Best Laid Plans

   Today is the end of week 1 of this lovely program.  As you may have noticed, I’m having a great time in London.  The weather’s a bit rainy (it has rained at least once every day, and many days off and on all day) but you expect that in London— it even adds to the experience.  Otherwise, my classmates are all fun and agreeable, our daily trips are exciting and informative, and I’m even learning some valuable multimedia applications!  Clearly a successful trip; I’m just sad there are only two weeks left!

  But, one cannot expect everything to go perfectly.  Today was basically a series of misfortunes.  Our original plan was to go to see the Olympic Village in Stratford, or London’s East End.  How exciting! Few of us are actually staying on to see any part of the Games, so we were very excited about this.  We piled on the Tube and when we alighted at our stop saw some intriguing preludes to the Olympic Park.

Walking, we saw many new buildings going up, lanes on the road specifically for Olympics traffic (painted on the road!), and it was clear preparations were well underway for the upcoming influx of spectators.  The place our professor, Dr. Everhart, had taken a group before is called the View Tube, so we were on the lookout for directional signs when we saw this:

Such disappointment!  Making the best of it, we tromped through a construction site and got as close as we could, which happened to be a train station.

 (Speaking of the Olympics, keep watch for my most recent

assignment- a podcast- in which I talk about the history of the Olympics in London)

   Plans had obviously changed, so we all agreed we would take the train on to Greenwich.  I was very excited about this because I had planned to do this myself at some point.  Some of you may know that the Royal Observatory in Greenwich marks where the Prime Meridian is located.  You can stand in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres at the same time!  Pretty exciting stuff.  We arrived at the quaint village of Greenwich and walked to the Maritime Museum . . . to find the Royal Observatory closed.  Another blow to our ill-fated day.  The museum was free, though, and housed some very interesting pieces.

This looks kind of small, but was actually huge!

Spinnaker!

The Children's "Hands On!" Museum was the best part!

Our day was salvaged by returning to center London via a Thames Clipper.  The weather was very nice at this point, and we saw many sites of London from the water.

Today was a lesson in planning.  Sometimes things are not going to go the way we plan, which can be disappointing, but often equally fun or better things come from those disappointments.

   Tomorrow we’re off to see Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, where the Banks family flew kites in “Mary Poppins”!  We are planning to fly kites, too . . . but I hear the weather plans to rain.  We’ll just have to wait and see whose plans prevail.