6/7/08-22:50

Long day today. Got up early-breakfast at 7:20. I had a tomato (good), scrambled eggs (good), sausage (weird), apples (tasted like grapefruit), tropical juice (good), and toast (a bit burnt.) After breakfast, I got a Lilt, which is like grapefruit/lime pop. It's pretty good, but I liked orange fanta better. So we got on the bus. 2 new tour guides today-Steve and Steve. Cool guys. More about them in a bit. It was maybe an hour or so to Stonehenge. I was at the back of the bus, 2nd to last row: Sarah Hayes, Michael and Colin behind me, Chase next to me, Drew and Spencer to my left, Neil and Madison ahead left, Christine in front of me. We all slept some, Michael sang some Karaoke and Drew drew (ha) a pile of poop on Colin's hand an a penis on his arm. Later Brian Baldwin told him it "resembled something it shouldn't" and he'd have to wash it off. So that was fun. We got to Stonehenge. We didn't pay to go in, but we were able to get almost as close as those who did. I stood on Neil's back and he stood on mine and we touched the exterior stones. Got some cool pictures, too. Then we all went across the road to a field with a lot of sheep. We chased them about a bit then played frisbee. I guess the grasses stung a bit, but I had jeans so I was fine. Got some good long tosses in, then went back to the bus to head on to Avebury. I, and most others, liked that a lot better. You could actually go up and touch the stones. They weren't as big and impressive as Stonehenge, but they were still cool. There was a big ravine that Neil and I played frisbee across. Great fun. Then we went to the Inn, the Red Lion, for lunch. Hang on...first we took "Across the Universe" style pictures of Emma, Liz, Christine, and Sarah. Then we went to lunch. I had the Ploughman's platter-ham, bread and butter, lettuce, some nasty brown sauce and a nasty pickled onion. The ham and bread were good. In retrospect, I should have made a sandwich. Oh well. Neil got a tasty looking Jacket potato with Aged Cheddar and bacon. It took a while to come out, and he almost at 2 others before his came. It was all good. When I went to the bar for water, the barman asked if I wanted ice and a slice (of lime). It was pretty cool. I'm gonna start saying that. Then we went back out and played frisbee some more, then we went back to the bus again. Then we drove to Bath-about 45 minutes. We got a bus tour of the city. Saw more stuff. Went out on another field with a good view of the city-more frisbee-and as we were standing there, Jill just ripped one real bad. It was nasty. Then we went down to the city centre. We stood around blocking the whole damn street for like half an hour, everybody was pissed, then we pretty much ran through bath. Drew went up to some random pretty lady sitting on the side and just started lounging-pretty funny. We left quickly. Green Machine and Wesley, Colin, and Spencer went out shopping. We just kind of walked around for a while, then went into the FCUK (French Connection UK) store. Drew went up to the lady working there and said, "Hey, I just want a shirt that looks like it says fuck." She was like, "Well, we have some of those..." He got this bright pink shirt that said FCUK in big letters. Funny shit. I saw a pretty cool looking shirt that had a sound wave and fcuk in small letters, but it was £20. Then we went to a sports shop and Wesley and COlin got frisbees. Everybody's going to sleep so I'll finish this tomorrow...Cheers.

24:00-Room

What a day. London Eye was sweet, brought back some memories of the last time. Always has to be one person afraid of heights...Libby this time. After that, we went to Westminster Abbey. Lots of walking, but it was all really sweet. Henry was our tour guide today. We walked all over, looked at all the memorials. Each idiom has a corner-poets, musicians, radicals...the plumber had one, haha. We all got tired toward the end. We saw where they do coronations and stuff, heard some good stories. Rode the bus back to Hostel and chilled for a little bit. Wrote about that earlier, though. Went to the subway station down Holland Walk. Nice path, forest on one side, brick wall on the other. Again, I hate traveling with large groups of people. Anyway, Neil, Patrick, Drew, and I (hereby known as the Green Machine) and Big Neil went to a cool Chinese fusion place. Waitress didn't know English, so instead of 5 separate checks, we got 5 huge bowls of fried rice. Along with that, we had egg rolls, pork dumplings, and I had Pepsi and sweet and sour pork-pork onions, pineapple, green peppers. It was good. Big neil had calamari, Drew had honey roasted pork, Patrick had "Meat Plate" (pork & duck), and Neil S had something with a weird, long, chinese name. Says it's pretty much like Drew's, but with noodles. After that, we went to see Spamalot. It was funny, but would have been better if I hadn't seen the movie like 50 times before and I didn't see all the jokes coming. £3 ice cream (caramel) at intermission. We were way high up, and there were little binoculars for hire for 50p. Helped a little, but not tons. The sign said 1x50p, so PJ put in £1.50, and jammed the machine. Walk back was pretty uneventful, took a shower, and now going to bed. Bath and Avebury tomorrow.

