Sweet Sunday!

So Sunday morning we headed out to church and had to wait a while for the circle line and so we made it to the station with only a couple minutes to spare before our train left. We got to church and enjoyed a good sacrament meeting as well as a good Sunday School. Relief Society and Priesthood were combined for the third hour and the topic was on reverence in Sacrament Meeting...it is obviously a touchy subject in the ward as there was quite a bit of contention, raising of voices and disagreement. A little different from what I am use to at home, but none the less...church was good. I can't believe there are only 2 more Sundays.

After church the ward had a "Munch and Mingle" where they provided a little lunch for people in the ward and we chatted. It was a very "filling" experience. (You can kind of see they dynamics of our ward in the background of this picture).
Another great thing was that we as a group bought Krispy Kreme doughnuts from the Young Woment to support them for girls camp and they were delievered to us yesterday, yum! Gotta love camp "Fun"draisers! That night we had a wonderful dinner and then a music fireside where different people were assigned to share their favorite hymn and then we sang it as a group. It was amazing! I was then able to audio skype with my family and catch up with them! Yay!

All You Need Is Love...

So yesterday we got up at 4:40am to go Abbey Road (the place where the Beatles did their famous ablum cover). We had to go that early because we had to walk across it ans we couldn't when it was busy with a bunch of cars. Long story short, the tube wasn't open that early so we took a random bus that dropped us off far away, we walked for close to an hour trying to find it, walked up and down the street a couple times and then finally found it.

It was kind of hard to take the pictures because we would run out in the middle of the road, take 2 pictures, see a car coming and then run to the sidewalk. Below are our attempts to recreate it. We tried a couple of times. For not being men and in suits, I think we did a pretty decent job! Recreate Beatles ablum cover...check!
We then wrote on the "Beatles Wall" where everyone signs to say they have been there and to thank the Beatles for their work. Personally, I am not a huge Beatles fan, but I decided to sign anyways.
We finally made it back at about 8am and so we all...went back to bed. I then got up a little later and Kristen and I decided to go on an adventure. We first headed to Camden Market, which was fun as it had a lot of souviner things and other funky clothes.
We went shopping in these little tents and let me tell you...the people who own them are CREEPY! They some how always know we are from the states, which is apparently really cool I here. One guy came up close to me and said, "You have very pretty eyes!". (I have got that a lot here...what is up?)
It then started to rain and so we headed back to the tube (got lost a little) and then headed to a few museums. Now, I am not a big museum person but these ones sounded really interesting:

We first went to the Natural History Museum. It was filled with animal exhibits, deep sea, about the human body, all about the earth and everything else. The exhibits were awesome and Kristen and I felt like such dorks for thinking everything was so cool. Here are some pics.

Ice Age 2, anyone??? "The Last Melon!"

Here I am calling the Coral Reef!
Seeing this scorpion made me feel like I was home! Gotta love AZ!
I had to take this picture because it reminded me of Night At The Museum! Favorite Movie Ever!

We then went to the place that it said we had to go on our tourguide books. It was a room that let you feel as though you were in an earthquake. We were so excited to go...but it was actually quite lame and a let down. Nothing really moved, the floor just kind of shifted...sad. I may have exaggerated my face a little!
We then headed to the gift shop and found the best things ever! Have you ever seen a lollipop with this saying on it before? I don't think so!
We then went to the Science Museum which was really cool, though we didn't have a lot of time to spend there. There were a lot of cool hands on things to do! If I have a chance I might go back! We then went back to the center, rounded up some girls and went out to dinner...and crashed from exhaustion!

Night!

THANK YOU!

I just wanted to send a thank you to everyone who has sent me letters and to those who have commented on my blog. I have appreciated it SO much! It is always great to come home to see a letter waiting for me! It is also great to see comments on my blog and to know that people are reading it! It gives me a taste of home...and so to those of you who are wondering about writing me letters, YOU STILL CAN! It only takes a couple days to get to me! My address is on the right hand side of the page, so get to it! ;)

Love You All,
Aub

Think of Me, Think of Me Fondly...

So yesterday I had class and then afterwards we were required for English to go to "Keats House". It took us about an hour to get there. Sadly, none of us really appreciated it seeing as we don't know much about him or any of his poetry, so we kind of ran through it.
Afterwards though we went to Hampstead Heath which was a park across the way. It was beautiful! There were birds, ponds and grass everywhere!

We also found the strangest thing...an outdoor swimming pool in London. Now, it is not your typical swimming pool with a diving board and slides. It looks like this:
(This is me trying to pretend to swim...just in case you were wondering! And the "things" behing me are people swimming!)
We then came back in time for dinner and I realized I didn't have any plans, and it was a Friday night...in LONDON! And so I talked to a few girls and we decided (at 6:00pm) to go see "THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA!"
We rushed there because it started at 7:30, they had a few tickets left, we got them at a great price and we were in our seats, ready to see the show.
It was totally awesome! I loved it! When the music came on I got so pumped and began to jam along! Gotta love London!

Scary Experience at the Globe!

Yesterday we had class (Yay!) and then I mailed out some letters, took a much needed nap and then had dinner!
We went and saw the play Macbeth at the globe theater.

(It was a little windy, can't ya tell?)
We just read Macbeth for our English class (and I can't say I really enjoyed reading the play and so I was wary about seeing it). We heard that it is bloody...boy, was that an understatement!

When we first arrived we noticed this big black tarp surrounding the stage with slits in it. They were for our heads. The play was so gross and bloody that they had to cover us. We got some pretty good pictures, if I do say so myself.

The picture below is of me trying to get out of the picture so it would just be of Chelsea, but Kristen thought I wanted to be in it. Ha.

