This past week has been a truly great one for many reasons. One because I still am coming to random realizations that I am actually living in London, never gets old. London is truly an amazing city and I love exploring it, which has mainly been my focus this past weekend. But I don't want to get to far ahead of myself so I'm going to go back to the beginning of the week.
Monday was full of class and studying for my very intimidating mid term (crazy that we are already half done with our courses here) in Social Welfare Issues in the UK. The test was extremely intimidating because I have had no prior education on the welfare system or state in our own country let alone that of a foreign one. So since the beginning of the course I have been playing catch up and trying to take in as much content as possible that I had never been exposed to before. The majority of the class are the students from Earlham College out in Indiana which is a very socially concious school where the welfare of the community is really emphasized. So these kids are very educated on the topic and well versed on the language used. I however am not. And so monday was full of studying and reviewing a seemingly endless amount of content and trying to comprehend the complex system set up in this country and its history. Lets just say wikipedia got a lot of use from this guy on monday! By tuesday I decided to review a little in the morning before the test which was scheduled at 5pm, but I wanted to get a workout in before this. I also wanted to go up to this park I had never been too which didn't seem that far away called Hempstead Heath. Let me just say this park is a cross country runners paradise with lots of trails, bridges, hidden buildings and memorials as well as great scenic views and passages through tunnels made of amazing greenry. It was incredible. So after this amazing workout in this amazing venue I realized that it was 3:30.... and it took well over an hour to get to this place. The outcome of this was that I rode many a stressful tube rides and bus rides to get to the test at exactly 5pm all smelly and muddy, good start. But the test went surprisingly really well and I feel like I may have actually over prepared (which was my goal in the first place). We find out our test scores on thursday of this week... so we'll see.
Wednesday I came to find that a friend in my Media in Britain class is a fellow runner for her school, University of Santa Clara. And a quite fast one at that! I told her about my running club here and she said that she had heard about it and was considering joining but was too scared too and that her training was suffering because of it. I told her to just send out an email like I did and she would be fine. And so by thursday night we were on our way to the workouts that I have been doing at Battersea Park together! But not before wednesday night where we went to quite the party at the school a few blocks away from us, Imperial College, where a very intense rave-type dance was going on. We actually met up with my friend and fellow runner from class, her friend who's birthday it was, and some others and danced and laughed the night away. It was really fun and we all enjoyed ourselves without drinking at all! So no money wasted! Always a plus!
The thursday workout ended up to be quite the eventful one not only because I had a friend to tag along, but also because while warming up we noticed a lot of really big trailers and lights set up near the river walk. As we started our stretches and warmup drills our coach ran over and asked what was going on. They told us that a movie was being shot and that we couldn't use the river walk to do our workout. While some of the runners were disappointed in this news, both myself and my friend were freaking out because we wanted to accidentally run into a celebrity! So we started creeping on the people over behind the cameras and found that it was only some old man being filmed that night who none of us recognized. UGGHHHHH!!! Why couldn't it have been someone cool and old like Clint Eastwood or Tommy Lee Jones! But still it was exciting none the less. So our workout was moved to a different part of the park to do our workout. Both of us did very well in the workout, me leading the men and she leading the ladies. In the words of Coach Pete, "good stuff."
By friday I came to realize that literally everyone in my flat was leaving for the weekend on excursions to either Ireland, Amsterdam or Istanbul. There was only two of us left behind and she had plans of her own. But I will say I was looking forward to having a weekend to myself. Friday night didn't include much, I only watched a movie (No Country for Old Men, which was incredible, highly recommended) and eating ice cream.... winner. But saturday was much more eventful. I went to the Camden Stables Market during the day and I found a stand that had old archived advertisments. I WAS IN LOVE! Such an advertising nerd. Of course there were many funny ones from the WWII time period and the 1950's but I was shocked to find one from 1889. I was so impressed that he had one from that long ago. I felt like I was looking at history. I decided that I was not going to come across something like this again so I bargained with the owner and brought the price down to 8 pounds. Good stuff x 2. After I went to the Tate Modern Art Museum to see some of my all time favorite artists work Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Claude Monet. Incredible muesum and I was so inspired by the work shown. After I went down to the River Thames where it was early evening and I took many pictures of the river front and the iconic parts of London (such as the background of my blog, I have taken my own verison).
(Here we have some art, an amaing painting of a cheetah at the market, the trees lit up on the waterfront, and my version of the background of the blog)
Today I had intended on doing a 5k out in east London that was free but when I woke up I found that the tube to get out there was shut down due to construction and that the bus would have taken much longer, almost double the time to be precise. Also it was obnoxiously windy, so that was also working against my decision to go. So I decided to do the traditional sunday long run. I headed up to Hempstead Heath again since I loved it so much the last time. It was so much fun to just go exploring while doing a long run and I ended up finding a hidden castle, many tunnels made of greenry and some epic bridges out in the woods. It was a great way to cover the 12 mile distance I had wanted to achieve. With that I have run 60 miles this week, the first time I've hit that much since probably October (good stuff x 3!). As everyone makes there way back in from there weekend excursions I am hearing all of their crazy stories from the weekend as we watch the superbowl. I hope that all of you are doing well and that you are all still staying strong with the harsh winter you are all experiencing. I also would like to take this opportunity to give my condolences and prayers out too Ruth Godding for her recent loss of her husband who was one of my youth pastors growing up. He was an amazing man and role model. The same goes for our entire church community as we have also lost the blessing that has been Pastor Bob who I have learned has also passed away recently. Really sad stuff as both of these men were incredible people who really brought great positivity to the church, the community and the world.
Lastly congrats to my teammates who had huge PR's at this past weekends NB Collegiate Invite. Really exciting and impressive stuff. I hope everyone is doing well and I wish everyone continued success and happiness! Take care to all of you!
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