The last two days have been a crash course in London sight-seeing. I have never been so sore from walking! I wish I had more to say, but I think pictures can be worth a thousand words (or more). One thing I would like to mention is that I am so amazed by how historical London is. I knew this place was going to be beautiful and rich in history, but to see the things that have made it a key player in so many artistic, political and social developments of society still alive and see people still living among them is another story! I have seen and touched artifacts, sites, and buildings that span almost every period of history I can think of, from London's beginnings as Londonium (when it was ruled by the Romans) all the way up to modern art made just a few years ago. It reminds me that we are living in history every day, and even though we may sometimes feel like a small number in the billions of people that inhabit this planet, we are still a part of something that will never be forgotten. I still haven't seen everything I want to see, but I have two more days here.

Here are the best pictures of what I have seen so far:

Trafalgar Square

The National Gallery

Benjamin Franklin's House (he lived here for 16 years to try and appease conflicts between the colonies and Great Britain while his wife was in the U.S.)

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament

Rose window at Westminster Abbey

The crown which Queen Elizabeth II adorned at her coronation (which I was able to see at the Tower of London) weighed almost five pounds!

Another view of Westminster Abbey

St. Paul's Cathedral (above and below)

Churchill's secret bunker during WWII (above and below). Many government officials worked and lived here despite the terrible sanitation and living conditions, but that kind of effort is what helped win the war. We should be forever grateful to that generation.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater 

Inside the Globe (one of my favorite parts of the trip thus far)

The Tate Modern Art Museum

Millennium Bridge

I'm a big architecture fan so I took plenty of cityscape photos

The wall around the Tower of London

All Hallow's Church (there's a stone arch and a crypt underneath which includes artifacts that date back to Roman rule)

Despite not having many tall buildings like the impressive skyscrapers in America, London is full of very impressive modern glass structures. It makes for very distinct contrasts as they sit next to historical stone structures. I believe the egg-shaped one is City Hall

Canons in Tower of London

The Tower Bridge

The Tower of London

John Quincy Adams' marriage certificate at All Hallow's Church. William Penn, founder and governor of Pennsylvania was also baptized here.

Charles Dickens' kitchen

Original manuscript of Oliver Twist

After a long night in the airport (I'm not complaining though because airports are one of the best places for people watching) I maneuvered to Hampstead today where I will be staying for my week in London. After a short nap (it was necessary, jet lag is real) I explored the neighborhood a bit and got some dinner at a local cafe. I didn't plan on meeting a fellow ESU scholar here, but I ran into Ben walking down the street. How lucky!

I can't stop replaying how it felt to step out of the Tube station and suddenly be immersed in this London neighborhood. All the cars, people and architecture were electrifying to me! I immediately got this sense that everyone was right, there really is a whole world out there beyond your own, and it was amazing to take my first step into it. The character of this place is so different than that of the neighborhoods in the big cities I have frequented in the States. I fell instantly in love with how powerful yet quaint it is: the rustic stone walls, the cobblestone side streets, the jaunty hills, the little cafes and corner stores with their fruit on display out front, and midst it all there are people and traffic teeming from every direction, making the streets swell and deflate every few seconds. It almost reminded me of cells swarming through a bloodstream. 

As an aside I would like to mention how the very kind lady who checked me in had actually been to Kentucky before and was very complimentary on the lakes and scenery. That gave me some confidence, like I'm really not from the middle of nowhere.

Tomorrow I will start the real sightseeing and so the real adventure will begin. But first, here is a quick snapshot I took of a street near my dorm. More pictures to come!

All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.
                                                                             -Aleksander Hemon,
                                                                               The Lazarus Project

I am currently packing my bags for my first trip out of the country. I can't even believe it! Monday I will be in London and then next weekend I will travel to Oxford to take summer classes. That alone is enough to make my life complete. Years ago when I was sitting in my tenth grade English class reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I remember thinking about life in the U.K., their rich literary history, the prestige, knowledge and history that Oxford is doused in as a school and a city, and how I wanted to experience that land for myself.  Being the pessimist I am I also remember thinking I would probably never get that experience until I was forty years old and a substantial member of society with a real job and real money. But here it is, knocking at my door and I can't wait to answer.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do with this blog or how I should really pursue this "blog" concept. It's such a free space. I do know I can reflect on things here. 

As of right now, I would like to reflect on how 2013 has been the craziest year of my life thus far, full of highs and lows, and thankfully, the same steady people who have been here for me all along. These are people that are decent and grounded in logic and vigilant for my sake when I find myself lost or not able to get back to those aspects. I know how cliche it is, but I am lucky to have people that really care about me, see my value, and even try to make ME see that value. That's some good shit if you ask me. 

The worst part about the world and the lives we live and the situations we go through is all the inevitable time we will spend wishing they went differently. And what's worse is we are very aware of how silly this is. 

Last time I saw America's North Shore: Spring 2012 in Cleveland, OH.

Some things that inspire me.

Fog Sonnet
January 2013

I wanted to walk around, hide in it.
I wanted to think I was somewhere else.
We saw it from our car as we crossed the
Ohio. It encroached the big old steam-
boats as they hugged the shore. The pines that lined 
the waterfront paths poked through like emerald 
church steeples. You could only see the tops 
of things. The whole city was caught between 
two grey skies; sudden symmetry. This must 
be life in the Pacific Northwest. My 
friend, who was driving, doesn’t like to walk. 
He pulled the car up to the water’s edge. 
Without any question, it crept over
the hood, then the roof. Then we disappeared.

Fort Myers Beach, 2006-----            1.25.2013

From everything you hear growing up, you’d think the ocean was this touchable and playful thing like a puppy or a field of sunflowers. Instead, you walk up to it, and it just lays out in front of you, pulsating like the Earth’s heart. Or on bad days, like a giant dying. So you step a little closer, suspiciously, until it’s tickling your toes. Then you think, maybe it’s shy. You let the whole thing hug you but its hug is vast and dark and greener than you ever imagined. It’s warm and cold at the same time. When you consider that you are nothing but a drop in its volume, you realize it is the scariest hug you ever received. 

It was December. It was a clear day, but it still had that strange lighting that winter is so notorious for around here. In most places there is rain or snow. Here there is a dismal color that lasts for three months. Some days it is beautiful and soft and some days it is like a gas. Even at one o'clock in the afternoon, when the summer months would be flaunting their sunshine and spilling untainted blue across the sky, there is just an eerie radioactive hue. It makes you question time, like when you wake up from a nap but think it's actually time to get ready for school.

The highway I was on ascended a small incline. It lurched between two stadiums with their vast moats of parking spaces and white lines. I looked ahead, as my mother always reminded me to do on the highway. Life is too precious and cars are too dangerous to be sight-seeing. She was a very nervous woman. 

A page from a newspaper, anonymously read and discarded, suddenly billowed out from under a set of speeding tires. It arched high into the clear green air, hesitated in a way that made you feel like you were watching a pivotal moment in your life unfold, then reluctantly glided back to the concrete. I thought of the lofty wings of a White Crane and how they are too much for the bird to manage at first take off, and then they settle into their graceful motion and flight happens. I thought of projectile vertical motion, such as I was learning in physics class. I thought of how each were pleasant comparisons, but each came from a different part of my brain, and why was society so obsessed with science when seeing this newspaper as a crane was so much more beautiful.

On Tuesday Night...

I thought of Christina and what she was doing in that field....