Day 108

Almost close to the end! This morning I woke up early, grabbed breakfast for the first time this week, then headed to the British Library. I think I appreciated all the manuscripts a lot more, and there was even an exhibit on Alice and Wonderland that was specially going on during this time.  After that I went back to Richmond, and just had enough time to pack a little more before we had to meet for our walking tour. I missed both lunch and dinner, but we walked down to the Tube to get to Central London to meet our tour guide for a walk around Central London to see the Christmas Lights. It was pretty to see, but we had seen most of them already, but he told us a little bit about the history of them and why some decorations represented different things. It was really long though and total our trip was more than 4 hours. The coolest, coolest part of the night was that while we were walking around we ran into the Star Wars Premier. There was the red carpet, people dressed up, lightsabers everywhere, and I have a picture of Harrison Ford. Pretty awesome day. Afterwards we grabbed dinner at Tesco, the only place open at 10:30, and went back to campus. Tomorrow we are saying goodbye to Big Ben and central London.

Day 106

Saturday is coming really quickly. I slept in a lot today, after having stayed up to finally watch Pitch Perfect 2 and catch up on the Big Bang Theory. We all grabbed lunch together, then went to the Pound Store where I got some different kind of candy for Nat and Jonny to have. After we walking there since none of us wanted to use up our Oyster Cards, it was pretty much dinner time. They were serving 'tomato soup', so all of us got some, but soon realized it was literally tomato sauce. To put on pasta. Like from a jar. Anyways, after dinner we dressed up and met Hamakawa to walk to Richmond Theater to see Cinderella.  Now, he did not warn us at all that this was supposed to be a comedic version of Cinderella at all. The song "Celebration" started playing, and all of us knew this was going to be interesting. Some jokes were kind of funny, like mentioning the VW scandal, some we didn't understand because we're not from here, and some were just weird. They sang "Blurred Lines", an Ed Sheeran song, "Ghostbusters" and "Uptown Funk", and that's just some of the songs. Oh and they sang "All About that Bass". In Cinderella. It was really weird. I'm not sure if I liked it or hated it, to be honest. I liked the music, but I'm not sure I liked it for Cinderella. The interesting thing about the play though was that Hayley Mills was the fairy godmother and she was in Disney's The Parent Trap. It was really weird because I was just listening to a song from the Parent Trap on my phone yesterday at the gym and knew that name sounded familiar and then I found out why. The theater was nice and small, though, but no one missed on not seeing it. Ash definitely would have hated it.

Day 105

Well, I just got done taking my Accounting final. It was pretty hard, but I don't think I did terrible.  The rest of my grades for this semester are out, and I got a 4.0 GPA. Accounting only counts as a pass or fail class, so that grade doesn't count overall. Today I went to the gym, took a shower, ate lunch, then continued to clean the room.  All my pictures are off the walls and my shelves are bare. It's almost depressing. We studied again for Accounting, and finished our final reflection essay that we had to do for tomorrow. Finally, there is no more work to be done! Hamakawa planned a lot of things for us to do this week.  Tomorrow night we are seeing Cinderella, and tomorrow morning the five of us are going to see Big Ben for the last time and spend our time out. Wednesday we have a Christmas lights walking tour, Thursday a group reflection meeting, and Friday we are going to Hyde Park again. Five more days and I'll be home!

Day 104

This morning was pretty relaxed. I woke up at 10, took a shower, grabbed brunch with everyone at 11:30, then headed to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I still swear that we visited it before, but it was absolutely huge with six floors. A lot of it was pieces of furniture and dresses from Napoleon's time and Louis XIV, but there was also Renaissance and Medieval stuff and artifacts from Asia and Africa as well. After the museum I grabbed a hot apple cider at Starbucks for a guilty pleasure, then went back to Richmond. I made it just in time for dinner pretty much, then after dinner we studied kind of for accounting and started cleaning out our stuff. Professor Hamakawa got the five of us tickets to see Cinderella on Richmond Stage which is super awesome and I'm excited. He's also taking us to see Hyde Park at Christmas again, which will be nice.  Tomorrow is my final exam, but not until 6:30 at night so I think I'll just do wash and start packing or something tomorrow morning.

Day 103

Today was our trip to Cambridge.  It started off pretty rough in the morning. We woke up early, and walked to the tube station, but the next tube didn't leave for another 25 minutes for some reason, and we did not plan on that happening. We grabbed breakfast in the Tube station, got on the Tube, then got off near the Kensington Campus. We then followed some other girls but they walked in the other direction and we ended up running to catch the bus. The bus ride was about two hours, and we got to Cambridge at around 11:30. We then took a walking tour which was basically a college tour. It was just the outside of different colleges that make up Cambridge University. We then had about an hour before our next activity, so we grabbed Subway and we went shopping. We then went punting, which is the popular thing to do in Cambridge.  It's pretty much like taking a gondola ride except in a flatter and wider boat. It was for 45 minutes and it was super fun but really cold. After that we got back on the bus and it took so long to get back. We then grabbed dinner in Richmond and got back to our campus at 8. Tomorrow I think I'm going to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Day 101-102

Sorry I forgot to post yesterday, I've been getting forgetful. Yesterday was a really good day, though.  It was our last Western New England class and we submitted our last homework. For lunch there was actual turkey to be put on sandwiches, and not just sliced turkey. After lunch I then noticed I had a package! This was the package Mom and Dad sent me in October and I just got now. I also got a camera charger which I ordered September 1, never got it, and Amazon resent it to me. So now I have 2 camera chargers. The Easy Mac was much needed, though, and I think the package came at the perfect time. Yesterday we didn't do much except walk into town and then walked by the River Thames. It's really getting to us that we are only here for about a week more. We then went back and celebrated our last class with a cake-brownie thing we split at Tesco. This morning we all went to Portobello Market because Dana was getting her friend something that she saw there earlier in the year. After that we ran into our teacher in town so we sat and talked with him and his wife. We saw them again at dinner and I really think he might think we're following him. Dinner seemed so good at first- pasta and chicken noodle soup. However, both were extremely spicy. They put jalapenos in the soup for some reason so literally all of us were dying and didn't end up eating anything because we were crying. After supper we started to unpack our backpacks and started studying for our Accounting final on Monday. Tomorrow Emelia and I have our day trip to Cambridge and we have to leave here at about 7:45 which will not be fun.

Day 100

It's officially Day 100! Today was the last homework we had for our WNE class, and it was mostly a review day for our Accounting final that's on Monday. We walked to town for the fun of it, and really didn't do much besides that. We just did homework and started studying for accounting. We had a meeting for our trip to Cambridge on Saturday. Tonight I'm staying up until 2 to watch the mid season finale of Supernatural because it is literally going to be the best.