photographing the small things in life

Today I got a reader pass for the British Library.  I am quite proud of myself.  But I will get into that in a bit.  First, we stopped in at King's Cross Station to see and take pictures of Platform 9 3/4 like every other stereotypical librarians.  We then strolled over to the British Library for a lovely tour.  In case you were unaware, the British Library is pretty hardcore.  They don't bend the rules for anyone and they measure their stacks in kilometers.  Whoa.  Perhaps the best part of the tour was when we went into the gallery which had volumes upon volumes of amazingly preserved books and manuscripts.  For me, the Sacred Texts portion of the gallery was the best by far.  Some of the volumes dated back hundreds of years.  I got my Bachelor's in Religion with a minor in Art History and wrote my senior seminar paper comparing medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts to Islamic calligraphy.  I cannot describe how awesome this exhibit was for me.  I found, however, that apparently I know Hinduism best of the major world faiths whose sacred texts were on display at the British Library.  I was able to recognize the majority of the figures and stories for the Hinduism display more than for any other faith.

As my flatmates so kindly reminded me just now, the British Library also holds the world's largest collection of pornography.  While it may seem that I would simply add this for a giggle, it is actually interesting to me because I read the book Libraries, Erotica, and Pornography for an assignment in one of my Information Studies classes (this book was not assigned, but rather we were allowed to chose our books for the assignment with professor approval).

But back to my British Library reader pass.  When Mr. Gets, a friend of the family, heard about my trip to London, he gave me a mission.  Now, Mr. Gets is British himself and apparently his grandfather, one J. L. Theodore-Getz, wrote a few books which are held at the British Library.  However, Mr. Gets thought they were at the British Museum so I had to find their true location first.  You see, some years ago, all of the books in the reading room at the British Museum were transferred to the British Library.  So, I took my mission there.  Now, Mr. Gets is quite a trouble maker so trying to ascertain what exactly he wanted from these books was a bit of a mission in itself as he rarely offers a straight answer.  Finally, I found that he wanted any biographical information that might be in his grandfather's books.  So today, I applied for and received a readers pass, requested the books, sat around for an hour to wait for them to be pulled from the stacks, and finally gleaned whatever information (of which there was little) from the books that there was.  It was all a rather intimidating process, to be honest but at least now I can say that I have a British Library reader pass (at least for the next month) and that I made use of its services.

panoramas

We flew kites today!  And I don't mean to brag or anything, but I totally had the best kite hehe.  Who'da thunk it?  We went to Regent's Park where we visited Queen Mary's Garden and Primrose Hill.  The park had lovely landscaping and millions of flowers, particularly roses.  At Primrose Hill is where we flew our kites, just like in Mary Poppins. 

Later, Lynn and I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum to see the special Grace Kelly exhibition.  It was all her dresses and accessories.  One thing that was really cool was that the last time I was in Europe, I went to Monaco and saw the church where Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier got married, which is also where she is buried.

My flatmates are now dragging me out to a pub so I shall go out with them despite my better judgment and need for sleep.

london in motion

<-- East and West -->

Today we traveled by boat to Greenwich to see the Prime Meridian.  And, of course, we all got a picture of each of us straddling it.  The Prime Meridian, or at least the Royal Observatory through which the Prime Meridian falls, is located at the top of a very tall and steep hill.  Thus, we had to walk all way up this steep hill in order to see this landmark.  Luckily, my flatmates and I have been training for this day for about a week now due to the fact that we are living on the 5th floor of the building and must climb some rather steep stairs each time we make the trek up to our apartment.  We then returned to London to capture traffic in motion from Trafalgar Square.  I learned a bit about how to tweak the settings on my camera so that it will take pictures that give the effect that the subject is in motion.

I later ventured into the National Gallery with Lynn to see some really great art.  That museum is huge!  I didn't even have time to see half of it.  We did however make a point to see the special exhibit, Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries which was really, really interesting.  That exhibit was totally worth going to see.  


In other news, I am a bit stressed about all of our projects that we have to do and turn in in the coming days.  I don't feel like my ideas are as awesome and clever as other people's ideas.  I have always had a hard time being creative on demand.  I know that for either my digital story or my photo book I want to do something about all the art I have seen and enjoyed while here.  And this weekend, Fran is taking me to the beach in Brighton and I was thinking about doing one of my projects comparing that beach to the beaches in Florida.  Something to think on....

finally here!

Whew.  It has been a long day.  Or couple of days.  I'm not sure if this is jet lag or just plain tiredness from everything that has been going on.  I got through my first solo plane ride alright.  The train from the airport into London was rather stressful because there was not really enough room for Tara and me to have our luggage with us.  We're pretty sure the other passengers kinda hated us, but oh well.  The cab ride to the FSU Study Centre was delightfully uneventful, though. 

So we are in flat #12, on the fifth, and top, floor of the building.  As with a large portion of European buildings, there is no elevator.  It was quite a feat to get our heavy luggage up all four narrow, steep, winding flights of stairs, but somehow we made it.  Tara and I ended up in the same flat, with two other girls: Alesha and Elizabeth.  The four of us, plus a few others went out exploring a bit and got some lunch and dinner later.  I am very much looking forward to touring and seeing more of London in the coming days, but at the moment, I am most looking forward to going to bed.

getting ready...

So I'm actually pretty nervous about this trip.  At the moment, I am more nervous and stressed about it than I am excited.  This will be the first time I travel alone (the whole plane ride to London part) and the longest I will have ever been away from home (I mean, not my parents' house, but away from my hometown of Gainesville).  I'm trying not to think about it, though.  I've started packing in the form of opening up my suitcase in my closet and throwing stuff in there that I don't want to forget.  I've also started a list of things to remember; things I don't want to pack quite yet since I use them all the time. 

I've got my little mascot in there, smack-dab in the middle of this picture.  It's a little sheep (hence the blog title).  It took me forever to decide on a mascot but I finally chose this little sheep I've had for a couple of years.  She doesn't have a name but I'm open to suggestions....

Ok, so I've explained the random sheep that I packed.  The other stuff tossed in there: paperwork, windbreaker, motion sickness/sleep-inducing pills for the flight, textbook, flip videocamera, London tourbooks... but Twizzlers?!  And two rather large packs of them at that?  Ok, I have an explanation.  So, I have a friend who lives in London, Fran.  We met because she was a foreign-exchange student at UF (where I got my Bachelors) and we lived in the same dorm the year she was here.  Now, I've been asking all of my friends here if they want me to bring them anything from London, so I thought it was only fair for me to ask Fran if she wanted me to bring her anything from the States.  She requested that I bring her some Twizzlers and Diet Mountain Dew.  Well, I don't want to risk the soda exploding in my suitcase but I will certainly make room in my suitcase for Fran's Twizzlers!