What I Would Do if I Wrote a Post from the United Kingdom

Hi again!

I'm afraid that I'm going to be breaking the two rules this blog has in no less then two days. First, I didn't post yesterday (shh... Laura doesn't need to know a thing). Now today, I'm veering completely off of our theme!

Nevertheless, I beleive you'll forgive me if I keep a bit of an online diary of my trip to England. Memories fade fast, so you have to take action. Besides, I can make Laura jealous! ;)

Thursday afternoon, me and my parents all headed out to the airport to fly over to the land of tea and crumpets (sorry if I insult you, UKer's. I love you, I promise). It was a quick flight down to smelly Calgary (sorry if I insult you, Calgarians. You actually weren't smelly in the least, but my city and yours have a rivalry to uphold), and then we settled down for an eight-hour flight to London.

The flight went off without much of a hitch. I managed to get to sleep fairly easily and only woke up once, giving me a respectable 4 or five hours of sleep. By the time we made it to England, it was only 12:00 or so... or about  6:00 AM back home. That meant that we had plenty of time before bed, and we took it. We walked around Westminster Abby, Big Ben, and a half dozen monuments to random historic figures. We saw parks, headed into a Starbucks for lunch, and looked at yet more monuments of dead people. Only then was it time for the highlight of the day; an international soccer match.

It just so happened that on the day we got in, England's national football team was playing Lithuania's. Me and my dad joined eighty-three thousand others and headed over to Wembley stadium. Let me tell you; it was amazing.

Not only did we see the stars that I've only ever seen on TV in person, but we got some of the best seats we could have gotten to do so. Me and my dad made bets, they did some cheesy opening ceremony with floats and marching bands, and the whistle blew.

Now, let me interupt my commentary here to express my complete and utter amazement at one aspect of Wembley Stadium. More then anything else, I was impressed by the amazing, near perfection of their urinals! 

Now, let me tell you, urinals can be annoying. To be perfectly honest, I don't think that most guys actually like them as much as they pretend to. I'll be honest, and perhaps sacrifice some of my masculenity, when I tell you that I much prefere to sit and pee then stand and do so, for several reasons.

A) You can multitask while sitting, if you get what I mean. Two thing out at once!

B) It's more comfortable sitting down.

C) It's very difficult to read a book standing up. 

D) At public urinals, you're standing awkwardly beside another guy trying to aim. I mean, both of you are grabbing your private part and peeing in full veiw of one another! You can see why this is an unpleasent scenario for both parties.

E.) Girls, if you don't know this, then prepare to be forever grossed out by males. There's no toilet paper around urinals, so the only thing you can do is shake "it" and return "it" to it's rightful area. But you can't get every drop with the shake. Some goes back into a slight hole. So... yeah. This post is getting extremely awkward.

Anyways, I was just impressed at the functionality of thpse British urinals! Instead of the usual individual urinals, the Stadium had one extremely long toilet that everone could do their business in. Water flowed down constantly to take away your waste. Now, I don't know why I was impressed by this, but I was in urinal heaven.

Getting back to the game, England easily crushed Lithuania 4-0. Dad won the bet, and we went back to the hotel.

Speaking of which... the hotel is weird. You know the little drains they have on sinks? In my hotel, the way you get the water to drain is by pushing one side of the drain so that it flips up. There's no removing the drain- it just twirls around when you press it. As well, the drain is situated in a washroom which has doors like a walk in closet. Weird, right?

And there are more strange British things! You probably already know that the British drive on the wrong side of the road. But did you know that the doors on almost any given building open in instead of out? I personally was shocked by this. I mean... why? Even worse, our hotel is the one exception to this rule, which totally throws me off.

By today, at least I'd half gotten used to these things. We toured through Westminster Abby today, and I was surprised to find so many famous individuals buried there. James Wolfe, for instance, who died in Quebec (how do you do accents on letters? Sorry Quebecers) fighting in the seven years war. I was also able to soak up the creative genuise of writers such as Charles Dickens over in the poets corner. If this post is even better then usual, then that's why.

After the abby was the Churchill museum and war rooms, which both were impresssive. Having long admired Churchill, it was fascinating to learn more about him. For example, did you know that his parents were neglecting ones and he once escaped a prisoner of war camp? Also, that dude is uncannily lucky. He almost died more times then Hitler.

After the war rooms we called it an early day, and that's where we are now. I'd love to tell you more- there were many things I missed or glossed over for lack of time. I'd like to tell you how I'm rather angry, because it turns out that England hasn't rolled it's clocks forward again and so I'll have to go through daylight savings again, but I don't have the time. I'd also love to tell you that I was happy to see a bunch of drunk, overly loud Americans draped in flags, hollering their national anthem in an airport and making fools of their country, but I don't have time. Finally, I'd like to say sorry to Americans because they made up half of our readers, but I don't have time. Besides, we've got a rivalry to uphold. (By the way, people who don't know; Canadians and Americans really don't like each other that much. Sure, we pretend to like each other if we meet on the street, but when a group of Canadians are together, our good-natured attitude to our neighbors to the south crumbles slightly, and joles and imitation abound. Honestly, though, American reading this; we like you. It's your country in general and the negative things that seem to come out of it that we don't like. If we were to meet you, I'm sure that you'd be nice.)

Well people, I should probably call it a day now before I loss any more sleep or this blog loses any more readers. Until next time, thanks for reading.

-Mark