Westminster Abbey, Stonehenge, Roman Bath, Sports Bar, Soccer Game, London Dungeon, Avenue Q, and Josh!

our new bartender friend

my first tequila shot

the girlies

drive back from bath

me and josh

this is for you mom...heres a pig in london

baths

view from the top

stonehenge

the rocks were heavy.

avenue q

gross anchovies on our salad

josh has been off of school for 2 months...

josh loves cock... fosters.

london bear? london BEAR BEAR!!

london dungeon

outside the london dungeon. thanks man for ruining our picture.

matt damon, no big deal.

me and matt hanging out again, cant get enough of each other!

matt damon again

on our way to the sports cafe to watch the futbol game

Westminster Abbey

Protests outside queen elizabeths conference center

me holding big ben. or trying to.

the london eye

sports cafe

sooo much to write about! sorry i have been so lazy and not in the mood to write/too busy to!

Gonna make this kind of short (short as in all of the things i should have written on a day to day basis but slacked off doing) because were going out tonight in a little...going out with a bunch of people from USC ironically enough.

Weds we went to Westminster Abbey which was awesome...it was also freezing. I feel like at this point I dont even need to say its cold. It was raining on and off of our tour but luckily only really started when we were walking back to our flat. The church is absolutely beautiful...so much history. Westminster Abbey pays homage to a lot of important figures in society like William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, and Chaucer, as well as a lot of the royal family like Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, and military figureheads. Not everyone is buried there but most of the royal family in the early ages was. The history behind the royal family is incredible-they were so brutal towards each other in order to gain the crown, with sisters putting each other in prison and sending them to their deaths. My favorite part of the tour was this incredible ceiling with all of these white fixtures where there was a mirror that you could look into and it looked like you were looking down into

On the 26th we were supposed to go out for Aussie Day to a club called walkabout but we ended up going to the sports cafe where it is essentially the 90 london style. Reallyyy fun...realllllly hot and sweaty. Met up with some of our guy friends there and just danced for a lot of the night. Sara and I tried to leave early-ish around 115 to go home on the night bus. too bad we couldnt figure out how to do the night bus. walking around in 4 inch heels almost getting hit by cars/buses late at night when you are cold and want to be home sucks. Our guy friends ended up picking us up in a cab and taking us home which was really sweet of them.

Josh got in Thursday the 28th...we went to waitrose where i introduced josh to all of the english food products. josh held up the line because he didnt bag his own groceries until the lady was done swiping everything through...all of the londoners hated us.

Friday we woke up super early around 730 to go to Stonehenge which took us 2 hours to drive to. Kind of anti-climatic...i mean i get that it was cool because we dont know how they got the stones there or put them on top of each other...but other than that the stones werent that tall or big...etc. so you walk there, and stand around and look at stones...cool. took an hour and fifteen minute ride to the Roman baths which were amazingly beautiful. Theyre thousands of years old. The men and the women werent allowed to be by each other in the baths so a "lifeguard" essentially would sit in the pool with only his head poking out of the top and he would hold onto a pole and poke people with it if he caught them touching. Also, they had to wear calico cloth covering their bodies. The baths are thousands of years old but now the water is left untreated so no one uses it (obviously). im writing this days after so i dont remember much else other than how pretty it was. After we left the baths we started walking around the city which is very touristy and full of shops. We went inside Pret to grab lunch and it started hailing...also saw a girl on a leash.

Saturday josh and i went to borough market-kind of like a farmers market/flea market but a lot more cultured, and with accents. bought some incredible pesto sauce and bread for later. made my video for class on borough market and edited it on joshs mac...ill try to upload it onto here for you to see as well. later on went to a futbol match where the fans were nuts with all of their chanting. they have chants for each play. Aston villa and fulham played. we were on aston villas side and they won 2-0. everyones just drunk and super obsessed with the games. fulham is such a nice little town too josh and i walked around after the shops were really cute. i made friends with a baby in marks and spensers played peekaboo for a while which was entertaining for me as well as the baby.
yesterday we went to the sports cafe again to watch the manchester united v. aresenal game with all of the locals to see how they acted. manchester united won 3-1. everyone stays intensely focused on the game no one talks like they do in american games.

