London Bridge is not falling down - lies, all these years!

Today was my first full day at the London Centre. We started the day off with an assignment - get to know the underground. So we went on a journey, once again to House of Parliament only this time we ventured more towards Westminster Abbey (we didn't go in because we're doing that as a group later). Then we went to the museum area, where we partially explored the Museum of Natural History and the Science museum - so amazing! I saw more dinosaur skeletons than I've ever seen! And we saw all these whale skeletons - holy huge! In the Natural History museum there was a room that shook to demonstrate an earthquake. It was rather tame but very fun! I think I liked the Natural Science museum the most. But there's so much more exploring to do in those museums, and we didn't even go in the Victoria and Albert Museum which sounds really appealing to me - our teacher described it as London's attic. We then visited Picadilly Circus and Oxford Circus. I learned that a circus is not something with three rings and bears and acrobats and such but a circle with streets branching off :)

We returned home to dinner and a meeting with the bishop of one of the wards we will be serving in. They place us in different wards in Greater London and give us callings. I will be going to the Wands____ Common (I currently can't remember the name...oops) but I won't know my calling until next Sunday. This Sunday we will be attending the Hyde Park ward which is right by the Science museum! We went inside, and we found this huge mural - it's a picture that my mom LOVES and I was so excited to find it! Yay! So I took a picture just for my mom. The visiting Bishop also told us some things about British people that I was happy to learn, such as that they are offended if you start a conversation by asking their name - they prefer talking about things such as the weather first. I thought that was very interesting. He was an extremely helpful person.

After dinner I was thinking about staying in the Centre to do my reading, but some people were going to see the Tower Bridge (see pic) and the London Bridge, so of course I joined them! While we were there we saw an Asian guy taking a bunch of model-like pictures of this Asian girl. They ran up to our group, which was probably about 2/3 of the group here, and wanted to take a picture with us. So the guy took pictures of all the girls, and then he wanted in, so the girl took pictures of him with all of us. He was really drunk...but super nice! ha ha we then returned to the Centre and now I'm not really looking forward to the reading I have to do for the classes that start tomorrow...ugh...I got homesick again today. It happens in the mornings mostly for some reason. By night time I'm mostly excited to be here. Sometimes, though, I feel like I'd rather be home watching a movie or something. That's just because I'm totally out of my comfort zone here, which is extremely good for me. I am so grateful that I have this opportunity - it's so unreal.