They are the books, the arts, the academes that show, contain, and nourish all the world

In case anyone was wondering, all of the title lines for these blog posts are Shakespeare lines.  If you'd caught on to that then bravo, if not then that's fine, because lots of them are rather obscure.  I use a search engine to find them, but they also fit the subject matter.  So with that said, today's discussion is Monday, which was a very academic day.

I started off the day with my history class in the morning and then a few of us headed off to the Museum of London to gather material for our history paper.  We had to find a period of history and write a one paged single spaced paper about all of the important events in it using only the museum as our source.  We wandered through the museum a bit and it was a pretty decent museum as far as museums go and then I took some notes on the years 1550 - 1660 for later reference.  Then we sat at these really cool plastic orange tables and ate some of the hamburger buns from the night before (they were more like delicious rolls) with jam and nutella.  I love it when friends plan ahead.

We next went to the Dutch pancake house to meet with a bunch of people from the Center for lunch.  They were supposed to have everything on the menu for five pounds because it was Monday, but when we got there we found out that the deal doesn't apply on a bank holiday.  And yes, this last Monday was a bank holiday.  We stayed anyway because we were so hungry and we bought waffles because they were cheap.  Mine were covered with these tart berries and ice cream, and although it was delicious it was more of a dessert than a lunch and it wasn't ultra filling by itself, but combined with the rolls that we had earlier it was just fine.

Then we went on to the National Gallery (I swear I have pictures of all of these things, they just aren't on my camera.  I have to collect them from everyone else).  We had to take the audio tour of the gallery and sketch two of the paintings for our arts class.  And apparently I'm a slow sketcher who pays way too much attention to detail, because I spent the whole hour I was there on one sketch.  We had only an hour because we have to be back for dinner every day by five thirty, which was slightly inconvenient seeing as the Gallery closed at six.

See my actually decent sketch?  The picture quality's poor, but this was the best I could do with my camera.

Anyway, we made our way back to the center just in time for dinner.  Anyway, right after dinner I found a small group of people congregating in the hallway.  They said that they were heading off to do the City walk, or the East City walk, and so I invited myself along.  Our team leaders were Lindsey and Nick.  Here's a picture of half of our group along the walk.

See?  We're imitating the building in the background.

Anyway, after a very long and exhausting walks with several turns and detours and lots of backtracking, we made it back to the metro station and went home.  It was such a relief, especially because by the end of the walk I really needed to used the bathroom.  It wasn't the prettiest walk I've been on, but it was nice enough to walk around and see the city.  I'm just really glad that I brought my heavier jacket, because it got rather cold by the end!

And thus ended my highly academic day.