Sunday, February 3, 2008

We All Follow Chelsea, On to Victory

Even though I walked a lot today, it still felt like kind of a lazy day. Previously, I walked around the East of the Chelsea neighborhood. Today, not really on purpose, I walked around the Western end of it. That's how the past few days have gone. Just heading out of the flats and deciding on where I am going while I walk. I kind of like it. The title of this post is part of a chant that the spectators do in the Chelsea stadium during football (soccer) games. I saw the stadium today.

I don't think I mentioned this before but I added pictures to my post from Friday about the walk through Surrey County. They are definitely worth a look.

I went to church with Rachelle again but we had some new companions. Anna, Chelsey, and Laura decided to come along with us. Its crazy thinking that including today, I have been to Our Lady of Victories 4 times. It doesn't seem like I have been there that many times. There were not as many people there as there have been in the past, at least it didn't seem like it. Either less children came than usual or I am getting used to the noise, I don't really know which. We had a priest who spoke in an Italian accent, it was hard to understand his homily. Otherwise, it was basically normal. One family was missing though. It is a mom, a dad, an older daughter, a middle son, and the youngest daughter. Last week or the week before, Rachelle and I heard the oldest daughter say to her dad, "Oscar hit me. Can I hit him back?"The dad replied with, "Yeah just not on the head." Haha. I thought it was funny. It was funnier with the British accents too.

I got back from church and ate lunch. Then I decided to go somewhere but, as usual, I didn't have a place in mind. I made my way to the Natural History Museum because I wanted to finish it off so I wouldn't have to go back. I walked inside but there were SO many families walking around, it was almost impossible to move so I left. I just started walking around and walked all the way down Fulham Road. This is a major road through Chelsea and had lots of shops along it. I was looking at my map and saw Chelsea Harbor on it so I went there. It has recently been re-developed. Lots of new apartment buildings with funky designed buildings (picture 1). I don't really know if I liked it or not. It vaguely reminded me of Canary Wharf but it was not as good, mostly because it was almost all residential and it didn't have the same vibe. I did walk down to the Thames (picture 2). It was really windy and pretty cold (for here) so I started to head back. Along the way I ran into Stamford Bridge Stadium (picture 3), the home of the Chelsea Football Club. The tours are £15 so I did not take one but the building looked very impressive from the outside.

I took a shortcut (sort of) through Brompton Cemetery (picture 4). There were soooo many graves. I have never seen that many graves in that small of a space. Fort Snelling has more graves but they are orderly, these were not. It was kind of spooky with the wind blowing, cloudy skies and bare trees. I wouldn't go in there at night. I was pretty tired by this point so I was just kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other and got through it. The rest of the walk was uneventful. I was walked along some side streets until I got back. Lots of red brick houses and some small churches.

The rest of my day was spent napping (I told you I was tired). I was planning on reading but I just sort of fell asleep. I finished Atilla yesterday on the bus. It wasn't that great. The whole book was just Atilla as an adolescent. I thought it would be a progression of his life, I was wrong. Parts of it seemed to have no point and there was a lot of foreshadowing to stuff he did as an adult but I didn't know exactly what the foreshadowing was about, just that it happened when he was older. My next book is The Diary of Anne Frank. I was just wondering through the library and I saw it. I thought it was appropriate because I am in Europe and because its diary entries which are similar to the blog entries I do. Granted, I'm not in hiding from people who would shot me on sight so its a tiny bit different but I do feel a little bit of camaraderie with her as a writer of sorts. I like it so far. Its amazing that she wrote all of it as from age 13 to 15. Impressive.

Not a very exciting day for me but I have had 4 or 5 exciting days in a row so I think I deserved a kind of boring day. I had spaghetti with butter and salt today. It tasted really good even though it was very simple. I had cookies with my tea. Really good too. Tomorrow is back to class :( Oh well, it won't be that bad.

Auf Wiedersehen!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Emily and I have both read the Anne Frank diaries in school. I did in like 7th grade, Emily thinks she did in High School. It's a sad sad read. That was part of the WWII unit we had in school. It was cool because the teachers all coordinated so in multiple classes we did all WWII related activities. That is when I got to "interview" grandpa gunderson about his WWII experiences. I got to hear all about how he could drive a big truck that he never had but it kept him out of the belly of the ship and saw the pictures he confiscated from the nazi snow patrol unit his group captured.