To Float on the Wayward Wind

My final weekend in London: it came a lot faster than I could have imagined. While I certainly was wishing I could stay in Vienna for a lot longer than I did simply because of the magic of being in Europe for the first time, the great travels I had from there, and the majesty of Vienna itself, four months was a good time for me to be away. It is actually one of my critiques of Lawrence's London Centre that, while mirroring Lawrence's 10 week trimester schedule makes sense, 2.5 months just isn't long enough to integrate into an abroad experience. I'm jealous of the one student who did two trimesters there!! Anyway, the beginning of my final weekend was at Kensington Gardens, which I toured around taking tons of pictures before heading into the museum in the Palace itself. While Kensington gardens basically had me already with the skeletal trees and the autumnal colors (even though it was December by this point), one of the things I particularly loved about it was

My next stop was the Natural History Museum. While the museum's exhibits are a mix of quality, I had two very important personal revelations there. The first was that I  love  dinosaurs. Like most little kids, perhaps little boys in particular, I was always intrigued by dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus rex, newly discovered dinosaurs that might beat the T-Rex, scary sea dinosaurs, etc. The thing that I realized is that I am still just as fascinated by them. Part of the reason for this is that they make me feel like a child again, in awe of the power of a "kingdom" of animals that "ruled" the earth millions of years ago completely distinct from any trace of humanity (of course it later became humanity). Especially with such rarities as the first T-Rex bone ever found, it's just so great to walk through a museum and think, "Wow. This is simply amazing. I feel like I'm 5 and I'm free from all the cares in the world and I can just be amazed."