one of my pictures

One of my pictures has been used on a website.

http://londonist.com/

If you look below the article you can see I'm credited, well not my real name but my flickr name.

I don't agree with the article. I like Kevin Spacey. I also liked Speed-the-Plow. And according to my theatre professor he not only saved The Old Vic but has done a lot for theatre in London.

hahaha. My picture was used. Pretty funny.

Quote of the day

Looking up pictures of Epping Forest(which I can't wait to explore this week).

Dan: Where is that?

Me: Epping Forest.

Dan: That's epping beautiful.

Edinburgh, Scotland

Ruqqiya and I took a weekend trip to Edinburgh, Scotland! We took the night bus which as we found out is not the most pleasant way to travel. But when we left after dinner we were excited! The night bus, like in Harry Potter! We were going to Scotland! On the tube ride to the bus station a bagpiper was playing at one of the stations. I took that as a sign that the trip was going to be fantastic. And I was right. On the walk from the tube station to the bus station I saw a man peeing on a building. Two minutes later a guy asked if we had any used bus tickets. When we said no he said, "Merry Christmas." We didn't get to sit together on the bus and that really sucked. Sitting next to a stranger for 9 hours on a night bus is not the most pleasant thing ever. Especially when he goes to sleep, turns over so his butt was touching me. Also not pleasant is being woken up at three am for a rest stop(or as they call it here a service station) by a really loud Scottish guy over crackling loudspeakers and leaving the warm bus and walking out into freezing rain. Wake up call! It was not like in Harry Potter.

I was so excited! The kinda excited that even though I was beyond uncomfortable, I just didn't care.

When we finally arrived in Edinburgh at 7 in the morning we were tired and didn't know where the heck we were. When we left the bus station the freezing cold air hit me like a fist in the face. It is sooo much colder in Scotland than London. And I hadn't packed right at all. Then it started raining. Freezing cold rain. My face felt like it was burning off because of the freezing cold wind.Everything was closed except a McDonald's so we ran in there, ordered some tea, tried to warm up and regroup. The weather varied from sunny to raining about 100 times a day in Edinburgh. But it always stayed freezing!

Ruqqiya and I hiked up Arthur's Seat. Arthur's Seat has nothing to do with King Arthur it's just a big hill/mountain thing. When we were walking up it started to drizzle so we decided to take a short cut. Almost straight up. It was hard. But we finally made it to the top and the view was soo worth it. It was so windy I was being blown around.

Cheesing on Arthur's Seat.

We didn't beat the rain that was rolling in while we were on the top. We were soaked and muddy by the time we got down.
When we got down from Arthur's Seat we heard some strange sounding half bongo half Indian music. The source of the music was these two guys wearing suits dancing around being filmed a very low budget music video.

Looking from New Town across to Old Town.

Edinburgh has so many stairs. These lead up to High Street. hahaha High Street. get it?

Edinburgh is such a gorgeous city. Everywhere you look there is beautiful buildings and monuments. Also men walk around wearing kilts! They just wear them around- to work or wherever! ahahaha How cool is that!? haha

The Elephant House. This is where J.K. Rowling started Harry Potter on napkins. We were both really excited because we are both huge Harry Potter dork fans. We went in and had tea and a delicious brownie sundae.

Acting dumb in the children's section of the museum.

I climbed up Calton Hill alone and saw some monuments and another great view. This was the windiest day. I was literally almost blown off my feet. They were doing some work on one of the monuments and the construction workers saw me almost get blown off my feet and they were all like wooooah be careful!! Don't blow off the edge!! Stay back from the edge! HAHAHA It was so embarrassing! haha

Edinburgh Castle at sunset. We decided to do the castle on our very last day in Edinburgh. When we arrived at the castle around 2 o clock the gates were barred and there was a military guy in full fatigues holding a giant machine gun in front of the door. I didn't know if it was closed or if it was always like this, or if we were at the wrong entrance, so I went up to the guard(who looked kinda startled at being addressed) and was like Hi! Are yall closed? And he was like yeah and then he started telling me this whole long story about why it was closed(a function-long story lol) and when it would be open and when we could come back. hahaha He was nice. When he was finally done chatting to me I went over to Ruqqiya who was like SARAH! I can't believe you went up and talked to a guy holding a giant machine gun! Are you crazy!?hahaha

I took a walk outside our hostel on the last day in Scotland. I looked out on the Firth of Forth and saw this island in the distance with some ruins on it. Do you see the rainbow shining directly onto the ruins?

There are a zillion more pictures on flickr of course. I take soo many pictures! But hey they're digital so who cares!?

