And More

Tuesday, Feb. 9th

The tube system is incredible: it's a public transit system that actually works. Who would have thought?
The tube system is close to terrible: there's always a problem. We had our first run-in with the tube's temperamental nature that day.

The literature professor was trying to sell her class to us (we have until next Monday to decide for sure on our class schedule), and she mentioned that she went to Nebraska to visit the home of the author she was studying at the time. She promised a Guiness the next time we were at a pub to whoever guessed who the author was. Thanks to Prof. Martin's American Fiction class fall sophomore year, I guessed Willa Cather. I was right, and I won the beer! I hate beer.

We took a double-decker bus to the river, where we then took a ferry ride on the River Thames. We saw the London Eye, Big Ben, the Tower of London, the Globe, and other famous things. Our destination was Greenwich, where we saw the Painted Hall (google it, it's like the slightly later British version of the Sistine Chapel, almost) and went to the Greenwich Observatory. It's there where all the world's clocks are set to, it's the "beginning" of time, as in all the other time zones start from there. And it's also where the longitude lines start, making it the dividing point between the hemispheres. That's right, I stood in both the Western and the Eastern hemispheres at the same time. I know, that's awesome.
From the Observatory we walked across the Thames in a tunnel that goes underneath it. Another pretty awesome thing.

Alice's son Jason came over and spent a loooong time on the customer service hotline fixing our internet connection. Praise the Lord, it got fixed! I had my first contact with America that day.