Janet Flanagan: A Public Relations Nightmare!

The Public Relations class at Morningside College is a joke! This class is taught by the most incompetent teacher I have ever had at any level of schooling. She manages to lecture for the entire 90 min. class twice a week without even mentioning any piece of information that might have any merit to our class. I honestly feel as if she is just making information up and telling us stories about herself. It is not even that the class is difficult, in fact, it is incredibly easy, but I just can not stand having to sit in class for a seemingly endless period of time learning absolutely nothing! Blah! However, that is the end of my ranting for the day, so peace out!

Harry Potter=Hitler?

The Cheif Excorsist of the Catholic Church (that is an actual job title) seems to have made the connection between Harry Potter and Hitler. If you want a good laugh check this out, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,20324620-5001021,00.html

First Week Of Classes

The first week of school is now complete, and it appears this year is going to be a blast. I moved into my apartment with, ironically enough, seven wrestlers. Class has been class, but at least they are all for my major this year.
Basketball conditioning starts on Monday, at this time I will probably be screaming for an extended summer, but oh well. Thats about it for now, I'll keep my devoted readership posted over the next few weeks, yes all three of you.

The End Of Summer

Today I completed my day at work in a job which was eerily similar to the movie "Office Space" and I could not be happier. To add to this feeling of ecstasy I am moving out of my house and back up to school tomorrow. Things are definitely looking up right now, at least until two weeks into the school year when, alas, I will be wishing it was summer again.

New Blogging Philosophy

Whew, the London Blog is finally finished! Now that I have finished more or less retyping my entire journal from trip, I plan on changing my blogging philosophy.

Instead of making long, sometimes well thought out entries approximately once every cycle of the moon, I have decided to type more short entries, with the occasional long composition. If everything goes according to plan you will be hearing from me a few times each week from now on. That is it for now.

Last Day In London (3 Months After The Fact)

I woke up on the ninth day of the trip at 8:30 AM with feelings of sadness, for this would be the last day before we hopped back on a plane to the states. It had already been such a memorable experience, and leaving just did not feel right.

On this final day we were allowed to tour on our own in order for everyone to check out the things that they had wanted to see, but had not had time to see in the previous eight days. Amber, Jill, Kristen, and I used this time to see the Tower of London. As usual, it did not go as planned as our tube passes had expired, and our new passes did not become active until 10:00 AM. We then tried taking a bus to our destination, but the traffic was so congested that we were continuously being passed by pedestrians (It reminded me very much of the opening scene from “Office Space”, so after much debate we decided to walk the remaining four miles to the Tower of London.

The Tower itself was an enjoyable experience. It was very similar to Windsor Castle in both function and design. The inside walls were covered in guns and suits of armor and the outside contained some aesthetically pleasing architecture. The highlight of the tower was getting to see the Crown Jewels. They were massive, ornate, gemstones on crowns that have been worn for about five hours total in the history of England because each monarch wears the coronation crown for only 3-5 minutes! The other cool site at the Tower was Traitor’s Gate, which is a gate going out to the river. This was only cool because we had learned lots of gruesome facts about that spot on our Jack the Ripper Tour. It is also of note to say that I felt the urge to sit on King Henry VIII’s personal shitter, which was a hole in the tower that dropped 30 feet down to the ground.

I did a little bit of last minute souvenir shopping, before switching up groups and going to check out the National Science Museum with Chantel, Tiffany, and Kristen. The museum was not especially interesting with the exception of the Spitfire, and the space exhibits.

After the museum we went to the London Eye, which is the world’s tallest ferris wheel, with Kristen, Chantel, Tiffany, Jarod, and Angela. The ride took a half hour to complete and the view from the top, overlooking nearly the entire city of London, was astounding. Unfortunately, it was not an experience that really translates very well into words, but is something that must be seen for yourself.

We ate for a final time as a group at ASK, an Italian restaurant which was very tasty, and then we made a trek over to the pub where I made an ill fated toast and enjoyed our last night together.

The next day we flew across the ocean, and took connecting flights from Detroit, to Minneapolis, and finally back to Sioux City where our journey and this series of blogs will end.

London Day 8

I apologize in advance if there are any silly grammer errors as I did not feel like proofing this entry.

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On day 8:00 we woke up especially early, 7:00 AM, in order to arrive early at Stonehenge. We took a two hour bus ride to Stonehenge during which I caught up on my sleep. I have always been fascinated by the size, magnificence, and mystery surrounding the monument, and as a result this was the day that I had been anticipating the most out of all the sites on our trip.