on the way to the sports cafe we saw the invictus premier getting set up. on the way back from the cafe we saw matt damon walking the red carpet. we were in the back at first and he came right up to us and then went the other way to take pictures so josh shaun and i ran to the front and i shoved my way over some girls and pushed my way up to the gate. josh and shaun were yelling america! america! at matt damon to identify that we were fellow americans and i asked for a picture. sooo we got pictures with matt damon which was awesome!

today we went to the london dungeon which we thought was going to be really cool theme park turned out it wasa mix of a baby theme park and a mostly just a tour. wouldnt recommend it to people although we did get amazing pictures from it of me in the stocks and josh trying to chop off my head and another one of us on our way down from the plunge which was supposed to mimic us getting hung.

josh and i went to pizza express after and got mozorella and tomato, formaggio bread, ceasar salad, and a margherita pizza. the appetizers were soo good but the salad and pizza was just ok. the salda came with giant anchovies on it and josh and i both almost gagged. aekafhekjfha ugh. (pictures above)

saw avenue q, which to quote josh was "a riot" about a bunch of fresh faced kids out of college facing the real world and the challenges we encounter. made me glad i still have a year left when im back in the states.

went to mcdonalds on the way back to see if there was a difference. WELL-there is. note to self-AMERICANS are fat because AMERICAN mcdonalds is good. european mcdonalds sucks. limp fries, only one ketchup packet for the large fries we got, half a mcflurry apparently equals one normal sized mcflurry in america, and as you can see for yourself, my cheeseburger was completely lacking. never been more disappointed.

anyways, going to bed now, class all day tomorrow :( ITALY AND AMSTERDAM IN 2 DAYS

Sincerely, McJori

ice bar!

sorry i havent written in a few days,

on weds we went to the city of london. its only a square mile small but it is the financial district of london. esentially its like wall street in new york. it was raining during our 3 hour walking tour so we made sure to bundle up. I ended up wearing 3 pairs of socks, leggings under jeans, uggs, 2 long sleeve shirts, a hoodie, my long peacoat, a hat, and 2 pairs of gloves. I was only a little cold so I'm chalking that up to a success. The tour itself was kind of boring considering everything we learned about was blown up in World War II so we got to hear about it but not see it. Could have been sitting in a warm classroom learning about it rather than walking around hearing about "what used to be there." We did see where all the old guilds used to be which was cool...if you sold bread you had to work on bread street. We learned that if for instance a guy who sold fish sold a woman a piece of fish that got her sick, he would be punished by being put in the stocks for a week with a fish hanging around his neck with the maggots getting to the fish and people are allowed to throw things at him. he could die if someone was throwing stones at him. i would never work on something that would make people sick because I dont think I would like to be stoned. we got to see where diagon alley in harry potter was filmed!

all the days are blurring together but we went to a club called tiger tiger i THINK tuesday night...it was interesting. must have been latino night because they kept playing shakira and pitbull. melissa and i danced up a storm. no one bought us drinks. fail.

Yesterday we went out really late, just Sara, me, and Brittany. Went to South Kensington to meet up with some friends which we thought was going to be a club but it was more of a lounge. really cool vibe in there though and the bartender gave us free drinks because we didnt have any money. were dead broke. REALLY need to go to the exchange place but for 100 dollars you get 52 pounds. i think the best we got was like 60 pounds for 100 dollars. ugh. going to be so broke. they had really cool watermelon drinks where it was actually fresh watermelon blended in front of us kind of like a smoothie bar....also had a champagne/vodka shot which was really good.

