A Very British Birthday

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Firstly…I AM 21 YEARS OLD!!!! Woo! Another year gone. Another amazing birthday! I received so many messages from people wishing me a happy birthday. I felt very loved – thank you to those who wished me well in some form or another today.

Today was bitter sweet. Last day in London. We woke up early to take pictures down at Big Ben. They turned out really well, I think. They were rather embarrassing to take – lots of honking from passing cars happened. Brits like to play “spot the annoying tourist and embarrass them a lot” ha ha but we got some sweet pictures out of it so it’s totally worth it. We hustled back for our last breakfast in the Centre. We then headed for one last Primark visit, and then a trip to Harrod’s. Now, if you don’t know what Harrod’s is, let me sum up what I know. It’s basically a place where only super rich people can shop. Everything is expensive and fancy and name brand. The designer chocolate looked amazing – they had high heels made out of chocolate! I couldn’t believe it. And all their chocolates were so pretty.

We went to the toy section where they had every amazing toy ever – there was a huge Buzz Lightyear made out of legos and remote control helicopters were flying everywhere. It was awesome. And a nice man there made me a birthday card whilst demonstrating this paint set thing. It was so fun! Then we went to the pet section where they had the most expensive cats and dogs I have ever seen – the kittens were so adorable! They were like $2000 each! Wow…They have this really cool Egyptian escalator at Harrod’s too. It’s kinda hard to describe, so you just need to see pictures. It was way fun. We went to Nando’s for dinner – a Brazilian chicken place. It was really good.

Then we hurried off to ride the London Eye! About half of our group went to ride it. It was so much fun. We rode it at sunset, and we got to see everything in London. It was beautiful and wonderful – an awesome way to spend a birthday.

And we got magnums after, which made it even better! We then went home and proceeded to shove all of our belongings into suitcases. I have way too much stuff to take home…I’m kinda worried it won’t all fit…we’ll see J At about 10:30 pm we had a special musical number thing by Chelsea Wilson, one of the girls in our group who is studying musical theater at University of Michigan. She did a medley of a few of the songs from musicals we saw whilst in London, including a version of popular where she sang to Professor Macfarlane – it was the best. So funny! And then she and Staley, another girl in our group, sang “For Good.” It was beautiful. And so sad. I can’t believe it’s all over. I said goodbye to Professors Macfarlane and Cooper. Both gave me hugs. It’s in interesting thing, to get to know your professors so well. I will miss them, for sure. You can really tell they love us.