July 11-12th

Yesterday was a busy day as well. I woke up with a headache and didn’t feel well the entire day but it still was a lot of fun. We got a little bit of a late start on the day but still got a lot done. We started off by going to the grocery store…again… then we all headed over to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was stunning. All of the intricacy and detail that went into that chapel amazes me. It was overwhelming and I could have stayed for hours. It was impossible to really take it all in in the amount of time I was there. The Cathedral itself is a little over 300 years old and is still a working church where millions come to worship. I won’t talk about the whole cathedral but I will talk about a few of my favorite things. The dome is absolutely breath taking. It is one of the largest in the world and was conceived by Sir Christopher Wren as an observatory linking heaven and earth. The interior of it is decorated with paintings depicting scenes from the life of St. Paul as well as mosaics depicting Old Testament prophets and the four evangelists. The quire, which is just in front of the high altar, is the focal point for music. Its mosaics depict the creation as well as other biblical scenes. The organ was gigantic, but very stunning. Something else that I wasn’t expecting was a memorial for American servicemen who lost their lives in the Second World War. It was pretty interesting. After walking around the ground floor we walked up nearly 300 steps to the whispering gallery. This was soooo cool. A whisper spoken against one wall of the gallery can be heard 32 meters away on the other side of the dome. My friends and I had a good time whispering sweet nothings to each other… After that we went up another 119 steps to a little over look but don’t worry that wasn’t the top…we still had 152 steps left! We finally made it to the top (might I add that after this trip I am going to have AMAZING calves.) the panoramic views over London were unbeatable.
After St. Paul’s we were all pretty tired but we decided to go shopping. I still had a headache so I didn’t really feel like being out with a lot of people. It didn’t help that because it was a Saturday everyone and their dog (literally) were all out doing things. I was sooo claustrophobic on the tube and shopping was not very fun at all. I did find some cute scarves which seem to be the “cool” thing here. But by the time I got home I was so sick that I thought I was going to pass out. This reminds me why I don’t want to live in a huge city. We all hung out and did homework for the remainder of the night…
Today we had church. The five of us in my ward had travel quite a way for our meetings. We were joking that we went to 3 hours of church AND traveled 3 hours to get there. But the funny thing is, is that im not kidding. I forgot how convenient Utah is. I feel like it made me appreciate it more. We just barely got home and im exhausted. In my new ward I was assigned to work with the primary kids. I was surprised to see how well behaved they were. I am really looking forward to the next 4 weeks with them. My ward is made up of a lot of the rougher areas in London. The people in the ward are all very different. There are a lot of people from all over the world, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, the Philippians, Hungary (just to name a few.) it is VERY diverse. The bishop there is from good old Salt Lake City though kind of funny. Any ways now I am exhausted and am going to take a nap.