Christopher Wren and afternoon tea.

Last Wednesday, Dr. Pedarzani (our sort of adviser here) took us all out for a full English afternoon tea.  It was heaven.  First of all, we dined in the heart of the British Museum, which was a supercool venue for feeling rather posh - pinkies out when you sipped your tea!  We passed this on the way there:

Perpetuating the conspiracy!  Everyone got overly excited and began taking pictures; Paola (Dr. Pedarzani) looked very confused.

Secondly, it turned out to be a complete meal.  We all got our own pots of tea and towers of goodies - sandwiches, biscuits, and sweets.  Our table looked like:

Mmmm... my heart still beats a little faster at the memory of so much sugar all in one place.

On a completely different note, my architecture class has turned out to be a weekly themed tour of London.  Our professor is named Spike Sweeting and looks like he is secretly Dr. Who.  We're pretty sure he doesn't actually exist.  Anyway, I thought I'd post some of the places we've visited, in case anyone was interested.  I know most of the images have a really weird perspective thing going on; this is because I am short and the churches are tall.  Spires, sigh.  These are photos of churches by Christopher Wren, best known for designing St. Paul's Cathedral.  He was hired by the king to design 50 churches in the City of London.  He had a limited budget but was still expected to design churches that would make Catholics and Protestants jealous of the Anglicans (who apparently don't consider themselves Protestant; this surprising discovery caused a rather embarrassing misunderstanding for me), thus the spires and my weird photography.  He also had to build in awkwardly-shaped spaces, forcing him to get creative with layout.

St. Mary Abchurch

St. Stephen Walbrook + Starbucks (those few churches which survived The Blitz are now conserved but heavily built around)

St. Mary-le-bow

The front of St. Paul's Cathedral, which shows what Wren could do when he was given a limitless budget.

Mia and the side of St. Paul's.  It may look strikingly familiar: many capitol domes are designed after this one, such as our very own nation's capitol...

... or my favorite, the Washington state capitol dome, in my hometown.  When Mia and I first saw the St. Paul's dome, we thought we were back home : )

Hope you enjoyed the tour; more soon!