Dinosaurs never get old

This morning I got up and arrived at the Natural History Museum just before it opened. It's literally right down the street; it takes me about 7 min. to walk there. And it's really quite beautiful, even when it's hopelessly grey and damp outside. I don't remember all that I've read about it, but I'm pretty sure this is one of those buildings that was built to look older than it is, like the Houses of Parliament in that respect. And it's huge. I spent about two hours there and didn't see everything by any means. They are also in the second phase of expansion by constructing another building on the land.



Of course the first thing you see when you walk into the museum is this huge brachiosaur (I think) skeleton. Most of the more interesting exhibits in the museum are dinosaur bones and replicas, and the exhibit talks a little bit about how the bones let scientists know what the dinosaurs actually looked like on the outside. They also had a temporary exhibit, which I did not see, about how and what dinosaurs ate. I think if I go back I will have to be sure to see that one, and somehow I will try to find a time when every single school in London isn't at the museum. I think this part will be quite difficult. Thought I must admit that large groups of children in very sophisitcated school uniforms is kind of interesting to see. The youngest children from one of the schools were all wearing white lab-like coats and were very much enthralled with the subject at hand.

I don't have any idea what this animal is called, but I thought it look absolutely hilarious and rather more like a cartoon or a person than a sort of deer. The exhibits at the museum are generally impressive, but I was disappointed that they had neither an okapi nor a kiwi bird, both of which I would have liked to see close up.

Today was also the first day of my English class. When I arrived, right at 1:15, the professor closed the door in my face... as a joke of course. He is really interesting and amazingly irreverent, and he makes a million jokes a class period without once ever using a joking tone, which is great and I believe very British. The class is studying mostly poetry, and we are reading Room With a View for the end of the class. We've started with poems by Philip Larkin, who I've never read before. We're also reading T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which is my favorite poem of all time, and we're going to take a trip to the National Portrait Gallery. So it looks like it will be a great class.

Tonight I watched the Panorama episode on "How to Poison a Spy," about the whole Russian spy death thing, and the program was very good and also very creepy. Now I am off to think about what I'm doing this summer, as well as what I am doing tomorrow. Cheers.