By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show--Samuel Johnson

I checked. There wasn't a portal to the
Ministry of Magic inside. 

The group in front of an artist's graffiti. 

In front of Buckingham Palace

Turns out London is AMAZING (not to anyone's surprise I'm sure)!!! For Core, we were required to go out into various parts of London and do sociological research of the people, places, and history there. My group (Stacy, Jodi, Chelsea, Julie, Jon, Austin, and Vance) went to Spittalfield in East London. It's the "dodgy" part of London, but it was also the best! We toured for like three hours with Janine, and she took us to a synagogue, a mosque, the first bagel shop, and other cool places before she set us free to do our own exploring. There were great places to eat everywhere (very ethnic Indian and Asian food mostly), and I got some spicy, delicious chicken curry. We also found this huge park that had a grown-up playground at it. I don't know how to better describe it than that it as a playground, but with everything for the size of adults. If you look at the pictures on Facebook it will probably help---we had such a fun time playing on everything like we were 8 again. We headed to the hostel after we finished around town to meet up with the other groups. Les Miserables was playing in London, so we headed downtown to pick up tickets--sold out. Instead, we found "The Best Nightclub in the UK"according to the travel guide I got from Mom and Dad. It's called Ministry of Sound, and it was so. much. fun. We danced the night away to lots of dub step and rave music. Now I can say that my first real club experience was in London at the best venue in the country. I'd say that's pretty cool. The next morning after sleeping at the hostel, we bought tickets for the rail and headed out into London again. This time we just went around for a little while and saw the touristy things--Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. I'd like to go back again and do more, but we did stuff for free because everything is so expensive in London. Late in the afternoon, we got on the train to head back home to Oxford and slept the whole way back because we were so exhausted. When we got out of the train station, we saw that it was snowing!!! England is just beautiful in the snow too! I ate at this place called Nando's for dinner that has Peruvian food (and free refills). My evening activity was watching 3 movies with everyone in the common room together. I love my friends here. We had an amazing two days in London, and I already can't wait to go back.

Hmmm maybe this is why they call East London
"the dodgy end."

Big Ben!

Chicken curry!!