Day 51:

Goodbye London! Today was my last day in this wonderful city. I will write more about it, but I'm not feeling very good and its late. What I did on my last day: oatmeal, perfect weather run, imperial war museum, national gallery, olympics in trafalgar square, dinner duty, lasagna, party, packing, the end.

DAY 50:

My grandma Richards used to tell me I was the golden grandchild because I was the 50th. Well, I don't know if today, as day 50 could be called the golden day or not, but it was certainly the day of finals. I woke up at 6:15 and got all showered and ready so I could be at my best. Then I studied for a few hours before my finals... Women's Question was from 11:30-1:30 and Poly Sci was from 2:00-4:00. I actually feel like both went really well! I think I really knew my stuff... I hope so anyway!

Unfortunately, there was no celebration after my P.S. final because I had to go right down to kitchen crew, but we had Indian food on banana leaves tonight so dishes were pretty easy. Then tonight Caitlin Reese, Sarah Fairweather and I went to see "The 39 Steps" based on a Alfred Hitchcok (sp?) movie. It was HILARIOUS!!! There were only 4 actors but they played multiple parts. We walked out lauging and smiling. It was just so much fun! Then we decided to walk down the street to Trafalgar Square to see the Olympics which they have been showing on a bigscreen in the center of the square. They were off for the night, but it was fun to the see the city at night anyways. We were able to look down Whitehall Street and see Big Ben all lit up. It was a beautiful way to end our night and our stay in London.

Day 49:

Yesterday was characterized by stress. Some good stress, some bad stress, but stress none-the-less. We went to Westminster Abbey in the morning as a group, although we got very split up inside. It was impossible to stay together. There were SWARMS of people and with all of them and all the statues, I felt very claustrophobic. It was neat though. After taking my classes here I felt like I recognized a lot more names of people buried there, especially in Poet's Corner. I really liked seeing the statue/grave for William Wilberforce, the man in "Amazing Grace" who was the member of Parliament who pushed for the emancipation of slaves in Great Britain. He's one of my new heroes, so it was cool to see his grave there.
Next, Mallory and I went to Primark for our (my) final visit. Ok, it was only my second time, but twice is enough. Crowds, crowds, crowds. Out of control. But I found some fun stuff. The worst part was spending an hour in lines. First line: I had the wrong size in something. Second line: told me I had to go to Customer Service. Third line: barely moving and super-hot.
The rest of the night was spent studying my brains out. Mallory and I took a dinner break and split a yummy Margherita pizza at a place on Bayswater, then got right back to studying. I finally quit around 2:00 and then woke up at 6:15 this morning to study again.

Day 48:

Today was one of those days full of ups and downs that felt long and short at the same time. But at 10:59, as I sit here in my bedroom, I feel happy about life, and that's all that really matters.

I woke up early to go running and it was pouring rain outside so I did some pilates instead. Then I went down to start some laundry and realized it had stopped raining so after starting it I went out for a short run. Of course as soon as I was down the street it started raining again, but at least it didn't downpour until I was in the home-stretch.

After breakfast duty, laundry, and a shower I had my last two classes of the semester, both of which were really good. Unfortunately a damper was put on this good mood when I got my past two Poly Sci papers back - the ones I worked SO hard on and revised over and over - and found that I didn't get a better score than last time - they were still in the A- range, which is fine, but it was just really disappointing after all my effort. I don't know if there's any hope of getting an A in that class now.

Well, I tried to cheer up for a study review for Women's Question, but reviewing for that class is always pretty frustrating. As soon as my brain was set free, I had to run down and do the lunch dishes since I wouldn't be there to help with dinner crew. This is where the day shapes up again...



A member from the Wandsworth Commons ward invited us to dinner. None of us really knew her, but I had her cute daughter Tara in my primary class. She is from Uganda and moved here as a refugee from Rawanda (where she is technically from but didn't live there for long). She joined the church just less than a year ago and is such a strong member. I just came to lover her. She was so generous and you could see how happy it made her to be serving us. It wasn't awkward to be in her home and she was easy-going and fun to carry on conversations with. Besides that, Tara was on cloud nine to have 3 older girls there to play with her. I wasn't looking forward to going tonight - I felt like I needed to stay home and study, but I am so grateful that we had this opportunity! It is something I will never forget.

Well, all my homework and final papers have been submitted. Now its just studying. I made some charts today that I can fill in tomorrow as a study guide. I'm not looking forward to studying, but I am looking forward to being done with finals. I'll just keep one eye on the horizon and buckle down tomorrow. As for tonight: Bed at 11:30! That's a record!

Day 47:

Dishes. Classes. Homework. Dishes. Dinner. Dishes. Homework. Blog. Skype. Blog. Homework.

