school day

This morning was officially my first day of school for the fall semester; I know some of you were wondering when I was actually going to begin class. My first and only class of the day was Health and Wellness with Paul Comfort on the Enfield Campus. I woke up early with anticipation and ran to Tesco to grab some notebooks since I had not yet even bought school supplies; I came home and had some toast with jam, pineapple juice and cereal.

Class was very interesting and surprisingly very fun. My teacher began talking about the structure of the class and the fundamentals of fitness and wellness. The most rewarding part of the class was when he would ask a specific question, most of the hands shot up in the lecture room eager to answer. We also talked about rugby, football (soccer), badminton and pursuit cycling – many sports that are not played or talked about in the US fitness classes. In this class we have a lab and a seminar where we will be practicing proper fitness techniques and doing VO2 max and oxygen tests. Should be very interesting.

I came back to Ted Lewis hall and met up with Megan and Michaele to head into central London for a day of art exhibits. We made our way to Liverpool Street via the national rail line.

Liverpool street station is one of the major tube stations in Central London, it is where many underground lines converge and trains depart to greater England from this station as well. We had made our way down the stairs and through the ticket receptacle and on our way to the track when there was a polite pre-recorded announcement over the intercom “attention, please make your way to the nearest exit as this station is being evacuated due to security reasons,” suddenly another much louder voice interrupted the recording over the intercom nearly shouting “Everyone, leave this station immediately!” there was panic as everyone began to make their way through a gap in the ticketing barricades that was only 5 feet wide creating a bottleneck of flustered people. All of our hearts were racing, as we had a small glimpse of what it is like to be in a mass panic situation in a public venue such as an underground station. The station was closed for the remainder of the day, and we have yet to find out what happened there, but we kept hearing people talking about Liverpool Station.



We eventually made our way to St. Paul’s and walked across the millennium bridge to the Tate Museum of Modern Art. The Tate was an old factory that was purchased by the museum to turn into a venue for its increasing collection of modern art. It is a really interesting building as they have blended the new renovations with the old structures and chimneys of the old factory. Megan and I purchased tickets for the Frida Kahlo exibit. Frida, Mexico’s most famous female artist painted very interesting subjects including a huge collection of self portraits and portraits with herself and husband Diego Rivera. The show featured nearly 50 oil, watercolor and pencil pieces of work by Kahlo – all very interesting. The views from the gallery windows were equally spectacular of the Thames and St. Pauls cathedral.

We headed back across the bridge to the Starbucks next to St. Pauls cathedral. I never knew I would ever be able to sit outside Starbucks sipping a Carmel frappachino, admiring the architecture of one of the most famous cathedrals in the world, with one of the priests sitting at the table next to us. We actually held up the Frappachino’s cup next to the church’s dome, comparing the similarity in the shape. After riding the central line to Piccadilly Circus, Megan and Michaele went shopping in some stores while I wandered around the surrounding streets where I found the CNN building and the Regents Street Apple store. The store was huge, with a giant glass staircase leading upstairs to another level. The store was packed with hundreds of Londoners, many of which were playing with the new ipod nano. Ipods are everywhere in London, as they are in most cities, but it seems to be in incredible abundance.