So I've just been ambling around

Today we went to the National Portrait Gallery (http://www.npg.org.uk/) to see the portraits of Vanessa Bell and James Joyce and T.S. Eliot and Winston Churchill and others while our guide woman taught us all about their lives, but later they kicked us out because of a mysterious brown bag left in one of the rooms.

But we went next door to the National Gallery and saw paintings by Monet and Manet and Da Vinci and Rembrandt and Degas, but the best part was the old school bathrooms that have hand towels like those in middle school where the cloth towel just rotates around in a circle in the towel compartment.

Tonight we stopped at an Indian restaurant and ate some spicy curry and some not-so-spicy curry with yellow rice and white rice and Nan bread and other bread, and we ate a dessert of fried butter balls drenched in sweetened butter sauce with a scoop of butter-covered ice cream, and Samira, the owner, showed us a picture of his son and daughter that was in his wallet in his back pocket.

Tonight after Indian food we went to Buckingham Palace, and we watched the British guards do their hourly march while we talked about Prince Harry and how no one's allowed to take pictures of the Pentagon or the American guards will tear you apart, and we sat by the fountain looking at the empty water bottles and trash floating around in it, and listened to each others' life stories.

Yesterday we went to Westminster Abbey for mass, and we sang songs and listened to scripture, and we walked over the graves of Edward Elgar and William Walton and Sir Isaac Newton, and I was so tired my head was nodding, but the ceiling was really high, the organ pipes were gigantic, the priest's voice echoed elegantly, and they used real candles.

Last night we were getting on the tube, but we took too long, and I was the last one to get on except I was too late, and the doors started closing, so I stuck my arm out to stop the doors, except it turns out the doors refuse to open again once they've shut, so I was stuck for a couple minutes trying with all my might to pry the doors open, and James was trying to help me, but the train was about to start moving, and the doors were not opening, so finally I just wrenched my arm out because I didn't want to get gutted in the tube tunnel and give my student traveling health insurance a reason to send my body back to Salt Lake for free because that is one of the services they provide.

Yesterday we went to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, and it was really interesting because there were perhaps ten men on their stepladders talking about religion, arguing about Islam and Christianity and Judaism, and there was a lot of yelling, and a Kuwaiti man who was perhaps 50 years old was trying to get me to go to dinner with him, but James and Matt came and saved me from him.

Also, yesterday when we were in Hyde Park, Matt suddenly got really excited and wanted to take a picture with some guy on a bike, so I took a picture of them and then after Matt said, that was Ewan McGregor, and I was like, wwwwhhhhatttt, because I didn't even recognize him.

I'm just waiting to see Ian McKellen or Jude Law or Posh Spice.

Ewan McGregor for you...he's much more
attractive in person than in the movies.