Things are different when you're in different places

LONDON TIME: 11:27 AM

Michael arrived yesterday in the early afternoon, after his harrowing trip from Dulles to Denver to London.  Now our group was finally complete.  Luckily, he'd slept on the plane, allowing us a full afternoon to explore the city further.  We wandered around near the river and had a quick bite (boxed sandwiches again) in the midst of everyone.  Following, we decided to take a boat to Greenwich.  It was a pretty good trip there, got to see a lot of London on our hour-ish ride.  Not terribly expensive either, only 3.50.

Greenwich was cool, totally different from central London.  Much smaller, more quaint.  We hiked up a hill in Greenwich park and enjoyed the great view for a while, then headed to the Greenwich observatory and hopped around the Prime Meridian.  That was interesting.  It seemed like sparks should've shot out or things felt differently when we crossed it, but the lack thereof was sort of a reminder of how arbitrary latitude and longitude are.  Still a neat experience.

The boat ride back was somewhat choppier, and for whatever reason I wound up somewhat seasick.  That was a pain, and made me somewhat less interested in dinner.  We picked up prepared food at a little store.  I bought a pizza that I baked in the oven in the hostel kitchen- an interesting experience since none of the knobs on the stove were labelled.  While it cooked, we sat in the common area of the hostel where we were badgered into playing beer pong with some Canadians by a drunk Australian.  Finally we wound up finding some friendlier folks.  

Not a bad day!  Basically, what we decided is that things are different when you're in different places.  And this is a different place, after all.