Sunday

We went to mass since it was Sunday. My sister was sick so we again, did very little.

Nothing happened

Nothing happend. 

Touring my sisters school

We toured my sisters school and registered me and my brother for school. Charlotte's school seemed very nice and her teacher ( who we met as well) was also nice. She's a little nervous about school starting. 

I cut my hair

I cut my hair. Well, technically a stylist cut my hair but the idea comes across. My hair has been cut. I got six or eight inches off. I got it thinned and layers. My hair is REALLY thick. Really. It is also curly. And blondish? It light brown with blond mixed in. So, now my hair is about to my shoulder blades. I like it. 

NOTHING HAPPENED

I did nothing. 

Clothes

I went clothes shopping. I discovered that stripes are in in France this year. Like 80% of teenaged girls I saw at the mall were wearing stripes. There was also a ton of striped clothing being sold in the stores. I got two pairs of jeans, a striped skirt, a grey T-shirt, a navy and pink/red striped T-shirt, a pink shirt with rolled sleeves and buttons like halfway down the front, and a cream and blue striped shirt. That was fun. I inexplicably saw a lot of cat clothing for little girls. 

The fault in our stars

I saw the fault in our stars in French. It was sad in French as well as in English. I saw it English back in June and I've read the book a lot. 

Cranberry beans

We went to the market. There were tons of fruits and vegetables. Here were breads and cheese and sausage and spices. The spices made me sneeze. It was cool but it was kind of loud. It was definitely an awesome experience. We got cranberry beans and fruit and bread and lots of other stuff. The cranberry beans were actually really good. They are named not for their flavor, as I was initially worried about, but for their color. They are white and red, they're really pretty actually. 

Another fairly boring summer day

I went to the store by myself. So, my mom forgot to buy mozzarella and I went to buy it for her. The store is within walking distance of us so it wasn't a big deal but I am in a foreign country. So I bought mozzarella and sat at home and did nothing. Oh, I did play soccer with my brother and sister. That was pretty fun. 

Sorry

Sorry I didn't blog for a while. A long while. Here, I'll give a quick summery of the past few weeks and the I'll start with what's been happening lately. Like yesterday and today ect. After my birthday we spent about another week in Rome and then we left for Marseille. In France. We will be spending the next year in Marseille. My brother and sister and I will be going to school here. I have been practicing my French. Working on conjugating verbs and writing and reading. French kids do a lot more geometry than Americans so I've been working on that too. I haven't really been doing very much lately. Again sorry. From now on I will try to be more faithful about blogging. 

In which it rains

We went to two churches. First we went to Santa Maria Maggiore. There is a legend surrounding this basilica. It is that a roman man and his wife made a vow to donate their possessions to the virgian Mary. Then they prayed to ask her how they should get rid of their possessions in her honor. She sent them a vision and made it snow in August. The place where the snow fell was where they were to build the basilica. 

After that we went to the St. John Lateran's Archbasilica. It is the official ecclesiastical seat of the Pope. It's a cool church. The architecture is really beautiful. When we were ready to leave we walked out of the church into the kind of porch thing. It has a roof and 3 walls but wind and rain can blow in. So anyway, we walked out of the church it was raining and the wind was blowing really hard. We decided we would wait the storm out. The storm ended up going a while. It was really pouring for a while and people kept trying to sell us umbrellas. When it finally stopped raining we went to climb the sacred stairs. You have to climb them on your knees. It was cool. 

In which we do absolutely NOTHING

We didn't do much. We went to a park and we got gelato. 

In which we go to Rome

We left London. We sat on a plane for a while and I listened to a lot of music. I listened to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and a bunch of other artists. We got to Rome really late and we didn't get to our apartment until ten at night. Then, since roman stores don't close until late, we went to get gelato. I got lemon, raspberry and peach ( that was my dinner, okay). 

In which we eat naan

We went to the best Indian restaurant ever. Then we went to docklands museum. We learned about how the docks have influenced the growth and development of London since Rome. We saw tons of cool artifacts and we went through this replica of sailortown. It didn't have any fake people in it but it did have recordings of people laughing and talking. That plus the dark ended up giving the place a more than slightly creepy effect. It was one of my favorite museums in London. 

In which it is my b-day

We went to see the basilica of St. Paul. It was really beautiful and there was a portraits of each pope on the walls. Almost all of them were painted but I'm pretty sure the portrait of pope Francis was a photo. I think that makes sense because they can put up a photo really soon after he was elected whereas painting it would take months. Then we took a bus to St. Peter's. It was crazy crowded, the line was probably 1/4 mile long. We went to get gelato instead. We'll come back to the church a different day. I got three flavors of gelato, I got lemon, raspberry, and this ice cream that tasted like almond and sugar. It ended up being really good even though you probably wouldn't think that combination would work. Then we walked to a bakery and I let Charlotte pick out our birthday cake because I figured it was more important to her to get to choose. She chose a strawberry orange cake which was delicious. We had ravioli for diner and it was the best I've ever had. I picked out this clementine flavored soda to drink and I got a cookbook in French that has tons of pictures to explain what to do and it will make it easier for me to understand. That's about all that happend yesterday. 

