who is also very sweet. We sat and talked and also watched t.v. which was a treat for us well to an extent because we got sucked into the show about the 100 top icons. In the morning Gill took us to the airport at 4:30, what a sweetheart. So we were thankful and we really enjoyed our time with her and with Nottingham, Oh Nottingham!
We arrived to Rome and were immediately reminded that we were in Italy because the bus we got on left like 15mins. late and they crammed it with people and it was just like yep we're back!
Roma is a beautiful place with so much to see, we only caught a little bit and actually wound up watching a calco, football, tournament with all South Americans. It felt like I was at Montrose beach on a Sunday and that made me happy. I walked around a grabbed a couple pictures but mostly we just sat there to eat. I did meet an Afghanistan man who spoke wonderful English and he told me how he goes to this park because he has not found his place in Roma yet but feels connected most with the South American community. He was very informative and I was happy to hear about Afghanistan. I can safely say it was a wonderful weekend, and a lot thanks to Angela she is quite t