Regent's Park - not the way the queen enjoys it

One of the things we do in this house, if the weather is good, is get whoever is around usually 5-6 people and head over to Regent's Park. It's only about a ten minute walk away. We take a frisbee and usually start by playing catch or Ultimate frisbee. When we get bored with that we start thinking of all the fun games we played when we were little and play them and generally act a fool. It is the most fun thing to do. ever. So far we've played wheelbarrow races, crab races, duck duck goose(yes duck duck goose), red rover(my favorite), freeze tag, chinese freeze tag, 500 and any stupid thing/game we come up with. British people gawk at us openly. Parents pull there children along who stop to stare.

playing 500. It is a free for all.

Dan and I loosing the wheelbarrow race because we were laughing so hard.

The boys new favorite thing is to play leap frog. But not the usual way... that's me on the right with my head getting pushed forward.

2 legged races. Zach and I totally won that one (no matter what Leah says).

Sorry these pics are so blurry! I have to get the originals from Leah so I have non-blurry pics. I'll probably post more of these park pics later because they're so funny but blogger picture uploader isn't working right now!

When we were playing freeze tag a fox ran out of the woods behind Dylan. We got a picture which I can't upload right now. It was so surreal. To be in the middle of London and see a fox. It ran almost right through our game! So awesome!

I saw Alan Rickman! haha

OK I know you all want Wales updates but I'm going to try and put my stories in chronological order so a week before Wales....

A few weeks ago our theatre class went to the Royal Court Theatre to see an awesome play called "The Vertical Hour."

After we sat down I was looking around and I look over and sitting 4 seats to my right is Alan Rickman! Of course that news spread quickly through the group. If you don't know who Alan Rickman is he played Snape in Harry Potter and more recently the evil judge in Sweeney Todd Demon Barber of Fleet Street(which btw I've been on Fleet Street!! how cool!):

HAHAHAHAHA first celebrity sighting. When intermission was over I had to stand up to let him by and he said, "excuse me." hahahaha He sounded like Snape!!

EXCITING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh!!! As I write this I am levitating out of my seat with excitement!!!! Josh Ritter is coming to London!!!!!!!!!!!! The venue he is playing at is literally a 10 minute walk from my house!!!!!! I am going tomorrow to see if I can get tickets!!!!!!!!!! March 31st baby!!!!!!!!!!!

my writing

Hey just so you know I write these really fast and usually don't check for spelling/grammar errors. Sorry if it's annoying.

Temple Church (well the outside)

Dylan and I went to see Temple Church a few days ago. Temple church was built by the Knight's Templar (the monk warrior dudes founded to protect pilgrims going back and forth to Jerusalem in the 12th century). Like idiots we forgot to check and see if it was open that day. The church itself wasn't open-they were having first communion. So we just walked around and explored the outside. It was a strange place. The church itself was surrounded by office buildings and apartments. Nice ones. Really nice ones, the names on the buzzers had a lot of Lord so and so and Lady blah. There were also a lot of beautiful gardens. It is open to the public but they certainly don't advertise. We weren't sure we were in the right place for the longest time. So we walked up the street, through the guard gate(that man was not helpful at all), and wandered around the maze of buildings not sure if we were going the right way till a courtyard opened up and we saw the church. I don't know if it was in my imagination(probably) but the whole place had a very secretive air about it.

Read this for some of the history. Remember if you click on the pictures they get bigger!

The tall statue has two Knights Templar on one horse. The knights didn't have enough money for them to have their own horses.


I have yet to meet cool door I didn't want to take a picture of. This door had a huge keyhole:

I should have put my finger next to it to show scale. Anyway, I looked through the keyhole to see what was happening inside and all I could see was some brown leather boots. They looked like olden days Robin Hood boots. They were lace ups.It cracked me up. I was like, "Dylan come here! Check out these boots!"

On the walk back to the tube station(blackfriars, on a building next to it there is a black statue of guess what? a friar) we passed St. Bride's Church.

Read this for the history I am once again too lazy to type up:

Pretty cool church. I'll definitely have to come back and explore the inside.

Building faces

These guys were just on a random building in London. No sign or anything to tell us why they were there or what they meant.

flickr

I forgot to tell everyone how to get to my flickr account. If you go to flickr.com and search for elsila1 under people you should be able to find me! To leave comments I think you have to have a yahoo account(which is free). I love comments!

It makes more sense to just view my sets. They are sets of pictures in different places so I have a Oxford set and a St. Paul's set, etc. It's easier than looking at a giant line of pictures you're not sure where they are. They are also in the order I put them in and not all discombobulated like the ones under "elsila1's pictures."

