Bra-sil *clapclapclap*

Vanessa and I went to Westminster Cathedral today; it was pretty cool, actually. I personally think the outside of the building is rather ugly, but the inside is really pretty- I liked Bentley's marble halfway up, mosaics the rest of the way up, motif that he stole from Italy. We paid the extra two-fifty to take the lift up the tower, which had a fantastic view of Buckingham Palace, Parliament, the Gherkin- pretty much all of the really big, London-y things. I took many a picture, though a lot of them are for me to reference when I'm trying to write my Architecture paper.

I'm starting to get a decent amount of my reading done for my papers. Since I still haven't heard back from Harry (the study abroad adviser here) about what the registrar's office said regarding my midterm, I decided to assume there was no way around it, so am starting to make my plans to get back to London Wednesday night instead of Saturday. Plus side: I'll have almost all day next Thursday, and all day Fri-Sun, to work on my papers. Also, I get to sleep in as much as I want. And I'll be saving a decent chunk of money. Minus side: I don't get to go skiing in the Alps because I have a FORTY-MINUTE midterm scheduled for a week when nothing is supposed to be scheduled.

I actually think that the plus side outweighs the minus, at least.

USC Kevin, Vanessa and I went to the Brazil v. Italy game at Emirates tonight. The ride there was INSANE- the Tube was absolutely packed with people flocking to the game, and when it pulled in at Arsenal (the station) we could see a huge bottleneck at the exit... when the doors opened, you could hear the bedlam, fans for both teams were doing chants and singing songs and waving flags, it was spectacular. The Italian supporters were particularly prone to bursting out into song (so I guess I know where I got that from, eh? The Irish are singers as well, I suppose). When we finally got out into the street, it was still packed, and I just wanted out of the crowd a bit since I was getting claustrophobic... until Vanessa and I noticed the Brasil v. Italy scarves they were selling. We each bought one since it was getting cold and they were way adorable.

The Arsenal stadium was HUGE, and very cool and modern looking. Our seats were pretty high up, but we still had a good view (of a game that I understood very little of), and the atmosphere was just very fun. It looked awesome when the wave started going around. Brasil ended up winning two-nil, both the goals were down our end. The first time it was a very standard run-the-ball-down-the-field, beat-the-keeper type of shot, and then the second time was really exciting since it was more of the type where you think they've gone too far past the net and have a bad angle and there's no way they're going to be able to make it in, but they somehow miraculously sink it in the opposite corner.

We decided to catch a bus back to campus- good call, much less crowded- and it let us off right in front of Milano's Pizza. So of course we ate there. I also ran to a store really quickly to grab more cough medicine, since I sound like a dying penguin. I want this cough to just go away, kaythanks.