Most of the week was filled with homework, my family will be visiting starting next weekend, so I have been trying to get everything done ahead of time. On Friday, we had a two mandatory academic tours. In the morning, I visited Inns of Court, which is a school of law and an association. Every lawyer must belong to an association similar to Inns of Court. It was similar to viewing a college campus, but larger. It also has the oldest church in London within the premises.
In the afternoon, I got a tour of Lloyd's of London, which is an insurance marketplace. Companies or individuals have areas where they share risk in other things. Lloyd's started out as a coffee shop in the same location, where ships would be insured before they went off on their journeys. The Titanic was insured at Lloyd's. The building was all metal, a very modern structure. The elevators were outside of the buildings, made of glass, and they showed a great view of London from the top. They had a few documents that were signed by the Queen that I was able to see.
On Saturday, I went to Grenwich, where there is a market and the Prime Meridian. The market was small, but covered and there were really nice things there. The whole area near Grenwich was really nice! The walk to the Prime Meridian was a little longer than expected and we weren't quite sure how to get to it, but ended up finding it fairly easily. It happens to be on top of a high hill that overlooks much of London. I had never seen London like that and it made me realize even more of how big of a city it actually is. Even though there aren't many extremely tall buildings, the city just keeps going. I was able to recognize some of the major monuments from the hill and they looked much farther apart than what I know them as.
Yesterday, I had planned to get up early and do some tourist things during the day, and do homework at night. When I woke up, it was raining and the forecast said it would be raining the majority of the day. I decided to stay in and try to be productive. It had been quite some time since I had time to sit at home without a plan and it was nice not to go anywhere! Since I arrived in London, there have only been a few rainy days. From what I hear, I have been really lucky. Sunday was the first time rain intruded on my plans to do something outside.
Today was my last day of volunteering at the Abbey Centre. It was definitely bittersweet. I really enjoy helping the center out, but I will also be very happy to have my Mondays open from now on. I did about 45-50 hours of work with the Abbey Centre, from working reception, giving presentations, or coming up with a business plan. The employees were extremely grateful for our work over the past 7 weeks and were sad to see us go.
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