My [almost] brush with Royalty.

This week was the first time I came super close to actually seeing THE Kate Middleton up close and personal, but as you can tell from the tone of this sentence- my dream did not come true [yet].

Gold medals for London Olympics

The week started off with another trip to the British Museum. Nothing too crazy, but I did find the exhibit on the upcoming Summer Olympics. The museum offered a close up view of the metals and each design. After getting into a pushing fight with the 30 tourists around me, I finally got close enough to the metals to catch a few good pictures of what they are going to look like.

Speaking of the Olympics, there really isn’t much hype here. Maybe it’s due to the fact that the Olympics are still months off, but the only real sign of it is the countdown in Trafalgar Square and the logos on every piece of McDonald merchandise. At night, there is a free paper called the Evening Standard handed out in the tubes, which are great way to get a handle to the news. In the paper the other week, I read an article about how officials are worried since no one in London or England really seems to care about the upcoming Olympics. If anything, they are just super stressed out about it since they know that tubes are going to be overflowing with tourists and getting to work will just become a hassle. Well I don’t know about these Brits, but I am personally very excited for the Olympics and a little disappointed I won’t be here for them!

As usual, I hit up two new tea places where I got my pot of Earl Grey and lemon tart or cupcake. I have always liked coffee more than tea, but I am starting to change my ways. I got one of those water heaters for my room and I will easily go through at least 7 cups of tea in a day. Unhealthy? Maybe. British? Yes.

[Side note: Thank the lord I have my own personal bathroom. The massive intake of a diuretic is really starting to wear me down.]

The big day of the week was this Wednesday. I will start off with the less important adventure and work my way up to the apex of this week.

For my Health and Society class, we attended the Hunterian Museum - The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Basically, this successful surgeon named John Hunter in the 18C ran a surgeon school, discovered new medical techniques, and had a passion of collecting weird body parts in jars. This museum consisted two floors of body parts that were both human and animal. Along with the jars, there were preserved body parts that showed failed and successful surgeries. 

A fetal lemur in a jar. Cute or Weird?

A view of the museum and all its jars.

Skulls that have syphilitic scars. Syphillis seems to be a reoccurring
theme in my study abroad experience. 

An interesting find was the chicken head with a tooth growing out of it. Basically, back in the day when going to the dentist wasn’t a ‘thing,’ everyone’s teeth were falling out due to the copious amount of sugar intake juxtaposed to the lack of dental hygiene. The aristocrats used to buy new teeth off of the poor, so the rich could have beautiful pearly whites at all times. John Hunter wanted to study if the tooth implantation could be successful with the new implanted tooth receiving a blood supply from the new host mouth. To do so, he stuck a tooth into a chicken’s head and observed it to see if the tooth lived. Obviously it didn’t, but that man kept on trying and trying. The real importance of John Hunter is that he was one of the first guys to truly do experiments to get proof to back up any claims he made. While medicine was all touch and go at the time, Hunter made sure he ran a couple tests to see if what he wanted to do was physically plausible and made sense. While the tooth experiment failed in the long run, Hunter did have successful surgical methods that made him wealthy and famous.

Now, onto the glory of this week- as I am an avid tabloid reader (it’s my kryptonite), I found out that Kate Middleton was made patron of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Kate was an art history major at St. Andrews and received good marks, proving that she IS a smart cookie! Anyways, the National Portrait Gallery was unveiling a new Lucian Freud exhibit (yes, he is related to Sigmund Freud) and Kate was going to be there for its opening!!!!! In my frenzy of excitement, I decided that I was going to skip class that day and just sit in the Gallery waiting for her. After calming down, I decided skipping class was not a good idea, but I did agree to myself that I would go during my lunch break. When lunch finally arrived, I tubed it over to the Gallery and speed walked my way in. This is how my conversation went with the seemingly nice blond woman who worked there:

“Hello, when does the Lucian Freud exhibit open today?” – Me

“It is open to members only all day today, but open to the public tomorrow.” – Blond Chick

“Welll…..if I was Kate Middleton, what time would I arrive for the exhibit?” – Me

“Ooohh!!! She was here at 10 AM! They didn’t even tell me she was coming in!” – Blond Lady

Upset, sad, and rejected, I left the National Portrait Gallery. I had missed Kate by no more than 2 hours! I convinced myself there was nothing I could have done since I had class and it must have been super secretive since the lady working there didn’t even know that Kate had arrived!

Me, upset, after missing Kate.

Kate, looking impeccable, at the
Lucian Freud exhibit opening.

Well to my chagrin, later that night I logged onto my tabloid sites and lo-and-behold, guess what pictures graced my computer…KATE! The blond lady from earlier that day tricked me into thinking that Kate had already been at the exhibit when really KATE WENT AT 8 PM. She arrived on a red carpet to screaming fans….WHERE WAS I YOU ASK? Crying in my bedroom convinced that the world is out to get me.

I guess that it is not my fate to see Kate at such a formal event…I guess I will just need to run into her on the street so we could have a better one-to-one chat. Right?

[Side note: SHE LOOKED GORGEOUS. I still wish I had been there.]

On the same day I missed Kate, I registered to be entered into the race to get free tickets for the Diamond Jubilee Tickets Concert in June. Events for the Diamond Jubilee have started already and I could not be more excited. The more I read about Queen Elizabeth II, the more I just adore her. The concert will show case British arts such as Sir Paul McCartney, Adele, and Coldpay!!!!!!!! Even though I am pretty sure only UK citizens can register for the tickets, I went ahead with it anyway. The deal is that there are only 5,000 tickets for the free concert and in March they will pick out of the pool of everyone who registered to receive them. If you win the ticket, you also get a free ticket for a friend, so basically only 10,000 people will be attending this concert at Buckingham Palace. I REALLY HOPE I AM PICKED. I will lie about my citizenry if necessary!

I. AM. A. CONTENDER!

My next big event is the Queen giving a Diamond Jubilee Speech at the Westminster Abbey on March 12. I am trying to be in attendance.

Lastly, this week April Fools came early for me, as my hall pulled a nice little prank on me. As you can see in the picture, they newspapered my door. What you can’t see is the tower of junk in front of my door, so when I knocked through the paper, I also toppled over the tower and made a mess. I am now planning my retaliation. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks guys.... 

This week I learned that people go to the gym on the lunch breaks, which I find sickening, and I did ‘work’ for the first real time. While I have not been doing schoolwork, I have been completing the never-ending supply of paperwork for medical school. I swear I am not THAT lazy.

So, TGIF! I am off to an amazing weekend! Have fun in the snow at home!

The cats and I say HELLO from the British Museum.