KCL - Day 15: In Two Places At Once
Today was Sunday, and I ventured out to attend KCL's Sightseeing Tour of Greenwich. Greenwich is a borough of London, about 40 minutes away from the London Eye. It is home of the smaller version of the London Eye, the Greenwich Wheel. It is also the site of the Prime Meridian, which separates the two hemispheres; if you straddle the line, you are standing in two hemispheres at once. This was my main reason for going -- I wanted a picture on the Meridian.
We took a clipper from the London Eye, and I was very glad I'd received my Student Oyster card in the mail the other day, because it drastically lowered the cost. As I stood in the queue, I held my new photo ID my hand, but soon noticed the girl behind me staring at it very closely.
Here's where I have to give a bit of background information: when Mom and I first got to KCH, when we checked in, the guy asked me my last name. The conservation went like this:
Me: Engelke.
Registration Guy: Which one?
Me: ..........I'm sorry?
Registration Guy: Which Engelke are you?
Me: Whoa.
I have never met another Engelke outside of my family. I have heard that they exist. But to travel across the ocean and find that another person with my name actually went to school with me -- I was determined to meet her, Judith Engelke. However, I forgot about my ambition after a few weeks until today, when the girl behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, "We have the same surname."
I literally stared and went, "Judith?!" (She then corrected my pronunciation -- she's German, and in Germany it's pronounced 'Yoo-dit') So we got a picture together, and wandered around Greenwich for part of the day. I met another girl, Sasha, who I went with to this fantastic Spanish tapas bar in Greenwich. It looked slightly sketch from the outside, but on the inside, it had gigantic wooden ceiling decorations that looked like ship steering wheels, and the whole place was slightly surreal.
I returned home to KCH and had dinner, before going to watch the movie-of-the-week with Steph in the Common Room. Afterwards, I walked back to Danehurst, my specific dorm building in KCH, where I ran into my friends Elisa, Stephen, and Rijan. They were cooking pasta in the pantry, and invited me to a late dinner. It was wonderful -- Rijan's a really good cook, and it was perfect compared to what we usually get in the cafeteria. Later, I only had to walk a few feet to be back in my room for bed.
We took a clipper from the London Eye, and I was very glad I'd received my Student Oyster card in the mail the other day, because it drastically lowered the cost. As I stood in the queue, I held my new photo ID my hand, but soon noticed the girl behind me staring at it very closely.
Here's where I have to give a bit of background information: when Mom and I first got to KCH, when we checked in, the guy asked me my last name. The conservation went like this:
Me: Engelke.
Registration Guy: Which one?
Me: ..........I'm sorry?
Registration Guy: Which Engelke are you?
Me: Whoa.
I have never met another Engelke outside of my family. I have heard that they exist. But to travel across the ocean and find that another person with my name actually went to school with me -- I was determined to meet her, Judith Engelke. However, I forgot about my ambition after a few weeks until today, when the girl behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, "We have the same surname."
I literally stared and went, "Judith?!" (She then corrected my pronunciation -- she's German, and in Germany it's pronounced 'Yoo-dit') So we got a picture together, and wandered around Greenwich for part of the day. I met another girl, Sasha, who I went with to this fantastic Spanish tapas bar in Greenwich. It looked slightly sketch from the outside, but on the inside, it had gigantic wooden ceiling decorations that looked like ship steering wheels, and the whole place was slightly surreal.
I returned home to KCH and had dinner, before going to watch the movie-of-the-week with Steph in the Common Room. Afterwards, I walked back to Danehurst, my specific dorm building in KCH, where I ran into my friends Elisa, Stephen, and Rijan. They were cooking pasta in the pantry, and invited me to a late dinner. It was wonderful -- Rijan's a really good cook, and it was perfect compared to what we usually get in the cafeteria. Later, I only had to walk a few feet to be back in my room for bed.