Torture In The Tower

Okay.  So the title is a SLIGHT exaggeration.  But we're getting there.

This morning was pretty awesome.  I'm not quite sure about the elective English yet but I'm so excited for the elective history.  There's a very small group of us and it's discussion based on one of my very favorite topics.  :D

Being away from home is still being a little bit of a problem.  It's hard.  Sometimes I just want to talk to my Mom or my sister and I can't.  I love it here.  I love the stuff I'm doing.  I love the things I get to see.  I love my roomies.  I love my classes.  I love riding the Tube.  I love going to the stores and trying to figure out what the labels mean.  I love trying to get up without creaking all of the boards.  I love the way the weather has been.  I love all the crazy things that keep happening.  But it's still hard and sometimes a lot worse.

But I'm okay.  Things are going great.  I feel like I've been here for a long time but it's not even been a week yet!  Every day I've walked for at least seven hours.  I've seen and done so many things.  I'm impressed at how quickly I've been able to get the hang of things.  This place is awesome.

We met up at 12:45 to get a brief introduction to today's awesome activity: THE TOWER OF LONDON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I usually have a "no more than three exclamation points at a time" rule but hey.  It's the Tower of London.  It deserves more than usual.

We all got stickers to act as our tickets and we were excited to see the Tower Bridge at a great angle for picture taking.  And then we began our time in the grisly but full of amazing history tower!

(And this next part was written the next day...)

On the way to the Tower of London listening to awesome music

The Tube ride was more interesting than usual.  A guy with a guitar and a guy with a violin came on and played some Irish jigs right in front of us.  They played three then went around asking for donations.  They got lucky to get such a group of thrilled American students and got quite a bit from just us.  There are better pictures of this but from other people.  Soon I'll do a post with pictures I've stollen from the other people in the group.

We all split up to explore the Tower but most us headed straight for the big stuff--the Crown jewels!  There's this little conveyor belt thing you stand out and it takes you past them.  Those were some pretty big rocks!  It's funny to think that they only wear those once.  I wouldn't want to wear one though.  I think my neck would be sore for a week.  Actually what most impressed me was the coronation clothes, especially the robe and the spurs.  Still wouldn't want to wear them but it was really neat to see them.  It'll be fun to look out for them during the next coronation!

Next we went to the White Tower.  I was thrilled.  Imagine both large and small suits of armor, giant swords, dragons made out of weapons and armor, sound effects, and more!  The White Tower was built by William the Conqueror a long long long time ago.  After years of a slightly embarrassing obsession about castles, it was so fun to be able to walk through one.  I feel like I appreciated it more than most people would have because I knew the explanations for things, like why the stairs are so windy and narrow, why the windows are built the way they are, and so on.  I was going up the windy staircases and through the chapels and things just in awe, remembering my days wishing I had been born in a time and status that I could live in a castle.  I don't think that would be such a good idea now but it was still very cool to walk through and think about it.

Is that a skirt?

ARMOR! :D

That is a BIG sword!

There were some great but kind of gross stories about torture, people who met bad fates in the tower, things that happened to the animals that stayed there and so on.  I walked right past the scaffold place without realizing what it was so I had to go back and think about all the people who had lost their heads at the place I was standing.  It was kind of cool to see all the graffiti marked on the walls by the prisoners.  There is glass over most of them to protect them but it's kind of cool to see the things they were writing about and even read stories about how something one person wrote helped someone else in the same prison years later.   Both nasty and cool.  This is also the place where I bought my very first souvenirs.  I bought a charm for the charm bracelet I want to make of all the places I go while I'm here.  It was an ax.  I don't think I'll forget where I got that one.

Tower Bridge

Dragon made out of various types of armor and weapons

Windy staircase: built for offense and defense, just like everything else in castles

A few cool facts about the Tower that I want to remember.  First is that there is a legend that if the ravens that live there every fly away, the kingdom is doomed.  I think it'll be all right because they clipped the wings of several.  Kind of sounds like cheating, doesn't it?

Cool door

Graffiti

Raven of the tower.  Also, a Beefeater in the booth that you can't see too well

Sir Walter Raleigh's study

Up a staircase

Scaffold site

The White Tower is behind me

Up in another tower with my Museum and other cool places buddy, Sarah

Unfortunately on the way down the long windy stairs of the White Tower, I started to have major problems.  My ankles, but especially my left one, have been hurting a lot.  I'd gotten used to walking for many hours a day so my legs and feet were fine but something was messed up in my ankles.  A very kind British guy who was walking behind me saw that I was having trouble and helped me get down the stairs.  At the bottom a lady who works at the tower asked me if she needed to call for help.  I had just got there and wanted to see everything else and I was kind of afraid of what the help would be (the guards?  The Beefeaters, or more accurately, the 'Yeoman Warders'?  Yikes!).  I said no and kept going along.  At the end of the trip, however, I was limping quite a bit and I had quite a bit of trouble navigating my way through the Tube and so on.  It made the whole thing less enjoyable than it might have been if I could have, y'know, been able to walk.

Waiting for the Floo Powder to work.  That's a giant fireplace I'm standing in.

I didn't know this was going to be a problem

My head is much too small for these helmets

Show me the enemy

My castle explorer friends

Groovy windows

In front of the Tower after the gate was closed

I came home from the tower and iced my ankles for the next few hours and then hobbled up the five flights of stairs to my dorm room.  Unfortunately I also had the top bunk which was difficult to navigate.  Also, the toilets are down a flight of stairs, the kitchen ("servery") and only area we're allowed food is all the way down, the classroom is a couple floors down... it doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's awfully hard to get up and down stairs right now.  Just walking is a challenge.  Hopefully things will get better soon.  Tomorrow we're going on our first away trip and I haven't even been to Hyde Park yet!  I went to bed and when I woke up one was feeling better but my left was even worse.  Doing some clever shuffling and maneuvering, I got up, got breakfast, went back up to grab my school books, went back down to the classroom and just stayed there until classes were done.  One girl brought me more ice so I elevated them and iced them during class.  Another girl gave me a piggyback up a couple of flights of stairs.  Everyone's been really nice about it but I feel so bad!  I tried not to say anything or complain about it but when you're limping and holding up everyone on the stairs, people are going to notice that something's wrong.

Everyone's at St. Paul's Cathedral right now with passes to get you into places that normal visitors don't get to see.  I wanted to go so badly but I couldn't go without holding other people back and without lots of help.  I'm so disappointed but it's better not to go, rest my ankles, and let everyone else be able to enjoy the visit.  It's so awful sitting here all alone in London when there's so many things I want to be doing though.  There's been quite a few tears shed today.  :(

I'm really grateful that everyone's been so nice about it.  Two of the boys came and gave me a Priesthood blessing before they left and several people have helped get my stuff up and down stairs, or in some cases, me up and down the stairs.  Still, I hate having to have people help me.  I was worried about health problems but wasn't expecting this at all.  I think I'll go to the Peter Pan house down the street and learn to fly...

I hope in a day or two I'll be off playing again.  Because this really, really stinks.

Or I could get me one of these