My trip in Britain

Hi JB.

I've visited Dartington, and met Clary. I read with great interest your earlier posts...and then I noticed the date you arrived....

despite all, I hope you had a good time in England. Are you a student in China now?

I arrived in London on third of July after 11 hours of flight Passing over North China, Mongolia, Siberia, Eastern Russia, Scandinavia, Baltic Sea, North Sea, to the west end of the Metropolitan---It is a curve! I still can figure out why it is a curve not a straight route as I at first conceived

The waiting in Heathrow (How to say that? a passport chech?) was...miserable. I really can recall How long exactly it took me to make that go-and-stop golf-styled "slugwalk" (Is there really a word like this? I have to admit I just created by accident ) in that snake-shaped queue with a party of Japanese women giggling behind me, a tall gentlemen enjoying in his mp3 setting the volume as large as I could move my foot to the rhythm, and several fellow Chinese businessmen checking the words written on the advertisement board on the wall which had Tiger playing golf as a main part, with a palm-top dictionary, which is popular within the country and which I still don't want to touch for the love of paper, and depsite all the effort, they still couldn't guess the meaning from their "patchwork" of all the word's Chinese definition, it didn't make any sense, their last conclusion was: Foreign advertisments tend to make themselves obscure.

Your plane flew in a straight line, but the world is curved! The aircraft flew along a Great Circle route over the countries you mentioned. But when you look at a flat map of the world, it looks like you travelled on a curved route! Its the map thats distorted, not your flight path.

So you arrived at Heathrow. Slugwalk is not a bad description! We would probably say the queue moved at a "snail's pace".

Did Clary meet you at the airport?

Hi Steve! Where do you live?
Dartington is surely a peacefully awesome land! I will certainly talk about it in the future.
Yes I am a student "now"(also the hardest time I have ever experienced ), and I have been a student for no less than 9 years
Still I have to apologize for the lack of ability to manage the language---I was really ashamed after I finished my last post, I met the situation in which I couldn't find a single word in my vocabulary to precisely express my feeling for several times. Hope you don't mind.

JB

Aha , That makes sense!

Dont worry about your English...its fine even if you do get your slugs mixed up with your snails! Just please dont ask me to speak Chinese...

I live near London, in Essex. But I always say just London because people know where that is.

I presume your tagline refers to the terrorist outrages on 7th July? Where were you when that happened?

I remember I talked about it somewhere before, that without Clary, I might have been stranded in the world's busies airpot.
Yes she picked my up, as well as her young and vigorous son, Tam. We discussed via e-mail about the location we met. And she even supplied my an address where I could view the 3-dimensional map of the whole airpot. We finally chose to meet at a noticeable signpost with a pattern of four arrows pointing to the center.

ok got to go now JB

speak to you tomorrow?

Another thing I feel grateful to Clary and Tam was that they helped me order a guesthouse some hundred meters away from Heathrow, in a small, maybe district called West Drayton. I still can remember the name of it was "Oakwood Guesthouse".


I know this kind view cannot be more familiar for all of you. But the arrangment, the whole scene, is really something for me.

And that day I had another class of global geography---The sky turned dark after 10 p.m. while according to my memory at the same time my home, Nanjing was completely dark around 7:30. That was really weird at first to me and caused me mistrust my constantly loyal watch.
Later when I got the answer myself, I thought I might be more weird when it was winter, or I was situated somewhere more north even to England such as, iceland.

I got to go too. It is now the National Day holiday, and we are going to my grandparents home tomorrow(you can read it here). I will be back sooner or later.


I have a question: Can you really view the pictures well?(well i can't)

my tagline, I made it weeks ago after the second bombing. It was not serious physically to me at all, but just the disgust it offered. I will talk about more later

I want to hear all about your trip to England, ^JB^. Hope it was great for you. I've always had a wonderful time in the UK.




And I can view your pictures perfectly, thanks!

Good to 'hear' your voice again, ^JB^.

Tell us more about your trip when you can.

I'm curious to hear about your reactions to the things you saw - did you do any grocery shopping while you were in England?

I love that typical street scene -- takes me back in a nanosecond.

Once For our group's project.
Orignally we just wanted to do something casually about the culture diversity. But gradually we came up with an idea about a 'global' 'cuisine' party.
A girl from Iceland prepared fish (dry stuff, she carried it from her home)
Another girl from Basque country/area prepared a splendid dish of omlette
For me, it is quite a shame that even I am from China...I just did some very ordinary Chinese dishes with bad skills.

To prepare for the dish we visited a grocery shop called Somerfield. The most awesome thing I witnessed was probably that highly-advanced (well in comparison with the equipment in China) electronic automatic 'shop assistant'. perhaps it was too adcanced, I was 'taught' to do nearly everything on it by a real assistant.
Not just awesome, a bit horrifying :wink:

JB

Well done! (I have that problem in Somerfields all the time)

Where were you based? At the school in Dartington?

Based? lol complicated

Well I spent most of my time in my host family, or host families. While our classroom varied, from St. John Church, to Kennicott campus, and to KAVICS main campus. Never in the main school though I frequently went there to use the computers.

And did you come to England to improve your English, or to go shopping at Somerfields?

On the morning of July.4th, as I promised and also strongly desired, I went deep into the heart of the city of London.
I didn't have a particular destination admittedly. I just wanted to have a walk in a typical western espcially European metropolitian city. And everything astonished me

First to the train station in West Drayton. There I bought a one day ticket--First thing that delight me in London.


Straight to Big Paddington Station. With that ticket I got into the tube on Piccadily Line (right with the spelling?)In retrospect, I realized that day I have just passed a place which was to be blown off days later----Edgware Road Station. I got off the train in Piccadily Circus, with no interest in any forms of shopping, I began my walk.

I don't know now how I have the courage to walk in such a big city withouth even a map in my hands at first! Many people told me that I have a good sense of direction and location, perhaps, I just often have a vague feeling of where I am and where I am heading for. After about 10 minutes' walk I finally reached a landmark----Crimea Monument. Beside it, a huge mass of people, most of them 'athletes' and logistical assistants taking care of the also huge number of bags on the ground-----It was a marathon, apparently.
But what's that for?
I had 3 guesses:
1. Making Poverty History
2. 60 anniversary of WW2
3. London's campaign for 2012 Olympics host city
Well I think the most probable choice is:All of them

From the monument, I saw a object in one of the most familiar shapes I had had in my memory. It was Big Ben.
Move!

This is a interesting discovery I made while I was reviewing my photos: Notice the same couple on the left of the Monument

The lovely logistical work done by Londoners made me understand what a world-famous real metropolitan should look like.