Tonight we went to an ice bar which was soo cool! literally. my hand was frozen holding my drink. the glasses were made of ice too and they supply you with gloves and coats with hoods on them. it was only a 45 minute session in the bar with one drink included for 15 pounds. definitely a one time thing but great for pictures. we ended up going to a bar called OnAndOn...got in for 5 pounds when its usually 15 so that was good. The club had 10 bars in it so the promoter said although I think we only found about 6 or 7. started out the night playing aretha franklin then escalated to nelly and then went to lady gaga and back to michael jackson. they 0nly play american music here which is funny. stayed sober the whole night...ive only drank once since ive been here like actually drank drank instead of just having a drink.

got back and sara and brittany had made us "drunk" snacks....brownies. well, brownie cookies since we dont have a cookie tin. yummmmm. good thing i wasnt drunk or i would have went to town...oh wait, i did. had like 7 cookies. blah

still super itchy. not sure if its bed bugs or what but this is getting ridiculous! i have little hives all over me.

going to bed, its 5 in the morning. sleep schedule is completely off.

nocturnally,

jori

running

its starting to feel like school now rather than some odd place ive been living in. went with brittany to hyde park yesterday to run. I AM IN LOVE. nothing like running on all of the different paths in the expansive green next, getting to watch people with their children and dogs, people playing pick up soccer (i guess they would say futbol) matches, and other runners. doesnt even feel like exercise because i was so enthralled with everything around me. the lake there has a cute little place to stop and get food and there are touristy shops all along the permiter. my battery ran out on my ipod so we came back after about half hour there but it was amazing. went running again today just around the area here...really good run didnt stop for 40 minutes but found out that running in central london isnt really the best. for one, everyone smokes. not particularly the refreshing breath of air i was looking for. also, everyone is so crowded so i had to dash my way expertly through the masses of people. almost got hit by a flustered asian tourist trying to get on a bus. im going to try to keep going to hyde park when i have the time but during the school week running around here will have to work. did all my studying earlier today so now i have just been watching episodes of nip/tuck that ive missed out on for the past 3 weeks. and looking at victoria secret swimsuits...wishing it was warm out so i didnt look like casper.

no pictures to post...didnt really have the chance to grab a camera while i was running. sorry!

forrest gump, (run forrest run...? couldnt think of much to do with running other than julia roberts and i most certainly am not a runaway bride quite yet)
jori

movida and more

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. went out the last two nights to two really fun clubs. The first club was called zoobar and all they did is play techno music and old American 90's music...but mostly techno. The guys literally have no filter they're extremely touchy feely/everyone is foreign and older. Apparently Tues and Weds are college nights but we went on a thursday so maybe that's why it was an older crowd. Nevertheless it was really fun. Sara and I went out with Shaun and two of his friends Cody and Max. Kind of stuck to them because the guys were so creepy. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Bought tickets to this hip hop/rap concert that we found out was in the ghetto after we purchased our tickets. Decided against going so we just took the loss on our 5 pounds we spent. Anyways, went out last night to this place called Movida that Shaun had a hook up to...the place was a members only club people had to buy tables kind of thing or know someone...went there completely sober and a few minutes in these guys asked us to their table where we had unlimited amounts of grey goose and the table next to theirs was giving us shots as well. Basically we got realllllly drunk, and reallllly sweaty. Note to self-bare the cold and stop wearing tights out! Met some foreign basketball players, one of which had his 8 month old baby daughter on his phone background and I proceeded to tell him I wanted to babysit. Seriously. We came back around 330 and demolished our living room. Still had all of the boxes/bubble wrap from our bedding and stuff so courtney melissa brittany and i played around in that, each taking a box to sit in and make our "home" while sara made us all food. must be quite the experience to watch all of your friends drunk while you're sober haha not sure I'd want to do that I'd probably be embarrassed by how we were acting. Woke up this morning...well woke up around 3, went into the living room and found it a mess. So now Sara is at whole foods, aka her heaven (its a 7 story one) while we are all laying in bed still. Trying to figure out how to watch the bachelor. Have to install something to trick the computer that I am at USC and in America still. We'll see how it goes...anxious to know what happens my roommates keep saying it was an amazing episode. Not sure if we're going out tonight maybe taking it easy...most likely we will make our way out to a pub or something. Made friends with some french guys and Spanish boys who are now bbming us. Birttany's friend Cem from the tube, aka her wannabe boyfriend, keeps asking us to go out with him and his friends from work.

too tired to think of anything creative,

Jori