Day 28

It's hard to believe that in 6 days I'll be back in Texas. Tomorrow is the last day of class, we spend the weekend in Scotland and then it's just finals left, crazy. Today after class Meggan and I headed over to TKTS intending to buy Billy Elliot tickets and on a whim I asked about Les Miserables prices and we ended up with Orchestra seats, dead center, seventh row back for 39 pounds! The show was absolutely amazing. I's seen it before but wow, the cast was kick ass here. It's definitley one of my favorite shows, plus the theater was really pretty and tiny.
Before the show, we went to Windsor for the day. Windsor is adorable, the whole town is really cute and the massive castle is really cool. You can't go into much of it but the grounds are really pretty and just seeing the outside is cool. Of course it was raining today so we got wet walking around but it was still fun. We toured the state apartments, saw a table that seats 54 in the Waterloo room and a bunch of other very ornate and well decorated rooms. We also saw the china collection, most of it from the 1700's, and a lot of weapons. All the rooms that weren't specifically for the King/ Queen were full of guns, swords, and knives all arranged in patterns on the walls. The blue and white room of the Queens and the red and gold hall were my favorite rooms. Once again, I can't imagine living in a place like that. We tried to picture getting up in the mornings and walking around in pajamas eating at the giant table and watching tv and it was hard. Everything there is so over the top it's hard to believe people really live there.

Windsor Castle from the train

Walking up to the entrance

With the castle behind us

Me in a doorway

Looking into the courtyard

Inside and archer's hole

Looking back at the castle 

Gardens around the round tower

More of the castle in the rain

Umbrella time!

The courtyard we couldn't go in

More of the Castle, the Middle Ward

Gardens in the sun

Looking down toward the state apartments

The Upper Ward

Me with Windsor Castle

Sundial

Me and one of the guards!

St. George's chapel

The Lower Ward

A kitty I made friends with

Front of the chapel. It's very pretty inside and a lot of Kings are buried here

Windsor

Walking up to the Queen's Theater

In front of the theater

With our tickets

The stage

Ceiling of the theater

Me and Ashley

Me and Meggan

Day 27

Today was pretty legit. I'd say the class field trip of the day trumps all other field trips except maybe senior year anatomy when we went to see open heart surgery and visited the gross anatomy lab at UT medical school. Today we went to Guy Medical School campus, and to the Gordon Museum. The Gordon is the largest teaching specimen museum in the world and the school is the largest medical school in Europe. It was awesome. 3 floors divided into four blocks full of specimens a lot dating back to the Victorian era of different organs with different diseases. There is an entire room about tumors and the surgery performed before anesthesia was available. Many of the people had 20 pound tumors cut off in under 30 seconds, crazy. There are also wax models of various body parts for students, and of various skin diseases. Then the specimens are divided by system and organ and they cover all the walls of three floors. It was so cool, we saw hearts, brains, gallbladders, lungs, everything you could think of and the person's medical story and diagnosis was in available to look at too. The coolest section by far was the forensic section that showed what different organs looked like after poison, gunshots, stabbings and various other wounds. It was really cool, and the crime stories were in books from Medico-Legal. There was also a murder section with specific cases, an abortion section all about illegal criminal abortions, and an infanticide section about mothers who murdered their children. Everything was so interesting to look at, and the genetic disorder section was cool too. They had elephantiasis, conjoined twins, and basically any really weird disease you could think of. Seeing fetuses still in the uterus and newborns who didn't make it was unreal, but really interesting. I was amazed at how small some of these babies were, and how human the unborn ones looked. We also saw a lot of old medical and surgery equipment, so all in all the whole place was really interesting. The curator told us all about the screenings for medical school in the UK, these kids are 18 straight from A levels (like high school) and undergo personality tests and psychiatric exams before they can get interviews to go to medical school, so different from the US.
After the Gordon I met up with Ashley and Meggan and we took a train to Brighton, which is a cute little town with a beach. We shopped for awhile when we got there and then hit the beach, which doesn't have sand and has rocks instead. Now you may be thinking that a rocky beach sounds cool and less messy, well it's not. It hurts your feet a lot and is not very fun to relax on. The water was really nice though and we all wished we had brought swim suits. After a very short time on the beach we were ready to move on though. I will never again complain about sand haha. For dinner we grabbed food along the pier, I found a fresh seafood cart and got lobster tail which was delicious and really cheap. I put a garlic chili sauce on it and it was awesome. Brighton was a really fun place to visit and a good afternoon trip but not a beach I'd really go back to.

Brighton beach and pier!

Before the wind got crazy

The beach!

Testing out the water, our feet hurt!

It felt really good though

Me at the beach, I can't imagine swimming barefoot here

Chillin on the beach, it was really windy!

In an old boat on the rocks!

Almost sunset over the water

Day 26

Today's post will be a short one. After class we hopped a train to Oxford to check out the colleges there. Meggan and I met up with our friends on the Baylor in Oxford trip, Liz and Jenny and they showed us around Christ Church College where they are staying, including the staircase where the Harry Potter scene going to the sorting hat was filmed! We wandered around the town for a bit and went through the market there before heading back into London. For dinner tonight we went to a really good Indian food restaurant and then came back and Ashley and I went running.

Walking up to Christ Church College

Oxford!

With Jenny and Liz

Inside the chapel

Pretty stained glass in the chapel

Outside in the courtyard

Stairs from Harry Potter

Courtyard outside the college

Walking the streets of Oxford

More of Oxford, it's like Cambridge and made of almost 40 colleges all over the city

The theatre in Oxford

Cute houses on the street