I have to explain the other picture below. I was taking a picture of Chelsea when I realized that our Professor (Young) was in the background. He was being so funny (and he didn't know it) and so I took lots of pictures of Chelsea, with him in the background. Here is just one. (By the way I was laughing so hard while taking these that I started crying!)
They play is all about death, killing, witches...and so nothing to pleasent. There were three witches in it that we SO scary and they would walk underneath the tarp and scare you. Not fun! Chelsea and I held hands the whole time.

There were also just lots of bloody men on stage and randonly popping out of the tarp. (I felt like I was at a haunted house!) It freaked me out and I just did not like it at all. It was actually quite scaring.
So that night Chelsea and I slept together in my bed, and let me tell you...those beds were not meant to be shared!
I forgot to mention though that the men in the play were "divine" and so that helped the play... a lot! :)

Note to self: Never see Macbeth again, especially at the Globe. The End.

Bag Pipes, and Kilts and Plaid...oh my!

So much to blog and so little time!

Oh Scotland! So, for those of you who didn't know. I have been in Scotland the past 3 days. We stayed in the capital Edinburgh. We left EARLY Monday morning and headed to the Kings Cross Train Station (yes, the same place where Harry caught his bus to Hogwarts). We got on the train and were lucky enough to get a table seat so four of us girls could sit around it, talk and do homework.

We had lots of fun times eating our lunches at 10am, reading Wuthering Heights and jamming to High School Musical (don't judge). It was a little over a 4 hour train ride. Once we got off we immediately heard bagpipes and saw kilts...no lie! We headed to the Hostel, but we couldn't check in yet so we dropped off our stuff...and went shopping!

What do you think? Could I pull it off? ;)

They seriously sold kilts EVERYWHERE! Sadly I didn't buy one, but I was tempted to...ok, maybe not.
We then met up with the group and went to the Edinburgh Castle.
One of our favorite parts were the guards at the castle. It is always so interesting taking pictures with them because they don't smile or even look at the camera, but I always wondering how many pictures they get taken of them a day.
Once we entered the castle we walked around and we were able to get a great view of the whole entire city.
It suddenly became really windy and cold as we were walking around and so we didn't stay there too long. We then decided to get inside to warm up, and so we shopped on what is called the Royal Mile. It is basically like "Main Street". Everything is on it including shops, restauraunts and other fun things.
I kind of just looked around at all the shops. I did find one souviner that I would like to have but I don't think it would fit in my suitcase. Dang it!

We then went out to dinner at a place called "The Filling Station".

It was really good and reminded me of a lot of restraunts back at home. (It was comparable to an Applebees). It was weird though becaus for our water they gave us a pitcher with three straws in it!
We then decided to split a big dessert at a place called "Chocolate Soup". We heard from the directors that it is a favorite of students each year. It was a brownie with ice cream and "chocolate soup" sauce.
It was so rich that it was a good thing that we all split it. Yum! Edinburgh was a little sketchy at night (and we were all so tired) that we didn't stay out too late. Most of us went and hung out at the hostel.

The next morning we had a free day (nope, you didn't hear me wrong). We had no clue what we were going to do and so we decided that we would get up early and head to the coast. We walked to the bus station and after asking everyone at the station where the best place was to go, we jumped on a bus to a beach that was about 1 hour away.
We were so happy once we got there (it was called North Berwick) and it was beautiful!

We then had some fun playing around on the beach...

trying to take jumping pictures...

reenacting movies...

(this is me pretending to be the "Little Mermaid"...if you couldn't tell).
and writing in the sand!

We decided to stay there and get lunch. I went to a little "baguette express" place. It was good...except the chicken was dyed red...strange.

The bus ride home took twice as long...and so we slept!

Once we finally got back to the city we walked around the city a little bit and guess who we found...a bag piper! We had a little jam session with him!
Then for dinner we went somewhere REALLY special...any guesses...
"The Elephant House". This is the cafe where JK Rowling wrote down on a napkin her ideas for Harry Potter and where the book began! How cool. (Now, just to clarify...I am not a Harry Potter freak, though it may seem that way, I just enjoy it and the girls I hang around with are obsessed!!!)

We obviously could not pass up the opportunity to write our own story while we were at the restauraunt.
And so we found a scratch piece of paper and decided to write what we thought JK Rowlings piece of paper/napkin would have looked like. I think we hit it spot on!
We then walked around the city more and found me the most classy dressed boyfriend!
I am then sad to admit that we went to a grave yard where supposedly JK Rowling got the names for some of the characters in her book. We actually found "Tom Riddles" grave, all the Harry Potter obsessives had a hay day! As we walked back we also found some fun grafitti (this reminded me of you Chuck, don't know why).

The next day we got up and it was cold and raining. We were planning as a group to hike up to Arthur's Seat (I will explain later) but because of the weather it was slippery and so they made it optional. Most of us decided we wanted to go anyways.
This is Arthur's Seat. Basically it is a mountian/hill thing. I can't remember why it is called that but it also had significance with Orson Hyde and teaching people in Scotland.

Now, do I look like a hiker or what???
We only made it about 3/4 the way up and then we came back down because we had an appointment with the Scottish Parliament.

There is a member of the Parliament who is LDS and so he showed us around and answered questions that we had. Pretty cool. We even got official tags and everything!
For lunch we ended up going to Tesco (the local Walgreens/Grocery Store) and picked up a sandwhich (P.S. It is weird, they also sell prepackaged waffles and pancakes)and we ate it at Edinburgh University trying to spy on some cute Scottish men...but no luck!

We then caught the long train ride home as we caught up on sleep and homework. It is always good to go away but its just great to be "Home" (which is London for the moment, and it actually feels like home now!)
Whew! What a long post! Until next time!

P.S. For those of you expecting a lot of scenic pictures...we really didn't get out of the city, sadly. But here is one of the city so you can get a feel for it.