17:55-The Room

Jamming in the room right now. Saw a music shop on the was back from Westminster, So Neil and Patrick and I stopped. I got a tin whistle and Patrick picked up a harmonica. Both in G. Neil has his travel guitar. Playing some music from the "Once" soundtrack. Good movie. Going to Spamalot on the subway in a bit. More on London Eye and Westminster later.

11:35-Outside Tussauds

Just visited Madame Tussaud's wax museum. It was ok, not that cool though, I thought. I lost my ticket. :-( Woah! People on stilts right outside the bus! Damn, I've lost my spare camera battery too!

8:22-Holland House-6/6/08

Just finished breakfast. Get to that in a minute. Slept OK. Door was really squeaky, so it woke us all up anytime someone had to piss. Very annoying. Beds OK.
Breakfast- they had yogurt, toast, croissants, other pastries, cold ham/turkey slices, OJ, "tropical" juice, water, some other stuff. It was OK. The other thing we're doing today is parliament and Big Ben. Should be cool.

21:50-Holland House

We went to the hostel. took a pretty scenic route, went down along Thames, past Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, then I fell asleep. I woke up just before we got to the hostel. Waited outside for about 10 minutes. Then went in. Neil was having trouble opening the door; there was no slot for the key card. There was another little plastic thing, and I stuck that up to the thing and it opened. Yay. We all took showers, then went out for dinner. Patrick, Neil, Drew, and I ate Pizza at the whole foods restaurant. Gelato for dessert. Very good. Also, Lime/Cranberry soda. (GUS-Grown-Up Soda) Went back and played some ultimate, good times. After that, another shower, then some British creeper came to our door, said he "left something in here last night" and came in to look for it. "It" was a 1 square foot blue flannel handkerchief. It was pretty awkward. So...I'm going to bed. Toussad's Wax Museum, London Eye, and some other stuff tomorrow. Breakfast at 7:50.

16:00 - Coach Parking Garage near Tower of London

Really tired. Went to see Tower of London. A bit different than I remembered. Saw torture stuff and everything. I think we're either going to Trafalgar Square or Hostel. I hope hostel. Need sleep.

09:45

Just went and saw Royal Albert hall and statue, built in memory of Albert when he died after drinking bad water at Windsor Castle.

6/5/08 - 08:24 - London Heathrow Airport

On the coach at the airport. We'll go back to breakfast...we got a hot croissant and strawberry jam, cherry vanilla yogurt, OJ. Real good. Irish countryside came into view after breakfast, then quick hop over Irish sea, then UK. Very scattered, random, not like the grid of cornfields in America. When we got off the plane, we all were bunched up right past the hall thing. Guy told us to move along once, nobody but me and Neil heard him then. He talked to a chaperon and then we moved. Got through customs fine, Chase was takin' pictures in the airport, security guy made him delete them. Did it again later, Jill did too. Yea, not much after. Group is big, clunky, inefficient. Most just standing around like lemmings. Outside by the bus, there was a little car pushing around luggage carts-huge train. Pretty cool. And they have metal trees and horses. Sweet. Lots of cameras around. Just saw a smart car. Motorcyclists just going right between lanes, legal here, I guess. Today's allowance for meals is coming. £20. Traffic is shit. Guess that's to be expected for the biggest city in UK. Just saw a man smoking and reading the phonebook while driving. Lots of shiny new cars here, don't see many beaters like in US. Guide just boarded at National History museum: "Dead Zoo." Haha...He's Bob, driver's Steve. Bob's a funny guy.

