Sorry I'm not very good at updating...

I'm writing this update on the past week as I wait for my mom and sister to arrive in London. On Monday the 16th, my theatre got to tour the globe theatre then we got a workshop from one of the people who works at the globe. It was really cool and I learned a lot about Shakespeare that I didn't know before.

My week was uneventful after that until friday the 20th when we took a class trip to Brighton. Brighton is a city on the English channel and is about 2 hours by train. When we got there we got to tour the Royal Pavillion. This is an old castle. It was really cool and everything in it was elaborate. The time period in which the castle was built, used a lot of oriental design, so that was cool to see. My favorite room in the whole castle was the dining room. This may sound strange to some of you, but the chandlier was elaborate with a dragon holding it up. Everything else in the room was

elaborate as well, but the dragon chandlier was the coolest

part of the whole palace. I want one in my house some day. Just kidding, but it was still really cool. The bedrooms had a lot of trap doors which was cool. We got to walk around with one of those audio guide things where you type in the number and can hear more than you ever wanted to know about anything, which I found really interesting. I think I listened to every one of the audio pieces including the extras. Then we headed down to the pier. At the end of the pier there was amusement park type rides, so a bunch of us went on them. After that we just hung out on the beach for a little bit, but it wasn't a warm day so the water was cold and sitting in one place for a long time made you cold. We didn't stay on the beach for very long because of this.

Me and Lauren on the Tumbler at Brighton Pier

The next day my friend Severa and I took a bus to Cambridge where we hung out for a few hours. Neither of us had realized that Cambridge had so many colleges associated with it (there's about 20) and had always thought it was college. We walked around some of the campuses greens which were beautiful. We happened to be there while a graduation for students in the masters programs. It was really cool to see people walking around in these long capes, it felt like something out of Harry Potter. Then we ended our trip to Cambridge by going on a punting tour of the colleges. Punting, works a lot like a gondola, where you have someone in the back pushing the boat. At first it was a little scary because boats kept bumping into each other, and we're so close to the water that I felt like we were going to fall over. It was really relaxing and a peaceful and great way to end a good day.

This is what a punting boat looks like.

On monday my theatre class went to a show called Entertaining Mr. Sloane. The main female character, Imeda Staunton, played Professor Umbridge in the last Harry Potter movie, and the cool thing is she's coming to talk to our class next Monday. I think that's pretty cool.

On Tuesday our program took us greyhound racing, which was really cool. I lost some money betting but I won the last race, and made two pounds, so I cut my losses by two pounds.

Yesterday I went to the Parliament building and watched the House of Commons debate about Iraq which was really cool and probably the highlight of my trip so far. I also attended a Foreign Affairs committee meeting about Afghanistan. That was cool, but they don't debate bills in committees when the meetings are open to the public, so it was only a discuss which got a little boring after a while.

That's been an update on my adventures of the past week. Hopefully you're all having a great week and I'll update you on my time with my family when I get a chance.