The only real problem with Stonehenge is that writing about it does not do the monument justice. It is a huge circle of rocks, really not that interesting until you are actually at the site and can think about how the ancient people, with primitive tools and no modern technology managed to shape, transport, and stack, all of these multi-ton stones into one of the most recognizable tourist attractions in England. The only disappointing aspect of Stonehenge was the audio tour. I was hoping to learn different theories about how Stonehenge’s history and architecture, but nearly everything they said I already knew from a project I had done in high school.

After our eyes had gotten a full helping of Stonehenge, we all piled back on the bus and made a trip to the City of Bath. It was here that we visited the ancient Roman Baths for which I assume the city is named after. The baths contain the only natural hot spring and the only well preserved ancient Roman ruins in the United Kingdom. It is easy to see why the ancient Romans thought that these springs were inhabited by gods because they were green and steam constantly rises from them. The museum of the actual ruins around the baths, accompanied by an audio tour, was extremely interesting, and gave insight into how the Romans lived while they occupied Great Britain.

If the Bath trip had ended here it would have been for the best, but unfortunately it did not. I hit the town with Amber, Jill, Kristen, Jarod, and Angela for a fun filled shopping excursion. Or at least it would have been fun filled if A) I enjoyed shopping, or B) I had any money at the time. As it was it ended up to be extremely boring. There was some interesting Georgian Period Bath Stone architecture, and I had my first experience with Thai food, but those were the only highlights after leaving the actual Roman ruins.

The lion’s share of the bus ride back was once again spent by sleeping, but about halfway through our ride my slumber was interrupted by our bus breaking down. We were stranded for a short period of time until another bus from the same line pulled over and saved the day picking us up. We rode back with several natives of the area who enlightened us on some of the finer points of English culture, such as the knowledge that fanny is a rather offensive word for the female genitalia instead of an old ladies word for the gluteus maximus. The rest of the ride back felt much more like a party than a bus ride and it was a sad parting when we each went our separate ways.

Back at the hotel we hung out in the lounge and watched movies with a group of girls from Pittsburgh. We watched A Bugs Life and The Goonies while eating delivery pizza and drinking Scrumpy Jack Cider Beer. It was a good night, but after The Goonies was over everyone went to bed in preparation for our final day touring the delightful city of London.

London Day 7

Once again I would like to apologize that it has been nearly two months since my return, and I am still not finished with this series of blogs. After I am finished with these, hopefully early next week, I plan on blogging daily, or nearly daily. This will include many short entries, but will be a more effective way for me to communicate with my viewing audience (all three of you).

I would like to warn you in advance that this is my longest entry to date due to what an amazing day on the trip this turned out to be.

Day 7

Day seven began like every other day, which means we woke up far too early and ate a shitty breakfast. After we successfully filled our stomachs with dry croissants, we got back on the bus with our favorite pint sized tour guide, Madeline Rainbow, and went on a 45 minute cruise to Windsor Castle.

For those of you who don’t know, Windsor Castle is one of the Queen’s three official residences (along with Buckingham Palace, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh), and it just so happened that the Queen was there on that day. The castle is huge! They show you where the original section of the castle was constructed, and then you look at the different sections that were added on with specific types of stone, in specific styles of architecture throughout the ages. All the additions to the castle over the years formed into the enormous and beautiful fortress that we know today as Windsor Castle.

The inside of the castle was just as impressive, if not more impressive than the outside. The first part that we checked out was called the State Apartment. You could tell immediately that this would not be a good place to stage an attack, because the walls of several rooms in this section of the castle were completely covered with different styles of guns, knives, swords, spears, and other more unconventional weapons. Other rooms were less intimidating, but equally impressive with extravagant portraits of kings and nobles. One of these rooms was called the King’s Closet, but resembled a conference room at a convention center much more than a closet. We were also able to see two different knighting halls where nobles are officially inducted into knighthood.

The other two indoor attractions at the castle were slightly disappointing compared with the State Apartments. There was a large chapel, aptly named St. George’s Chapel, which was basically a poor mans version of Westminster Abbey. It had some nice architecture, and is the burial site of such important people in history as King Henry VIII and Thomas Hobbes, but it lacks the mystique of Westminster Abbey. The other indoor attraction, The Queen’s Dollhouse, was not much of an attraction at all. It really was just a big dollhouse behind a glass case. I stayed in that room for all of ten seconds before I went back outside.