Mallory just sent me these pictures of the London Center. I should have posted them a long time ago so my family could see where I'm living, but better late than never.

Day 46:

Today was my last Sunday here! My last time at the Wandsworth Commons ward. My last day teaching the darling Primary kids. It was a little bittersweet, but I have to be honest, it was more sweet than bitter. I'm going to miss these people and miss England in general, but I'm getting so excited for home. During Sacrament meeting my little primary friend Poppy came and sat by me and we played little hand games to keep her quiet. I kept thinking, next week this will be Carly giving me a hand massage :) My primary lesson went really well today. It was on kindness and the Good Samaritan. The last few weeks we have acted out the scripture story and it's worked well, but today I decided to color pictures to use to tell the story. It went well, but two minutes later Poppy burst out, "Are we going to act it out now? Please!" Well, I figured if they wanted to keep talking about the Good Samaritan that was better than coloring pictures at the end of class so I let them, and then they wanted to do it again so they could be other parts. It was fun to see how excited they get to participate. I hope that even though it was just a fun activity for them they will remember the story a little better now. I think they will - they're smart kids. Also, this cute kid, Bemnet, got to be in my class today because his teacher was gone. We bonded at a much and mingle a few weeks ago and it was so fun to have him in class- he's a little ball of personality. Ok- last thing about Primary... best quote of the day. During sharing time Marta (the wonderful Scottish woman who teaches the singing, etc) was asking the kids about what gives us that good, warm feeling inside and Julian was in a particularly goofy mood and for some reason he shouted (in his little English accent), "I know, they're gospel-teaching, man-eating sharks!" I guess you had to be there, but all the teachers got a good laugh.

Megan and the Seth, the bishop's boy
Dinner crew isn't so bad, but it does take up a significant chunk of time. Because we don't have Saturday dinner or Sunday breakfast together, the dishes get used for leftovers and sandwhiches but don't get washed so they pile up and make Sunday dinner cleaning a mess. I decided to go down and do dishes for about an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon. It was actually kind of nice to be down by myself in the kitchen, but it did drive me nuts later that night when the dinner crew was complaining about doing dishes. I wanted to say "Good thing I did and hours' worth of dishes earlier or you'd REALLY be hating it!" The good news is that Terri made this delicious creamy, cheesy cabbage soup. I need to get the recipe.

Tonight we had a testimony meeting for devotional. It was so great and was really spiritually filling, although I have to admit that by the end I felt like I'd had a minor flashback of Rough Camp. Lots of tears, lots of hands-fanning-faces, lots of wiping mascara from under eyes. I think they guys were a little overwhelmed, but all that aside, it was a sweet experience to hear everyone bear testimony of the Savior and the gratitude they had for the things they've learned on this wonderful experience in London.

Day 45:

Mallory, Sarah and I went to the British Museum (finally) and it was so worth it! What a cool musem. It was overwhelmingly large so we mapped out a way to visit all the museum's list of "must-sees" and ended up seeing a lot of other great things along the way. They have a lot of ancient artifacts from all over the world, perhaps the most famous being lots of remnants of the Parthenon and the Rosetta Stone.

Mr. Pharoh man.

Disco Fever with the man in the loin cloth. Afro-70s dancing? hmmm... the possibilities...

POUND IT.

After the British Museum, Megan and I tried to go to the London Temple. It takes a little over an hour to get there and costs 15 pounds each for the train and taxi ride. Luckily our travels went a lot smoother than the group that went yesterday since we never had to wait very long for the train and got a cab without much trouble (we couldn't go with them because we had kitchen crew). Unfortunately, though, the baptistry ran their last session about an hour before we showed up. We were told they took walk-ins, but we weren't told how early they closed the baptistry on Saturdays. The nice temple worker took pity on us and showed us around the baptistry for a few minutes. He told us about some of the cool symbolism and a bit about the history of the temple, which was having its 50th anniversary this year. We would have taken time to wander and admire the beautiful temple grounds but it was FRIGID outside. Raining, blowing, cold cold cold. It was miserable. Luckily there was a nice lady who was also heading back to the station and let us share her cab which pulled up a couple minutes later. It was quite disappointing that we spent 15 pounds and 3 hours without doing any baptisms, but I'm still glad we got to see the temple. This is a picture Mallory took yesterday. We didn't get to walk around the grounds because the weather was so awful and we were freezing.

Waiting for our cab, shivering, singing "Master the Tempest is Raging", wishing it wasn't so freezing, hoping a cab was really coming, smiling for a picture, shivering some more, etc.

I felt like the wicked witch wearing all black in front of the temple.

Megan looked bright and happy though.