Scotland II

Hey, so I uploaded more pictures today. Here they are!

This is the group near the top of the mountain.

The group again at the pub we ate dinner at. Few places actually have bottles of ketchup (in Scotland and England), so we had a plate FULL of used ketchup packets. Great fish and chips.

Bethany was happy about our Scottish breakfast the next morning (at the same pub). We had blood budding. It might have been good if I hadn't known what it was. It wasn't bad, though.

And of course there are random people playing the bagpipes on the street.

It's a pretty bright picture, but that's me in front of Edinburgh Castle.

Scotland was a blast. It was cold, beautiful and everyone was really nice. I'd love to go back and see more of it.

I told you about the Freeze mission that I was involved in. Here's the link for that video. Look for me just after the two minute mark.

FREEZE VIDEO

I also participated in a Slow Motion Mission in Herrod's Department Store. It's a HUGE store with more security than I've ever seen. We did the mission in one of the more open sections: women's shoes. Here's that link:

SLO-MO VIDEO

Both of these were a lot of fun and I'm so glad I got to participate in them. It would be quite a bit harder to do something like this in Fresno.

Last night we went to see some of the sights at night. But before that, we went to Cheers.
It was a pretty cool little place.

Okay, I've got some work to do.

Countdown until home: 10 days.

Scotland

Hey, so sorry it's been a long time again everyone. Definite mixture of busyness and laziness. Sorry. But here's some pictures from my Scotland trip I went on a few weeks ago.



This is the view from my hostel. Edinburgh Castle is pretty sweet.

Walkin' down the street.

A little pond. In the back ground is a mountain that we climbed. We went up to the right, which is off the picture.

Scottish Parliament. Pretty weird looking, but kinda cool.

Who need a path up the mountain? Straight up!

Hmm, I thought I had more uploaded on photobucket already. But I don't. Bummer.

Today was a GREAT day. My roommate and I both missed our alarms, so we didn't make it to class. It wasn't a big deal today and it was the first class I've missed, so it wasn't to bad. Then I made some lunch and did a little work. After that I went down to the pub on the corner and played darts for 2 hours. That was pretty great. Intense competition. Haven't played in weeks.

The next part was the best though. You may have heard about Improv Everywhere's (www.improveverywhere.com) Grand Central Station Freeze. They got a couple hundred people to Grand Central in New York and froze in place for five minutes. It's all over YouTube right now. Well many other freezes have happened after that one. Today, April Fool's Day, there was a World Wide Freeze. It happened in San Francisco at 9am, New York at noon, London at 5pm, Italy at 6pm...more than 20 places froze at the exact same moment. At Paddington train station, ten of us from the London group went to participate (including a teacher). I'll post some pictures of it and the link to the videos when they go up.

My flight leaves London on April 12, so there are 11 days until I come home (late at night, so I'll see you all on the 13th). On Sunday the 13th, I'll be going out to eat Mexican food (because I miss it). Don't know where or really care, as long as it's good. Anyone who wants to come is welcome. See you guys soon!

Spring Break

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I've had a bunch of papers and assignments to do. There are also some people that moved into our building from North Carolina a couple of weeks ago. We've been hanging out with them a lot, so I haven't been spending as much time on my computer.

Spring break was a lot of fun. Let the pictures and stories begin:

I left my flat at 6am on Friday, February 15th and arrived in Rome around noon. I bought a cell phone when I first got into London just to use within my group. It's been really handy. But when I got to Rome, it wasn't working and I couldn't call the girls to meet up with them. I met some people in my hostel and we all went to the Colosseum together.

After the Colosseum, we headed to the Spanish Steps and got some gelatto. Mmm.


My phone started working later that night and I met up with the girls. The next day we went to the Vatican.


You aren't really allowed to take picture in the Sistine Chapel, but it's really pretty. So I did.


A nice view of St. Peters Cathedral and Vatican City.

The girls met some awesome Canadians that we hung out with for a few days. This is Rob and Hannah. We saw these bikes that look like they were blown up, so they pretended like it had just happened. Some people walked by and felt really bad for them. Hehe.


Rome is a decent size, but you can walk pretty much anywhere. This is the Pantheon.


And we walked to the Trevi Fountain.


We went for dinner and then headed over to the Colosseum for a nice view at night.


The next day, Sunday, we took a day trip to Pompei. That's the city that Mount Vesuvius, the volcano, exploded on. It has since been excavated and was really cool, but after a while all ruins start to look the same.


It looked really cool, but it was a very long and stressful day. There were issues with trains, directions, taxis...rough day.


They must not have very good dog control, because there were dogs running around all over Pompei and the city of Naples. We did finally get home, though, and were very glad.


On Monday, we took the train to Florence. I love Florence. It was the best place we went to all week and we got to spend 3 days there! This is me and a statue of a boar.


Il Duomo Cathedral at night. We spent the first day just walking around Florence and seeing what was there. It's a beautiful place. Quite small.


Tuesday. A view of the river from the Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge. Today Rob and Hannah, our Canadian friends we met in Rome, came to Florence for the day. We met up with them and hung out. In the morning we saw the Michaelangelo's original statue of David. Went to a museum, walked around some more, did some shopping at some outdoor markets.


