Day 3 VCUK-11 June 2019

I woke up early and listened to the British classical music station and had breakfast with Krista and had breakfast. I ate watermelon and tea and the rest of the blueberry pancakes. I blogged and planned out my week better.

I was supposed to go wander regents park this morning but decided not to cause i only have 2 hours before schedule and it takes 20 minutes to get there and I didn't have anyone to go with. I'm torn between spending time with my VC people and actually seeing the things I want to. Thankfully so far Krista has volunteered to come on literally everything I've suggested so far. I want to make some British friends too though. So that I have someone to hang out with when VC people don't want to.

Differences I've noticed so far: -the tea has a weird scum on it no matter what teapot or teabag a i use? (must be the water?)

-the streets and crossing streets is wild and difficult

-street signs are on building corners

-people say "Hiya" as a hello which is cute

-people say "yea?" instead um pretty much

-tax is included in the price of the item!

-everything is old and slow

The maintenance guy came again cause last night Flat 1's fire alarm was going off for hours and they heard water and electrical wires in their ceiling making noises. They were up til 5am. He checked the leak again and checked our fire alarms and then he replaced the two lightbulbs for us.

After breakfast I got ready and then blogged more. I like my mornings with Krista it's nice. I entered the Friday Forty for cursed child tickets! I hope I have a better chance of winning cause I only entered as 1 person and I've never won in London so maybe. I'm planning on going to the harry potter places today after our schedule. Krista said she'll come with me! We're gonna go to the kings cross platform 9 3/4 and then go to Claremont square which is grimmauld place in the movies (the order of the phoenix house).

We went to the Artist Guild by 11am and had an artist talk with Deborah Taffler who had worked for Pentagon for a very long time and is a Brand Strategist aka she plans the concept for brands and then works with them to make sure they stick to it. She showed us a really easy to understand way to do this called the Prism Method. The Prism Method is figuring out what the brand's goal is, the brand's heritage, and the brand's personality. It was really cool and I'm glad we had it. I wish she talked to us before we took Robyn's class.

Then we had some tea at the Artist Guild and then we went back to our apartments for lunch. I went with Emma, Julia, Jess, and Rachel to Waitrose and bought herbal tea, a goats cheese salad for lunch, and Pimm's! I found Pimm's in a can!

Then I thought we'd go the two bookstores on a street like we planned but they took too long so we didn't have time. Sometimes I rather do things by myself just to be more time efficient. Big groups take too long.

I went back to the apartment and quickly ate and then led a group over to the British Library. The British Library is free! Bill bought us tickets to the one special exhibit called Making Your Mark though. Half of us went in at a time. It was actually really boring. Bill said it was a writing workshop but it was just a exhibit about the history of writing which we've already learned in class. But they had some cool cuneiform stuff and what not. It went from mayan and early writing to Phoenicians (You can thank the Phoenicians.) and greek and roman and then different languages and the printing press and typewriters and then computers.

Then we went to the vault which had all of these paper "treasures". There was a part with the Beatles stuff. Where they had envelopes and stuff that they had scribbled lyrics on. Then there was the gutenberg bible and the king james bible and the magna carta. They also had some cool little globes (celestial and terrestrial pairs), a moon globe, and a pocket globe that opened.

Then we looked at the queens library and left.

We're going to get library cards here cause it's free and then we can print and scan stuff!

I got everyone to come to the platform 9 3/4 and I was so excited but then we got there and no one wanted to wait in line. Pretty much almost cried. I waited on line and then Krista decided to stay. We chatted with the girl in front of us who was from Israel. She really liked harry potter but had some weird opinions which was funny. She thought that they were all genius actors and that Daniel Radcliffe is ugly and Rupert Grint is gorgeous and a true genius. It was interesting and funny. We finally got to the front and took photos. My photos are okay. I might go back again and have someone else take photos.

Then we spent time in the gift shop and I finally bought my Gryffindor sweater! I've been waiting years to buy this. They had this really cool snitch thing that was like those magic string things where you can't tell how it's moving but it goes between her hands. There was also a bunch of hp candy! I think I'll get stuff there later before I go to Scotland so I have hp candy for the Jacobite train.

Then we walked down to Claremont Square where 12 Grimmauld Place in Order of the Phoenix was filmed.

Then we walked back and the second we got back everyone was headed out to the pubs so we joined them. They just wandered around for a bit which was sorta annoying. Then we took the tube to Covent Garden (the Piccadilly Line). Covent Garden was really cute and posh and we couldn't find any cheap bars and I dunno why they thought that'd be a good place to go. Eventually we just started going in every pub.

The second pub we tried had enough space for all of us and it was perfect! It was cute and pubby and the two bartender ladies were funny and friendly. When we walked in however they thought we were kids and asked where our adult was and we all had to show them our IDs. I got Pimm's and it was pretty cheap. Later I got a Guinness which was also pretty cheap. We found this cute side room upstairs that was sorta outside sorta not. We all gathered round in the little corner booth and drank and had a great time. A couple more people joined us later.

Then we left and went back to the flats completely trashed at 10pm. It was great.

We got back and I ate dinner really fast and we all went to Flat 2 and hung out til super late. We watched Love Island and then played Piccalo for a bit and then Paranoia for awhile. Paranoia was fun I've never played it before. One person whispers a question to the person next to you and then that person has to answer with a name of someone in the room and then you flip a coin and if its heads you get to find out the question but if not you never find out and it just keeps going around in a circle. It was hillarious.

I left a midnightish cause it was getting boring and I still needed to shower and such. I went and showered and then facetimed home cause I was feeling lonely.

Then I went to bed in my room. Hopefully the rain doesn't leak.