Sometime during all this nonstop action, we found the first and only Palace Guard (The guy’s in red who aren’t allowed to move) that was not behind a fence. We decided that it was essential that we take a picture next to this guard as it may end up being our only opportunity to do so (it was). As we were taking these pictures the guard switched his gun to his other shoulder, and slammed the butt on the floor effectively scaring the shit out of me and Amber. When we turned around we noticed that the stone face guard had a big shitfaced grin across his face. Amber turned around and said “You aren’t allowed to smile,” and like magic, the grin disappeared from his face.

After the castle me and Jill Bohnker broke off from the group and took the tube to Colindale to visit the Royal Air Force Museum (RAF for short). I need to give her some props here, because I really wanted to see this museum, but nobody else did, so she took one for the team and skipped a day of shopping to go with me. Hooray Jill.

Colindale turned out to be much farther away than we had originally anticipated and the 45 minute train ride actually took us outside of the area in which our tube passes worked. In order to get out of the station we actually had to get close to other people and slip out behind them. We made the ten minute walk and arrived at the museum. I have always been fascinated by airplanes of all kinds and the large collection of planes was an incredible sight to behold. I would compare it to SAC Museum on steroids; it had a large variety of WWII fighters and bombers to go along with the more modern planes from more recent times. On our way out we realized that there was another large hanger building solely devoted to the Battle of Britain, which was even cooler than the main museum, but unfortunately we did not have enough time to really investigate that section of the museum thoroughly.

We left the museum and slipped back into the tube station and took a quick visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It had lots of statues and figurines from other cultures and had a section on the evolution of fashion that I reluctantly went through with Jill (she did go see airplanes with me). We then went to try and find the temple church, which is featured in the Da Vinci Code. We found out later that we actually went past it on our way to take pictures by some random church that we thought was the Temple Church. A passerby told us that the church we did take pictures in front of contained the first clock with a second hand, but I am skeptical about the validity of that statement because the church appeared to be fairly new.

We were supposed to meet up with the entire group at the Hard Rock Café at 7:00 PM; however, you should never expect to be on time anywhere while traveling with a Bohnker. So after accidentally going to the Hard Rock Casino, three miles away from the café, we finally met up with the group approximately 30 minutes after the designated arrival time. This particular Hard Rock Café was actually the original Hard Rock, and it definitely was a very interesting place to hang out. It was chalk full of music memorabilia and had rock music playing in the background. I bought a drink called a hurricane, which was very, very good, and a bacon cheeseburger that was very, very, overpriced.

During our meal the owner of the restaurant, who bore a strong resemblance to a Motley Crue roadie, came and visited with our group for a short time and said he had a surprise for us after dinner. We all thought he was blowing smoke, and after dinner we went next door to the Hard Rock Store where we were to receive our free souvenir glasses. In the shop everyone was singing, dancing, taking silly pictures, and in general making fools of ourselves, when Jimmy, the owner guy, came in. He asked us if we wanted to see the vault and of course, we said yes. We had no idea what the vault would contain, or even if it actually existed, but we followed Jimmy downstairs where he unlocked a giant metal door and brought us into the surprise highlight of our trip. The vault turned out to be full of super rare and valuable rock music memorabilia such as: a custom made guitar played by Jimmy Hendrix, John Lennon’s trademark spectacles, an outfit worn by a member of The Clash, and guitars played by Curt Cobain, B.B. King, Keith Richards, and many other rock gods. Seeing these relics of music history would have been cool enough, but we were allowed to touch, hold, and pose for pictures with the majority of the artifacts. My personal favorite picture was when I put on Curt Cobain’s white sunglasses and slung his guitar around my shoulder.

After the nearly religious experience we experienced beneath the Hard Rock Store, a few of us revisited Platform 9 ¾ so the people who were unable to the previous night could pose for pictures. We then took the tube back to the hotel where we were scheduled to have a round table sort of meeting, and exchange personal stories and highlights from the trip thus far. This meeting consisted mostly of us rubbing the fact that we held Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar in Larry’s face.

My final activity of the night was somewhat of a buzz kill, but I packed very light and had to do a small amount of laundry in order to have clothes that did not smell strongly of BO for the remaining three days of our trip. After laundry I went to bed and prepared for the next day.