On True Love and High Adventure

Well, at least high adventure.

Finished reading The Princess Bride yesterday. Great book, although it requires patience from those who love the movie. One of my favorite quotes comes from Inigo, as he and Fezzik are in pursuit of the man in black. As they fight the many levels of the perilous Zoo of Death to rescue Westley, Inigo turns to his loyal companion and says, "Let's look on the bright side: we're having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are."

In a way, that's how I feel about my time in London right now. It's had some bumps, to be sure - mostly in the school arena - but then I remind myself of where I am and what an incredibly huge gift this experience is, whether I always appreciate it as such or not.

Meet Basketball, the fattest pigeon ever.

My friend Sam and I are on the hunt for the

biggest of all time, and so far Basketball is in the lead.
I know you guys will want updates, and don't worry.

They're coming.

Hey Ben! Looking good.

Living far from campus has it perks, as it gives me plenty of time to read on the bus. I'm not the only one, either. I love how much people read here! Doesn't matter if I'm on the bus or on the tube, I look around me and people are reading books. Next on my personal reading list is the first Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet." Saw the movie at Leicester Square Sunday night, and love how all of the main landmarks are down the street, just updated with 21st century surroundings - Big Ben is still here, but with cars driving around it instead of carriages.

Other things I've done this week include going to Camden Markets and exploring the antique book stores that London has to offer. I also visited the Beatles to Bowie exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery (some very cool photographs of the pop culture icons that defined the swinging 60's London), where I met up with Nadine from USC. Haven't gotten around to quite as many new sights this week because...

First week of classes officially terminated for me on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Don't hate me, but as of yesterday I finalized my course schedule: three classes on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, and an optional screening time on Monday evenings for one of my classes. My schedule has turned out to be even better than I expected; I'm taking two classes that I really wanted to take at King's, Jane Austen in Context and The Film and the Book, in addition to a comparative literature class called Travel Writing (very appropriate) and a theology course labeled Introduction to Christianity, which is actually very interesting so far. Basically my schedule looks nothing like it did two weeks ago, and I am very, very happy about that!

I've also taken some time in the past couple weeks to start getting involved in a church here. They have a regular service Sunday nights that I've been to twice, but this past Tuesday night I also tried out their small group geared towards college students. Met some really nice people who are genuinely applying their faith to their lives, and even found out that one of the youth leaders recently came back from visiting RockHarbor church in Orange County, which I went to for a little bit in high school. A nice little coincidence to remind me of home and how much I love and miss you guys - hope that you are all staying warm and safe despite the crazy weather changes I've been hearing so much about. You guys are getting more rain than we are here, and that's unacceptable! I'm sure you'll give it back to us as soon as possible.

For now my plans are to lounge around a little bit and take a respite from all the coming and going I've been doing the past couple weeks plus some. Also taking time to recharge so that I will be ready to take Edinburgh by storm next week when I visit Eric and Adriane for a few days. I'm so excited to see and eat chocolate soup with them (it's an Edinburgh thing)! For now, London and I are still spending some quality time together. I'll be posting some pictures from the past week or so, so watch out for those.