6/5/08-Atlantic Ocean-5:41 London

1:12 to London. Sun's comin' up. It's beautiful watching the sunset in the Americas... ...then meeting it halfway around the world, over the Atlantic Ocean. Got a window seat for this flight, so I was looking there. Got to page 102 in the book and lent Neil The Great Gatsby to read. Both bathroom trips have been quite eventful-the first one I took a while ago, Alison was waiting in line talking to a guy from I dunno where. 55 maybe. She was telling him about the choir program and everything, and she went in and I finished talking to him. Just then, we hear a thump, and an older gentleman, 65-70? is lying on the floor in the aisle. Flight attendants rush to him and get out oxygen tank and everything. They move me and the other man waiting in line to the bathroom at the other side of the plane. After a minute, the man gets up, and they have him sit in a chair in the back. I think he was ok, just had been sitting for a while and stood up too fast. It happens. :-/ Next time I went back a few hours later, nobody passed out, but Chase, the silly bugger, was chattin' it up with the flight attendants, one of whom was called "Chainsaw." He got a high five from him. Saw him just wandering around the aisles later. Neil spilled a bit of lasagna on his pants. Shout wipe not effective thus far. It's nice and sunny out now looks like a nice day. Looks like they're coming around with breakfast, which sounds good. Heehee...people gettin' stuck between trolleys...

6/4/08-Gulf of St. Lawrence-22:20

We were just rushed off that last plane, they told us they were boarding this plane at the same time. We got to the terminal, though, and everybody was just waiting around. It was 30-45 minutes before we actually boarded. Neil and I went to the Corner Bakery. Shared a Ham and Swiss panini. He got a blueberry Odwalla, I had apple juice. Delicious. Got on the plane, its a 777, 2-4-2 seating in coach, 2-3-2 in business. TVs in the seat backs, along with radio and movies and that. Watched an episode of The Office. On a related note, I was quite dissapointed with the season finale of that this year. WTF, yea? Surfed the radio a bit, heard some James Taylor, nothin' much after that. Read On the Road, good book so far. On page 18, passed the "prettiest girls in the world are from Des Moines" quote a couple pages back. Good book so far, packs lots of story into few pages. And there's lots to go. Dinner was served, delicious as well. Lights went out just now in plane. Sleepy time...But yea, Lasagna, Salad, Bread, and oatmeal bar. Lasagna was great, pretty much like on Aer Lingus last year. I put some salt on it, too much. Almost ruined it. Still good though. Salad was good, fresh. Nice "oil and vinegar" dressing, seemed pretty much like Italian. Bread was cold, coulda been better warm. Used "50% corn oil product" made a sammich with that. Oatmeal bar...damn. Good. Oatmeal, brown sugar, real good. Pepsi. Mmm. Watching a Scorse Rolling Stones concert documentary now. Good stuff, I need to listen to them more. It's a concert movie with interviews, kinda in format of another Scorse, The Last Waltz...The Band. Christina Aguilera is doin' a duet with Jagger now...hmm. About to go over Newfoundland. 37000 ft, 634 mph, -56º F outside. Brr. 4:15 to London. 2460 miles. Gonna take a piss now.

6/4/08-16:17-Chicago

On the ground at O'Hare. There's another plane in our terminal right now, but they're pushing back soon, I guess. Plane didn't actually get to Des Moines until about 2:25 or 2:30-supposed to take off at 2:20. We never heard them call us, so when we went to the gate to check, they said we should've come sooner cuz it was last call...haha. Took off around 3:30. Fine flight, cloudy. Tiny plane-couldn't stand up straight. Sat between Neil and Colin- 1-2 seating. Nice old flight attendant named Gene, I think. Good at pouring root beer. Moving to the terminal now...Oh yeah, got a choco taco in DSM. $2.50. Pretty good, don't quite know if it was worth it, though. Here we are. Next flight leaves at 5, 34 minutes.

So this one time, I went to England.

I made a big journal when I was there. I'll be posting them by entry or by day for the next few days here. I might also scan them in, so you can see why I'm typing them up. :-) Enjoy.

Still not gone, sorry.

So, I finished packing just now. I started last night by cleaning my room.

Mom loves helping me pack, and she's good at it, so she got a list together and made sure I had all my stuff.

That little guy on my pack is my travel lizard. He's supposed to be a good luck charm, and everybody in our youth group gets one.

Oh yeah, I'm going to England. For a church trip. Choir's singing at a couple of places, and we're "following the footsteps" of John Wesley, as well as just doing some sightseeing. I've gotta head out now, but I'll take loads of pictures and put 'em all up when I get back. Have a good first have of June, folks! Ciao..

Here I Go

Don't you hate it when you've finished packing and everything, but there's still an hour left before you have to go anywhere? You don't want to get started on anything because you know you won't finish it, but you don't just want to sit around for an hour either. So, you write a blog post. And then your mom tells you that you have a lot to do still. So you go upstairs.