The days are winding down. In just about forty-eight hours, I will be sitting in the Atlanta airport (oh, how you were not missed, Atlanta) waiting for my flight (another nice, long, layover) to Grand Rapids. Home. Finally. It’s bittersweet, as I mentioned before. On one hand, I’m very ready to be home, start getting back to “normal,” begin work again, move into my apartment. But on the other hand, I love London. It’s a wonderful city full of so many different people and things and smells (yes) and places and everything to do. Tonight our group is going out one more time as a last hoorah. One kid already left today after our last day of classes (had two finals. Have one more paper to finish and then I’m DONE with classes here) and several girls leave early tomorrow morning. The rest of us (save two, who are staying a little longer) leave Saturday morning.
Unreal. Where did the time go?
Monday I didn’t do much. I had a lot of homework to complete so I stayed at Regent’s nearly all day and worked on that. Tuesday I told myself I would finally make it to the British Museum and Library, so another girl in my program and I did that after class. That was kind of cool. Lots of old artifacts.
Main Lobby of British Museum.
This looks familiar, doesn’t it? The statue was on the poster for the London 1948 Olympics!
The Rosetta Stone! First sign of language.
Venus (not Williams).
Aphrodite.
Apollo. Poor guy. He seems to be missing something…
The Nerid Monument. Not really sure what it was, but found in Mesopotamia. Really old.
Model of the Parthenon in Greece.
Statues from the Greek Parthenon
Aerial model of area around Greek Parthenon.
Another model.
MUMMIES!
This one was actually kind of creepy. You could see the tendons and muscles through the wrapping and even the face drawn on the cloth over the head looked like a dead, deteriorating face.
I just liked this statue.
Next we went into the Pablo Picasso exhibit. Sketches drawn by him and other people of him. There was one section with several titled “The Rape” or “The Rape II,” etc. This was one of them.
If I was an Art major, I’d analyze this more, but i’m not. So I’m not going to. Interpret this as you will or look it up online.
Title of the section of sketches.
After the Museum, we walked to the tube station and went to the Library. At the British Library there was this exhibition called “Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands.” All British authors and books, some really old, first editions, and some just highlighting them as British writers. But the big draw about the exhibit was some of the handwritten pieces and portions of manuscripts. There was a complete handwritten and illustrated book of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll as well as a painting drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien of Hobbiton from The Hobbit. There was also handwritten lyrics John Lennon wrote of “In My Life.” Some handwritten Wordsworth poems, Franny Burney, Virgina Woolf, Neil Gaiman and a page and a half handwritten of the manuscript to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Beginning of chapter six, to be exact. We couldn’t take any pictures, unfortunately, but it was very, very cool to see and I’m glad I did.
Front of St. Pancras station.
This was kind of interesting. For the record, a shuttlecock is another name for a badminton birdie. I looked it up.
London Town 
