One More Week

First, my camera is broken so I won't be able to post as many pictures as usual. I'm going to have to steal them from my friends when they post them. I never realized how attached I was attached to my camera until I had to spend two weeks without it. Anyway, here are some pictures from the Changing of the Guards and the Natural History Museum from last week.

Today is my "one week left" mark. At this point I am just anxious with everything I still have to do... like pack. I'm probably the worlds worst packer so it should be interesting! I'm actually surprised I packed everything to bring here fairly easily.

I have to back up almost a full week, starting with Saturday. That day was set aside to say bye to Rachel. Maddy and I went to Starbucks in the afternoon and we got to skype Kaley! She is making me feel better about going back because she said it is not as bad as we think it will be. It is still strange and she does miss London, but being with her family is good. We then messaged Rachel to see when she wanted to have dinner. She responded a while later and said she had just woken up and would not make it into town. Maddy and I were starving so we went to dinner on our own. Rachel said she would be able to meet us the next day.

Having a Sunday Roast is a tradition in England, and we haven't had one yet so we had to before we left! Thankfully the pub in town has a Sunday roast so we decided to go there. Rachel said she would be done with her family plans around 3 or 4 so we decided to meet around 4 in town. The roast was the closest any of us had come to a home cooked meal. Rachel came a few hours later and said she would be in town again the next day, so we still didn't say goodbye.

Monday was another bank holiday and the weather was perfect! I met Maddy and Ellyn in town and we went to sit by the river to enjoy the sun. The weather here has still been pretty cold... I think I've only wore a dress once since I've been here! We were sure to take advantage of any warmth we had! We went to another pub in Kingston that has cheap food for dinner and told Rachel to meet us there. She wasn't responding for a while and when she did she said she wouldn't be there for another hour. We were all pretty tired so we didn't stay long once she got there. Saying bye to her wasn't bad, either, because I know she lives in the same state as me. 

You know when days don't go exactly as planned but you are completely fine with it? Well, that was Wednesday. Maddy and I had planned on going into the city because Tanya Burr, a make-up artist and a Youtuber, was doing a meet-up in Covent Garden that afternoon. I met Maddy at Waterloo and we decided to walk across the Millennium Bridge (which was used in one of the Harry Potter movies!) to St. Paul's Cathedral. On our walk there it started to sprinkle. Normally we would be fine with this because it's London ... what else do you expect! But the fact that we were going to meet Tanya later meant we wanted to try to look as good as possible. Thankfully the rain stopped pretty quickly and we got to St. Pauls. We didn't go inside because we didn't want to pay, but the building is much bigger than we expected! From there we went to Starbucks. We wanted to sit inside to warm up a bit, but while we were waiting for our drinks we realized that every table was taken. Just as our orders were called some people left their table. Perfect timing! We walked around some stores after and eventually made our way to Covent Garden even though we were early. We decided the weather wasn't horrible and we didn't mind waiting!

We thought the meet-up would not be a lot of people since she isn't that well known. We were very wrong. There weren't a lot of people when we first got there, but when it got closer to the time it began to fill up. When Tanya arrived everyone started screaming and me and Maddy got scared. We didn't expect people to scream and run to her. Everyone was crammed together and it was just strange. After about 20 minutes Tanya had a panic attack and had to leave. I barely even saw her, so it was a bummer. But she tweeted this picture of the crowd later that night:

It was crazy! But we decided to make the best of our time and we walked around more of London. We walked to Regent Street and Oxford Street and then took a tube to Embankment. We wanted to get off before Waterloo so we could see Big Ben lit up. When we saw it, though, it wasn't. The view from the bridge was beautiful, though, so we stopped to take it all in. At 9 the bells rang and then Big Ben lit up! Again, perfect timing! We then made our way to Waterloo to get on our trains back to our houses.

Today was a laundry day for me... not so exciting. But Maddy's parents came in today so Ellyn and I met them at the pub for dinner! Her parents are adorable! They were so nice and very peppy for getting off a 24 hour flight earlier that day! They left to go to their hotel but Maddy stayed with us. Her mom even hugged us before she left and her dad left money with us to buy us a drink.... they so sweet!

Lately I haven't been able to sleep well at night and I think it's because of how anxious I am with everything coming up. I'm not happy about leaving London, but I am excited to go back to my family and friends. Packing, seeing the city for the last few times and saying goodbye is a lot more stressful than I ever imagined it would be.