In which we see sculptures

I'm really a modern art person. It is one of my favorite types of art and I especially like he sculptures. Naturally, when I found out we were going to Taft modern I was really excited. We saw a ton of art and I went with my mom because my little brother and sister wanted to go through it faster than I did. We wandered around the Thames for a while and we sat at a park because mass wasn't until 5 o'clock that night. We went to this itsey bitsey park and sat there and ate chocolate until 4 o'clock because that's when you have to begin fasting before mass; one hour before. Then we went to a church called st. Patricks which turned out to be a really small church. 

In which I look at rocks

Today we went back to the natural history museum. We figured that the mineral section would be its own trip and we were right. We spent like, forever in that part of the museum. They had the chemical makeup of the minerals written with the names and the place it was from written on a card but it was written like H2O ( water) instead of like Dihydrogen Monoxide( also water). I named all the elements in them and how much of each element and successfully annoyed my brother Teddy. We saw " the vault" where the natural history museum keeps it's most valuable specimens. I found the rest of the mineral exhibit more interesting because the vault was gemstones and gold and things like that I really like seeing all the shapes the crystals form in and the imperfections in the minerals are interesting. Once we had finished the mineral exhibit we went to the V&A. We saw lots of architecture and interior design and fashion design stuff. I really like all of those things because they're art which is awesome but they're art that has a purpose other than for the creator or beauty. 

In which we see skulls

Today we went to a market. We walked around for a while searching for something for lunch and cheese. It wasn't long before we found a stall selling meat pies that could be eaten cold so we picked up a few of those. We needed fruit because meat pies does not a meal make. First though, we went to a cathedral nearby for a bit. It was really pretty. After we had walked around in it we went in search of the fruit mentioned earlier. There was one stall giving out free samples of their strawberries and they were amazing so we bought them. We looked for cheese but there was a strange lack of British cheese. All of it seemed to be French. We realized that we were unlikely to find the cheese we wanted so we headed to the London museum. The London museum tells about britan from the Neanderthals to now. It was really cool to see all the artifacts. There were an aweful lot of Neanderthal skulls. 

In which I go to another science museum

Today we went to the natural history museum again. It's a good thing I really like science. We saw dinosaur skeletons. It was really crowded so it wasn't that much fun. We also saw the cocoon. I don't have that much to write so I'm just gonna tell you random stuff.

My favorite author is Tamora Pierce. My favorite color is periwinkle. My favorite animal is a dolphin. My favorite subject in school is science. There. That's good enough. 

In which we see some marbles and music

Today we went to the British museum, and the the British library. At the British museum we went to see the eygiptian and the Greek parts of the museum. We saw stuff from the Parthenon. They were called Elgin marbles. They were actually in kind of bad condition and their faces were mainly not visible. We weren't feeling the museum so we went to the British library for a while. We looked at the Magna Carta and the original copy of the lyrics for one of the Beatles songs. We even saw sheet music in Beethoven's own hand. That was significantly cooler ( to me) than the British museum. 

A side note

I've been referring to these posts as today even thought they didn't actually happen that day. I'm still catching up on posts so I'll tell you when it's actually the day I'm talking about.

In which I pretend to be a pirate

This morning we went to mass at the Westminster Cathedral. The church was built in the early 1900's. The tunes for the sung responses were different than I am used to but that can be expected whenever you are traveling no matter the distance. The church was huge and really echoey. After the mass was over we took a double-decker bus to a park. The playground was shaped like a pirate ship and I climb on it because I don't have that much time left that I can play on playgrounds. 

In which I get even more scientifically educated

Today we went to the London science museum. There were a ton of exhibits, some of them were more interesting than others. My favorite was the one that was about space. I guess are a lot of science museums in London. 

In which I see the city

Today we kind of got a tour of the city from my dad's friend. We saw Big Ben and parliament. We saw the outside of the Buckingham palace too. We went in the national galleries. There was a lot of paintings there. We went to a park and it was nice. London weather is really awesome right now. I keep hearing that it rains a ton but that hasn't been happening. 

In which I get scientifically educated

Today was my first real day in London. I slept 12 hours last night because I was so tired. We went to the natural history museum. There was a lot of scientific stuff there. It was super interesting. There was a exhibit about rocks and minerals that was particularly interesting. We only finished half of the museum so we're going to come back again and finish it. We had sausage and mashed potatoes for dinner. It was a fun day and I hope the rest of my time here will be just as good.