Week 9: Mind the Break. Er, Gap

Finally. Spring break. The big one. The time to finally unwind. For some background on this week, most people have been planning their spring break for the last month or so. And in classic Sid style, I did not. Not until the week before the break did Josh and I make rushed plans to stay in London the whole break. 

Before we got here, some people in the program were giving us crap for staying in, not just one country, but just one city. But, I have to say, it was a very good decision on Josh’s part. We got a more in depth view of the city of London than we have of even Bonn, where we’ve been living for the last 2 months. And I loved pretty much every minute of it. London is definitely my favorite city that I’ve been to in Europe so far. The hustle and bustle, the bridges, the foods, the fact that they speak English, the weather, and the fact that, since we’ve had a whole week to digest the city, we’ve had little to no rush. We had a long list of possible sights and restaurants to hit and visited nearly every single one of them. One of the best parts was that we finally had a break. On most of our trips to other countries, it’s a mad dash to get from sight to sight, trying to maximize every moment. We were able to sleep in and catch up on some much needed relaxation. 

Over the course of the break, some other people in the program would show up for their 1-3 day visit to London and we would give them tips on what to check out and hear about their travels. On Tuesday, we visited Oxford with Madyson and learned about their quirky history. They’ve got some really weird traditions. Really weird. I’ll leave it at that. It was pretty cool to see the origins of the lamppost, Aslan, and satyrs from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as well as the ballroom where the practice dance for the Yule Ball in Harry Potter was filmed. Around wednesday (my sense of time is pretty messed up from the lack of scheduling), Josh and I met up with Ryan F. and Sean a couple times. We got real fish and chips from a small diner-like restaurant which, according to Sean, was somewhere locals frequently went to if they wanted fish and chips. Apparently locals have very good taste in restaurants because that was definitely some of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had. Now that I write that, I’m realizing that isn’t actually high praise given how little previous experience I’ve had. Whatever, it was tasty. Over the course of the week, Josh and I had some downtime and had a chance to get slightly ahead on the 211 homework that’s due on the coming tuesday. We managed to get a lot done on the weekend starting off Spring break because we hadn’t yet begun our travels. I don’t know how far along everyone else is but if I had to guess, a lot of 211 cramming is going to be happening monday night.