school's closed and I can't wait.

Today we had a snow day...first time since like Junior year of high school. So awesome. We literally had like 2-3 inches this morning and the entire city shut down basically. The tube stopped running for the most part, buses too, and all classes were canceled. They were talking on the news like it was the end of the world, "we could get up to six inches!"Dude, if this was Rochester they'd barely bother bringing out the plows for six inches. It's so different here! I guess they just aren't prepared to handle the snow, I've heard it only snows here once a year if that, and this is the most snow they've had in 18 years or something crazy like that.

So I spent the day playing Skipbo with Patricia and watching really cool British game shows. It was a good time. We're all hoping that tomorrow we get another snow day cause we're greedy and we already made a plan for something to do. We're going to try to go see a show if we can, they usually have massively cheap tickets if you get them last minute like we would. So we'll see what happens with tomorrow...

Otherwise, we've been keeping busy. Class monday and tuesday, internship wed-fri for eight hours each day. My internship is going pretty well, although it's shift work which kinda sucks. I either work from 7:30-3:30 or 1:30-9:30, so I either get up super early, or just spend the entire day there. It's a good experience though.

So what else....
On Saturday we went to Cambridge. We took a train [my first train] from King's Cross [Hogwart's Express] to get there, which was cool. The only thing bad was that we kept going through these tunnels and it was the most uncomfortable feeling for your ears in the whole world. It was like intense pressure and just super unpleasant, way worse than on airplanes. It's hard to explain, it was just really weird. Cambridge was really beautiful, we basically just walked around and visited King's College and Trinity College [super old, super gorgeous, supergreen manicured grass that you're not allowed to walk on...you get the idea]. We also went to Fitzwilliam museum which was neato. They have an Egypt section which is totally my thing, I love checking out the mummies and all that. We also saw a place where Charles Darwin lived for a year, according to the sign outside it. Pretty sweet. We went in some shops and we ate at a pub which was nice. I keep discovering new differences between home and here. Example 1: I ordered a chicken bacon club. The bacon was...more like ham/canadian bacon than anything. It was like this big slab of thick meat. It was good but definitely different. Example 2: My drink choices were Coke and lemonade, so I chose lemonade....which upon drinking I actually discovered it was Sprite, which I guess makes sense since it is a lemon-lime soda...but then what do they call real lemonade? It's weird.
We've also gone shopping a little this past week. Went to Primark which is the world's greatest store. They have tons of good clothes, jackets, shoes, bags, even household stuff like sheets and whatnot. And it's all SO CHEAP. I bought a pair of flats for 4 Pounds...a shirt for 4 Pounds and another one for 7 Pounds, seriously with those prices it's a sin to NOT buy things. So amazing. And all the Londoners here are so fashionable and stylish, it's nice to buy some clothes here. I was also in the hunt for a nice peacoat since the coat I brought here was my Columbia one. Don't get me wrong, I love that coat, but I really wanted a peacoat, especially here because I stick out like a sore thumb in that other jacket [not like I don't stick out in every other way, but the jacket is a dead giveaway]. Anyways, I ended up finding a nice one [with a hood! thank goodness] for 19 Pounds, which I thought was an excellent deal. You can't touch that in America.

I guess I'll say a little about food to wrap this up. The food here is pretty different. Apparently they don't have high fructose corn syrup here, which is a big thumbs up in terms of how healthy the food is. The only thing about it is that without it, everything tastes really different, and a lot less sweet. So far the sweetest cereal I have found is frosted flakes [which is called Frosties here, even though it still has Tony the Tiger on it] which still tastes a lot different than ours at home. It took a little getting used to, but it's a lot easier now that I've been here for a while. Ice cream is a lot different, way less sweet. Peanut butter, same, less sweet and more peanutty but still super delicious, thank goodness. And no salmonella as far as I've seen, unlike at home haha. They have doritos here, but they don't have lay's. They have similar looking bags but I think it's called Walkers or something like that. But they do have realllly weird flavors like Prawn Cocktail, Chili Chocolate and something with Duck in it, I'm not exactly sure what it is but it freaks me out a lot. The ketchup is different here too, it tastes a little different. The worst thing though is that they don't have macaroni and cheese [unless I just haven't found it yet]. This is a massive blow to my main diet which I have been coping with decently. I miss it a lot though haha. I've been trying some interesting new sweets though...they have TONS of different candies here. I tried a Cadbury Turkish bar which has turkish delight filling [like in the Chronicles of Narnia...Edmund loves that stuff, so I figured I'd see what it's all about] It was not nearly as delightful as it sounded. It's this weird pinkish filling but it's not liquidy like if you had a raspberry filling or something. It tastes like it does not belong in chocolate though, apparently it's made partly with like rosewater? I have no idea who thought that was a good plan but I'm going to stick to regular chocolate for a while.
Oh and I forgot, yesterday was Chinese New Years so we went to check out the festivities in Trafalgar Square that they had. They had some vendors and decorations, and performances all day long. It was pretty cool, but it was SO COLD and it started snowing so we took a few pictures and walked around for a bit but then we went in the National Gallery to look at paintings since it was right next to the Square. It was cool but for the time being I'm a little museum'ed out.
This weekend we're going to Windsor to see the castle and other things there so that should be cool. I'll try to update again soon when there's more things to write about!