Christmas Lights

I almost forgot to upload my Christmas Lights photos!

Covent Garden Vendor (the piece of paper says "American Harvest Mulled Cider")

Covent Garden

 Trafalgar Square (with the Olympics count down!)

Covent Garden 

Oxford Street

Oxford Street advertisement for Arthur (the movie) 

Oxford Street by Selfridges 

Oxford Street Boots (drug store) 

Oxford Street display

Oxford Circus?  Or maybe Bond Street...

Oxford Street 

 Oxford Street

Bethesda, MD 

Parliament Square and my family's Christmas tree back home in DC

Back in London

I forget why but my friend Engin and I decided to walk around London last term and Engin was in the mood to practice his photography skills with his iPhone...?  So these photos happened haha.  But they turned out quite well!

Anyways, I got back to London at 8am on New Year's Eve and fell asleep and woke up at 3pm.  I'm having a hard time adjusting to the jet lag but I'm sure I will be good to go soon enough.  I had a good time at the fireworks and am looking forward to traveling with my friends this semester!  I found out that some Stone Ridge kids are joining the UCL party so it should be a good time!

Ramsay has also switched up my furniture and decided to secure all of it to the floors and walls... not sure why.  Slightly annoyed but already used to it--the desk is considerably nicer.  Anyways, it's back to labs, lectures, and tutorials!

Westminster Bridge / The London Eye

A nice policeman at Parliament Square

View of St. Paul's from the top of a new mall thing...

♪♫ I got 3/4 of the Shard.. in my hand. ♪♫ 

(The Shard is soon to be the tallest building in the EU)

hhtp://the-shard.com

Parliament Visit

Brendan and I were lucky enough to get to visit Parliament in December.  I was taking a British Politics class which did a field trip and so Brendan and I just pretended that he was in the class even though my class had maybe 40 people in it...  Fortunately, the professor didn't seem to mind that he came along since she didn't say anything about it haha.  Anyways, We weren't allowed to take pictures inside but we got to see the House of Lords (some of them were asleep...) and the House of Commons (which was far more interesting).  It was also surprisingly easy to get in.  Brendan and I would just walk up to each police officer and say "uh... we're with UCL...?"  And they would just send us along to the next guy.  We even got a temporary ID picture lanyard thing.  Good times--I definitely recommend it.

Entrance Hall (meeting up with my class)

Oliver Cromwell and the Houses of Parliament (waiting in line to get in)