A Tale of Death, Friendship, and the Failure of Kites (Or How I Survived Finals)

My hardest exam, Linear Circuits, was yesterday. Honestly, I was really disappointed with myself and how the exam went. I'd studied quite a bit (because I was so freaked out about the exam), but when I sat down to take it, I kept second guessing myself. I walked into the exam feeling so ready and confident. I KNEW the material, but I can't help the nagging feeling that I messed something up.

Anyways, I've been studying a little bit every day and simultaneously trying to take advantage of the last of my time in London.

On Saturday, Cate, Holly, and I went on a FREE tour of Somerset House. One of my guidebooks informed us that they do a "Hidden Spaces" tour for free every first and third Saturday of the month. The building abuts the King's College Strand campus on one side, so it was really convenient (and really interesting to learn about a building we'd been sitting next to for almost 5 months).


You may recognize the building from a couple Sherlock Holmes movies (including the new one), Sense and Sensibility, The Duchess, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and practically a million other movies...

The highlight of the tour is something called the "Dead House." There are actually no corpses interred there (our guide told us that they'd checked), and the head stones had been moved there from the Catholic chapel that had been built at Somerset House for Charles I's wife.


Apparently, the skull and crossbones used to be a symbol for doctors. Comforting, eh?

On Monday, I took an early morning walk to Postman's Park, the site of the Watts Memorial. The memorial displays plaques for everyday people who died doing heroic, selfless deeds. They date back to the 19th century mostly and are absolutely fascinating (and really moving).


These were truly incredible, and if you would like to see more, I took a TON of photos of these, and they're all on Facebook (in my "Around London" album).

Except for these few diversions, I was mostly locked in my room studying, but now that my Linear Circuits exam is over, a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. In addition, Abbey returned from Scotland last night, so we all went to see Robin Hood at the Vue. It was the perfect way to end the evening!

This morning, Abbey and I went on a mission to pick up her external hard drive from the repair center and decided to pick up some bagels on the way back. I tried a "shortcut", and we ended up walking a lot more than necessary... Oops... As I'm sure my friends can agree, I have a very good sense of direction (and can almost always get from Point A to Point B without issue), but no one should ever, ever, ever listen to my shortcuts. They are NEVER shorter. Remember this if you ever choose to travel with me.

In the afternoon, we went to Hard Rock Cafe because Abbey needed to get a few souvenirs for a family friend (or something like that). We had a blast, and it was kinda like being back in America. We had (American style, not British) milkshakes and burgers.



When we went into the Hard Rock Cafe, the sky was blue and (mostly) clear. The past couple days have been very warm; in fact, this weekend, it's supposed to reach a high of 23°C (~73°F)! For London, that's pretty impressive. Anyways, when we left the Hard Rock Cafe, it was still warm, but the sky was London-colored (grey). Still, we went up to Hampstead Heath to enjoy the gorgeous weather with some outdoor fun!


From Hampstead Heath, you can pretty much see the entire London skyline. It's gorgeous! And the park is everything the English countryside should be (well, sans sheep -- Baaaah!)! There are ponds and wildlife! It's picturesque and really reminds me how much I miss the country.

I brought a few of the things that I'd picked up for my London May Day (for which, as you may recall, it was raining). Namely, I had tennis balls, a frisbee, and a kite. Abbey was REALLY excited about the kite and absolutely determined to make it fly. I'm no good with kites, but I really like throwing things (and I'm pretty good at it). Mostly, I played catch with whoever would join me. Abbey and I brought our foam swords, but I kinda broke both of them. Accidentally. Really accidentally. Abbey and I have been whacking each other with the swords all week, but it took a couple strong swings to demolish both of them... Whoops... They were just £1 after all...

Cate will never forgive me for this video.



Here's the videos I took of a few attempts to fly the kite. There were many, many, many more attempts, but I stopped filming after a couple... Oh, and a note on the music: I put the clips into iMovie to splice them together, and I added in the music as a joke; however, when I removed it, it wasn't nearly as amusing, so the music stayed...