2/2

It is getting slightly harder and harder to blog everyday, but I do try my best. So sorry.

1 February

Today started out great. Albeit, I got up real early (8:45) and went to bed super later (4:15), we all walked down to the river at 9:30. We had to meet at the London Eye at 10:20 for our trip. It was a pleasant walk, where we all just talked quietly (we were sleepy) and looked at the people and cars as we slowly walked. The Eye was stunning. It moved pretty slow, so it took about a 29 minutes to go all the way around, but it gave us a beautiful view of London. It is such a large city, and being in the Eye really put it into perspective.

Joey and I

A look at the Millennium Bridge. Also, I live about 5 minutes
from the tall tower 

Big Ben and Westminster Abbey in the background

Buckingham Palace, and the gardens leading up to it.

Parliament, complete with Big Ben and a red bus on the bridge

A look towards London Bridge and the East End.

After the Eye came the best thing I have done in London so far: lunch. We went to lunch in the East End at a place called Tayyabs. What Tayyabs is is a Pakistani barbecue restaurant. We started out with getting.... deep fried chick peas (?) with mango chutney and a deep fried ravioli with something else in it (maybe). To drink was a mango drink, that had the consistency of a milkshake, and tasted wonderful. For our starter, we got lamb shanks, chicken and lamb sausage. It is hard to choose which was best. From there, we got some flat bread which was amazing (I mean it is bread), rice, and four bowls of food to put on the rice and bread: chicken, vegetables, lentils, and lamb. I can't choose a favorite because they were literally all delicious and all unique. I did feel like a complete waste of a person because I was too full. We were planning on exploring the East End more, but we decided to get back on the tube and take a nice nap- which we all did.

From the bottom: vegetable, lamb, chicken lentil. You can see how big the bread was. Just amazing food.

 On a side note. I am very interested to see how mom deals with this kind of food when she comes to visit. I plan on taking her to a variety of places for dinner, and undoubtedly, some sort of middle eastern/south asian food will be in order- like a meal like this.

After the nap, we all got up and hung out in the lounge for a while, then went to ULU. I played a racing game that was sponsored by Red Bull. It was a competition between everyone at ULU. I ended up in third place out of everyone who tried. So I was very happy about that, and I know I would have made joey proud.

2 February

We got up early to go to Camden Market this morning. By that, I mean we left at 11:30. It is only about a 13 minute or so walk from my room, so that is incredibly close. It was an amazing market, I am sorry, but I have no pictures because I left my camera card in the computer. So next time I will take some photos (no worries I plan on being back). We went with some girls, so they did a lot of shopping. We did get split up, which was fine because at the time, the three of us guys were hungry. So we found the food court and it blew my mind. Every stall was offering us free samples, so we got an entire starter just from those samples. Everything was great. From the Ethiopian food to the Asian and more European food- it was a difficult choice. Joey and I decided on a sandwich from this place, where an entire pig leg was lying on the grill. So on a warmed roll, we got a great helping of pig, some salad, sauce, and most importantly, cinnamon apple chutney! It was amazing!

Then we got on the bus and took it to the City of London so we could go to the Museum of London to complete an assignment. We got off in the city and walked down Fleet Street. We took an alleyway for fun, and ended up at the London headquarters of Deloitte. They buildings were nice, and they were real close to this pub, which boasted that it has been in business during the reigns of 10 monarchs. We went through the museum, but were too tired to truly enjoy it all, so we took the tube home and sat around for like 50 minutes. Then we went to the pub to watch Manchester United play (and win).

We concluded the evening in the lounge. We started playing cards, but realized that we had too many people, so we stopped that and just hung out. There was a movie playing and I am quite tired, so I just watched that. Once the movie ended, we started another one, The Hunger Games. I quite enjoy that movie. However, with like 35 minutes left, I went to go to the bathroom, and got stuck talking to Kate in the hallway for about 35 minutes. I really enjoyed it though because it is nice to know that she is having struggles similar to what I have/had, and that I could help her with some of her problems. When we finished, everyone was leaving, but somehow I got caught talking to Joey for a solid hour. I finally made it to my room around 2, where I could write this blog and most importantly: go to sleep.

Cheers!