Another day of adventures on the buses. We love just riding the bus until it has to stop. Today we ended up all the way in Chiswick, which is about 4 or 5 miles away (and London is tiny, so that's a ways away). We had the entire top story of the bus to ourselves and just had a great time chatting and riding the bus. Let me tell you, riding the bus is one of the scariest and most thrilling things I've done in London so far. Basically it reminds me of a ride at Disneyland- there's a bar in front of your seat you can hold on to while the bus lurches around other cars, trees, posts, bicyclists, and pedestrians. I'm absolutely shocked that I haven't seen anyone get hit yet. I'm not sure, but I think that I've seen several people's feet get run over by the buses I've been on. The pedestrians are much too brave and reckless and the bus drivers are much too aggressive and reckless to share the road together. I know it's only a matter of time that the two have a violent run-in with one another.
So we had to get off our bus in Chisick, and we walked around the little suburban area for a while. It was a darling little town with houses stacked everywhere. I feel like almost every community has their own little park and we saw lots of people walking their dogs or playing with their kids. It was a really quaint area, and of course, they had some red phone boxes. We took a couple pictures, and then tried to find a bus stop so we could get on another bus and find our way back to the center. It's always an adventure to try to find our way back home when we get lost taking buses. Basically when we take buses, we ride them until we terminate (or get off at an upcoming stop if someone on the bus smells funky. There's no way I can stay on a bus for 20 minutes or so with a smeller) and then we get on the next bus we see, no matter which direction we're going. We'll do this for an hour or two, and then try to navigate our way back home on another bus. It's quite the adventure.
Some of the iconic red telephone booths. Apparently I'm alot shorter than I thought...
The bus we rode for half an hour until the bus terminated in Chiswick. The bus driver yelled to us, "hey all you up top!" We had figured we could just chill up on the top deck until the bus started driving again. Apparently, the driver had other plans...
One of my MANY rides on the tube
After the bus adventure I went with Lyssa and Mikelle on one of our London Walks through Hyde Park. This park is HUGE and basically just an open area of grass. It was beautiful and we walked around it as the sun was setting. I'd love to come back to the park later on when the weather gets warmer and lay out and read a book and have a picnic or something. It'd be an excellent area for going bike riding too. The only bad thing about the park is that it's overrun by birds. Birds EVERYWHERE. And the stupid people feed the birds! They're basically encouraging the birds to live in the park! I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mind a couple of birds here and there, singing and frolicking and doing bird-things, but it gets annoying when you're basically stepping on birds everywhere you go and when you have to use an umbrella with no clouds in the sky, because it will protect you from little white bird-gifts that may fall on you. Seriously birds, go away.
I just got back from going to Byron's- a fantastic restaurant that I see in many of my future nights here in London. It's basically an American burger-joint. Except it looks like the classiest place ever. We heard from some Americans in one of my friend's wards that it's a great burger and shake place if we're missing home and American food. So basically you'll be able to find me here every night after dinner, having my real dinner (because usually dinner is a sketchy business at the center. We did get some good chicken curry for dinner tonight though. Yay!). We went just to check it out and try their shakes. I got an Oreo shake and it was actually pretty dang good. Thank you London! I didn't think I'd be able to last 4 months without a good shake. Oh, and great news- they have 2 Chipotle's here in London!! So no worries, I won't be starving while I'm here!
Oreo milkshake. You were delicious.
Anyways, now I really need to start a 3-page paper that's due tomorrow. It's weird trying to balance school and all the stuff here in London. We have a hard time realizing that we're doing a "STUDY" abroad and not just a "vacation" abroad sometimes. Lock-down time...
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