The girls walking down the street. I've been working on taking cool pictures at night. I'm getting better.

Wednesday morning. This is a view from Piazza de Michaelangelo. It's a hill on one side of the Florence. I hiked up the hill and got a beautiful view of the city.



This is a view of Ponte Vecchio from further down the river.


Hmm, my pictures are out of order. I don't know why. We took a day trip to Pisa. Well, not really a day trip. We were in Pisa for about 2 hours: eat, take pictures of the Leaning Tower, buy souvenirs and grab a train back to Florence. Short trip, but very fun.


Rawr!!!


I love auto-timer.


That night was the first night we went out to an Irish pub down the street. It was really nice because most of the people spoke English and it felt much more like being back in London.


As I would walk around, I would just take pictures of cool alleyways and buildings. This one was cool.


Now Venice. We took a train from Florence to Venice on Thursday. A view from the water bus.


Still taking pictures of cool looking places. A gondolier at work.



In front of San Marco Cathedral. Beautiful place. Three guys approached Marika and asked her to take a picture of them. Then each of the took a picture WITH her individually. It was hilarious. I took a picture of one of them.


The grand canal from the famous Rialto Bridge.


San Marco at night.


Rialto at night. I took these pictures while I was wondering around looking for my hostel. It only took about an hour and a half to find it. The Rialto is one of the few bridges that connects the two sides over the grand canal down the center of Venice. I wandered around on the wrong side of it for a good hour. I finally asked for directions at a gelateria. She knew exactly what I was looking for, so I bought a gelato and headed off to my hostel.


The next day we found a pizza shop with the thickest pizza i'd ever seen. Tasty, too. That one piece was a whole meal.


"I dare you to go out and stand there." "Okay, take a picture."


In the San Marco Square area, there are more pigeons than I have ever seen in my life. I bought a bag of feed for one Euro. Poured some out in my hand and they were all over me. It was fun. Some guys actually approached me and took pictures with me while I had pigeons all over me.


The Bridge of Sighs. Which comes at a good time, because now I sigh that my trip is over. That night I hopped on a train back to Rome and then flew back to London.

I got back at 1am on Sunday, so the Tubes were all closed (they close around 12:30). I hadn't used the night bus system before and I had a bit of trouble with it. I FINALLY got back to my flat at 3am. It was a long night. But I made it. Italy was amazing and beautiful, but 10 days away was exhausting and I was very glad to be back in London.

Sorry it took so long everyone! It took a couple of hours to get this together, which is why I hadn't done it yet. Please leave a comment or just say hello.

Class trip to York on Monday through Wednesday, so there will be a blog about last weekend's trip to Scotland when I get back. Miss you guys! Be back in 5 weeks today!

I'm Off.

Hey Everyone. Sorry I haven't blogged this week. It's been pretty crazy with all the papers I've been writing, required reading i'm trying to keep up with, and fun people that I'm meeting. I'm leaving for the airport to catch my flight to Italy in 5 hours. I'll be gone Friday through the next Saturday night. I'll get back just in time to go to the live album recording at Hillsong London on Sunday morning (the 24th). There will be a huge Italy blog when I get back (Rome, Florence, Venice, and more). Miss you all!

Josh

Windsor Castle

Okay, I'm going to set the mood for this post first. Starting humming "My Country 'Tis of Thee". You might not have known that it's also the British national anthem "God Save the Queen". Well it is. Last week we went to Windsor Castle.

This is the queen's crest.

One entrance into Windsor Castle. I don't have a picture of the whole thing because it could only be taken from the air. Windsor Castle in ENORMOUS.

More of the outside.

And more.

This is one of the royal residences. I took this between the bars of a gate, so we couldn't go in and see it. But when we were standing at the gate, some important guys unlocked the gate and went in with a folder stamped with a royal crest. Wonder what it was...

This is one of the little cross shaped holes that are all over the castle. They were for archers to shoot through. It was very difficult to get arrows in from outside, but the holes were wide on the inside so the archers could have a large area to attack.

We got to see the changing of the guard here. It was way better than at Buckingham Palace because there weren't hundreds of people in the way.

More changing of the guard.

The band that marched in with the new guard.

The old guard marching out.

St. George's Cathedral

A stained glass window in the cathedral. I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures in there. Oops. But those are the two that I got before they scolded me.

Defending the castle from invaders. It took a while to learn how to aim the cannon, but I got it after a few shots.

The big lookout in the middle of the castle.

Umm, that's another building inside. I don't really remember what is was. Other people some pictures of me in front of the castle, but I haven't gotten them yet.

Oh yeah, for those of you who I didn't tell, the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) and the NFL struck up a deal this year. For the first time ever, the BBC broadcast the Super Bowl live on public television. It was AWESOME. Kick off was 3:15pm at home, making it 11:15pm here. The biggest disappointment was that they didn't show American commercials. Heck, they didn't show ANY commercials. They did added commentary during the commercial breaks :-(. But it was a lot of fun. The game went until about 3am here, so those of us who stayed up for it were definitely tired in class the next morning. But it was TOTALLY worth it to see the Patriots gets beat this season. Okay, better finish up my paper. It's due at midnight. Thanks for reading!