Saturday afternoon

No pictures to add today - just an update. JT, Lisa, and I have spent the last few days slugged out and enjoying London. Most of the girls in our building are off in Spain for the weekend, Sarah's in Exeter meeting Toby's parents, Chelsea's working, and (for those of you who don't know) our other roommate Zai was sent home a couple weeks ago - so the three of us have had a quiet weekend to ourselves; which has been nice after all the traveling we've been done!

We were going to try and make a trip to Scotland this weekend or next, but we didn't book train or coach tickets before the prices skyrocketed. So we're officially done traveling outside London - so we're going to spend the last couple weekends exploring the corners of London and doing HOMEWORK.

Wednesday JT and I managed to get our flat some free groceries (legally! I promise! :-)). When we moved into the flat there was a TON of travel and left-over text books just sitting here. After tripping over them multiple times, Lisa finally asked the program director if we could find a used book store and sell them. She said yes so JT and I took off Wednesday to try two different used book stores. I had found one in Notting Hill the weekend before (it's an AWESOME store - a little hole in the wall where I got 3 books for less than two pounds), but we decided to try one in Kensington (on Gloucester Road) first. After filling SIX Sainsbury's bags with books, JT and I took off, making the trek with only a couple stops every block to ease our hands and arms :-). We threw ourselves in the door of the bookshop and when they responded "yes, we buy books" JT and I found the energy to do a happy dance. The woman bought about 8 of our books and paid us 20 pounds! She gave us stronger bags to carry the rest of them and we took off on the Tube for Notting Hill. My now-favorite bookstore bought the rest of the books and we walked away with a total of 34 pounds! So we made our way to Sainsbury's, bargain shopped so well that Sainsbury's almost owed US money when we walked out, and walked back in the flat with six Sainsbury's bags - this time full of FOOD! We were VERY excited.

Thursday the three of us slept in and made our way back up to Notting Hill to SHOP in the bookstore and just wander the area. I left with six books for five pounds - one of which I gave to Chelsea as a feel-better gift. We spent the rest of the day goofing around and playing cards in the flat - oh, and making a midnight run to Sainsbury's for chips, salsa, and Nutella! :-)

Yesterday (Friday) we once again slept in :-), and found our way to the Kensington Public Library up on High Street. We're all in the religion class together (which is really more of a philosophy class) and we all have 8-10 page papers due the 15th - so while everyone's fretting over taxes back home, I will also be fretting over adding the remaining 8 pages to my paper :-). Just kidding - kind of... but at any rate - Lisa and I are both writing our papers about a Buddhist scripture, so we were successful in finding some resources at the library yesterday. No one can say we didn't do anything for school this weekend! And then we continued to once again watch movies and play the night away in cards.

Which brings me to today - Saturday afternoon - I'm still wrapped up in my blanket, and we're all still in our PJ's. We've got no plans for the day except for intending to do homework.. we'll see how it goes. Our friend Jo (a girl name) is having a bit of a bad day, so she's up here spending the day with us and drowning her sorrows (and our appetites) in the chocolate cake she's currently baking in the kitchen. NO complaints here! :-)

Tomorrow's JT's birthday, so we've got plans to go out tomorrow night. The Olympic torch will also be going through London tomorrow late morning, so we're going to get our lazy arses out of bed to see it :-). It's not too often you can have the conversation "Should we go see the Olympic Torch tomorrow? It's going through Notting Hill and Piccadilly Circus." "Yeah, let's catch it in Notting Hill - it's only two tube stops as opposed to six.." :-)

Other than that - life's all about finishing up classes and enjoying the last 22 days in London. Although I'm not necessarily excited to leave London, I'm ready to go home. I actually had a dream about being back on the US dollar without an exchange rate. It was awesome. :-) I also informed Dad that immediately after picking me up from the airport we need to make a stop at Taco Bell. It's the weirdest things that you miss......

That's all for now folks!
Love to all,
Gen

PS. HI TO KAITLIN! I LOVE YOU!