traveling

It is hard for me to believe that I have been back in the states for 3 weeks and in less than a week and a half I will be heading to Wyoming where I will be doing the NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) Wind River Wilderness course.

I have been wanting to do a NOLS course for quite some time and this is the one that I finally got my parents to agree to but now that it approaches I am starting to get nervous. I know that everything will be taken care of but I am still nervous. I just have to remember that this school has the wonderful reputation it does for a reason.

London Calling

The internet at our hostel in London has not been great but it is working now so I can update you on my London adventures.

Tuesday, after a four and a half hour train ride from Edinburgh to London we walked into the hostel and basically had enough time to drop our stuff off and unpack a little and then we were off again. wE got on the tube and when we came up and walked a little bit there was Big Ben (he's not as tall as I had imagined), the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We walked across the river to the London Eye which is like a giant ferris wheel that lets you see all over London. We went up as the sun was starting to set and had a magnificent view of the city.

Wednesday we watched the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Then after that we walked through Hyde Park and ate lunch at a cafe there then went to St. Paul's Cathedral. I was blown away by St. Pauls, it was so beautiful (no pictures allowed inside though) and we walked up all the 500 and something steps to the very top. Wednesday night we went to different theater shows, I chose the Phantom of the Opera, playing at Her Majesty's Theatre. It was a wonderful performance and what made it better was that I had blackberry ice cream during intermission.

Thursday we started off at the British Museum which has a little bit of everything and I was overwhelmed walking though there. Then we went to the Design Museum which I loved. There was an exhibit on sustainable innovation which showed new products, buildings, etc that were making moves in sustainability including a solar powered boat, new packaging for puma, and recycling rain coats into bags. After that we went to the firm uscreates (http://www.uscreates.com/) and talked with Mary Rose Cook, one of the founders, about what they do. They were service designers but their main focus was changing social behavior. One of their recent projects was getting more people to get tested for chlamydia. Then we went to radarstation (http://www.radarstation.co.uk/) which was one guy who did more of managing and coordinating people to work on projects.

Friday we went to Prospect (http://www.prospectdesign.eu/) where we talked with Richard Eisermann who I was very impressed with. He studied at RISD and has lived all over. He has been working for quite some time and told us a lot about how he has made transitions into new things. We ate lunch at the Black Friar and then headed to Seymour Powell (http://www.seymourpowell.com/). I think everyone was pretty impressed with Seymour Powell. Out of all the firms we visited they do more of what we are specifically trained to do. Their main focus is researching the future and doing a lot of forecasting. After that I walked through the National Gallery where I saw Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Da Vinci's Cartoon. Then I went to the National Portrait Gallery and then a few of us went to see Date Night.

Today I went to an exhibit at the British Museum that had Renaissance drawings then to a little French cafe near the hostel for lunch. After that I took the tube to the Tate Modern Gallery and then walked to Westminster Abbey which was closed for visiting by the time I got there. I did get to see a protest against the war in Afghanistan which was interesting. Then I came back to the hostel and I guess I'm about to start packing for my last travel day, my journey back to the states tomorrow.