BLADE or DIE!

I have been pretty terrible at updating my blog especially since so much has been happening. I must say that I finally taken charge of my own experience here and started really doing the things I want to do. There is so much to tell and so much fun going on so I'll see if I will be able to squish it all into one post. :)

Just over a week ago, a group of about 15 of us figured out that we could rent Rollerblades from a local shop for 24 hours at a time. We all reminisced about our younger days of classic skating and jr. high school and decided to get them. We also found out that in London there are skate nights. Try to picture this....
A group of us wobbling though Hyde Park in the dark, stumbling over one another and any break in the pavement as we make our way to the edge of the park. When we emerge, we meet a large group of people all sporting Rollerblades and expressions of disgust at our appearance. We confidently turn to one another and examine our colorful 80's attire and hairstyles before receiving instructions for the night's skate. We learn that we are to follow behind the marshals at all time as they are going to be blocking off the roads for us to skate on. Information about keeping up with the group or being kicked out of the skate turns three of our 15 away and we are down to a dozen. The skate starts and we're off, the 12 of us hollering "Marco," "Polo" back and forth to one another to keep in contact among the large group of skaters. We fly down the streets of London with cars stopped on all sides, cheering us on and people from the pubs, lining the busy streets with beers in hand rooting for us.
It was so much fun to skate through London and to do it at night, we would occasionally stop to get a super busy road stopped so we could skate down part of it, and there were 'sprints' that we did on side streets as well. When all was said and done we skated around 14 or 15 miles around London. Our motto became "BLADE or DIE" and this was heard here and there when we stopped or tried to motivate one another after falling or trying to keep up. The twelve of us made it through the entire thing! Boy did we show those people what we were made of. We ended up making friends with some of the people we skated with and they loved having us there as entertainment as well. It was a blast and I did my best to take pictures and video during the skate, this proved to be more impressive to people than my skating but I also didn't end up being in many of the pictures.
That night we got a huge group of girls together (not hard as we live with 33 of them) and had a cookie making dance party in the basement. The day turned out to be near top one of my favorites in London.

What have I been doing with my other time, you may ask? Well, recently, I have worked on a few drawings and charcoal for my art class and spent much of this week studying for my upcoming history exam. Funny that it took me going on a study abroad to actually start focusing on school and homework, but it's true. We went on our last group trip this week to the Southwest of England and I spent loads of coach time studying my notes and being quizzed by people around me. Apparently my professor has banned me from studying because I "know it all." So hopefully that will show in my exam score. My next post will be about our extended trip from this week but I think I'm getting carried away with how long this is, so I better stop now. Enjoy.