Brighton day trip

Last week I went on a daytrip to Brighton Beach with Alissa, Dan, Zach and Dylan. We took the bus and man am I glad I packed the Dramamine, it was a bumpy ride. It was pretty empty, so for most of the ride I slept curled up on two seats. At one point I was sleeping facing the backs of the seats and the bus driver braked really hard and I fell into the leg room area. Rude awakening!

When we arrived we couldn't believe how sunny it was! I was sorry I had forgotten to pack my sunglasses. We of course did the expected, cheesy, "it's so bright in Brighton" jokes. hardy harr harr. lol

The beach! Famous Brighton Pier. Which turned out to not be all that impressive. Just a bunch of subpar carnival rides that were waaay to expensive to ride. Must have been a huge deal in the 40's though.

Where's the sand!? I picked up two rocks to take home. One for Sue in my office and one for me.

Alissa and I.

The Royal Pavilion. Built by George IV.

Brighton's history is quite tawdry(that's a good word). It's history reads like a cheap romance novel and before it was a place for families to go on a beach holiday Brighton was known as a place to take a mistress or two for a weekend.

Because it was such a beautiful day we spent most of it wandering through the town, the gardens and the palace grounds. So many people were out on the streets and everyone was smiling. I heard more than one person say, "it's just like summer!" We got milkshakes at a place called Shakeaways. They have over 160 flavors of milkshakes, including tic tac flavor eeeeeew. I ended up getting the kinder bueno flavored one(I'm currently obsessed with this candy bar).

We saw all sorts of street musicians: jazz, raggae, a dude with a guitar, and big bands like this one. The sign says community.

They were showing "Danny the Champion of the World" at the playhouse and I was freaking out with excitement because that is one of my favorite books of all time. Turns out it was Alissa's too. So she and I decided to see the matinee show. The boys didn't want to so they went off somewhere and we went to see it. It was geared towards kids but it was still great.

After the play Alissa and I went down to the beach to the first beach sunset we'd seen since we'd been here.

I took about sixteen shots. I won't put them all on here but they're all on flickr of course!

After the sunset(which put me in such a good mood.)we met the boys and together went and had a fantastic dinner at a place called Pinochio's. It was the best meal I've had in a long time. They had a two course deal so I had minestrone soup and four cheese ravioli. It took us longer than it should have to count everyone's change for the bill and the waiters started laughing and making fun of us!!!

Afterwards we went to have a pint before we caught our bus back and picked a random pub. Turns out it was a gay pub. It was called the Black Horse lol. The bartender tried to sneakily take a picture of one of the guys in our group hahahaha. I don't know what the was about but I've never seen the poor boy so red. After that we went to our bus depot. Alissa and I had to pee so we popped into a random club next to the depot. Turned out it was a gay club! HAHA. Brighton must have a huge gay community. I got hit on by a woman wearing a GI Jane costume(it was dress up night there). She asked what my costume was and I said tourist. That cracked her up.

We had a little bit of time left and the boys wanted snacks for the bus. How they were hungry after that meal we had I have no idea but we went to the nastiest grocery store I've ever been in. It smelled soooo bad and the fruit was rotting in the bins. Gross.

We all napped the whole way back to London. It was a good day.

London is amazing

London is amazing. Every night I can't fall asleep because I'm still so excited to be here. Everyday something interesting/exciting/amazing happens.

Protest outside of Goodge Street Station

Walking up the street to Goodge Street Station I heard chanting, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. When I rounded the corner I saw this:

About a hundred people were gathered.

Turns out they were protesting scientology. There is a scientology center right next to Goodge Street Station. They are always handing us flyers for "free stress tests" and asking us if we want peace for the world and in our hearts. One of them was rude to me once. When I said I had to go because I was late for class he called me a liar.

I was curious because these people were really against scientology. I mean they had some seriously emotional chanting going on. They were also wearing V for Vendetta- Guy Fawkes masks. I had to ask what this was all about.(When I got home and told people that I took pictures and gasp! actually talked to the protestors people were shocked. Some girls in the house actually walked four blocks out of their way because they were afraid of going near the protest. I'm not really sure what they were so afraid of.)

Turns out the protestors thought scientology was a cult that kills people and steals money from them, etc. They were wearing the masks because they thought that the scientologist were taking pictures of the group and would follow them home and hmm... I'm not exactly sure what they thought they would do to them but it wasn't good.

I asked these guys what they were all about:

They were quite a nice lot.

Now I don't personally have anything against scientology, but it was great to see a protest in another country. First off the cops were there but they weren't freaking out or trying to break it up(and the protestors were loud), in fact they had a barricade set up for them. Interesting. Like the old quote that says I don't agree with you but dude you definitely have the right to say whatevuh you want(or something like that).