More Nerdy Adventures

On Sunday my roommates and I went to the British Library, which is about a fifteen minute walk from our apartment. It was a gigantic library, but the most interesting part was the room filled with 'treasures'. It was a dim, climate controlled room that contained some of the most famous/important documents in writing. The stuff that I thought was the coolest was:
An original copy of the Magna Carta
A Guttenberg Bible
Original hand written lyrics to Beatles songs such as 'In my life' (they even had John Lennon cartoon scribbles all over them!)
Original letters written by Jane Austen
Original hand written scores by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven
It was all pretty incredible. The classical music alone had me blown away. I can't believe both the British Library AND the British Museum are within walking distance of my apartment. I am an in a nerdy girl's paradise.

In that same vein, I had some more archaeology orientations yesterday. I went on tours of the Institute of Archaeology, the Archaeological Library,and UCL's Petrie Museum, which is comprised of over 80,000 Egyptian artifacts (all of which were excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie, who is considered the father of Egyptology). The museum was pretty cool; it featured the oldest dress in the world (made of linen, it is over 6,000 years old).

And to finish off the day, the new archaeology students were invited to a welcome party on the top floor of the Institute. The party had free beer (in enormous cans) and wine. I sipped a Stella and mingled with my classmates and professors. I met kids my age from all over the place, including Finland, Denmark, France, Australia, and Japan. Whenever I told someone my home institution was in NYC, they were always very impressed.
"Ooooh, New York!" one girl answered. "That must be amazing!"
"Yeah it's not bad," I would reply casually, ever the bad ass. "It's pretty sweet."
It was a little weird drinking a giant beer with my colleagues at six o'clock in the afternoon, but I guess that's how they do it over here. Either way, I had a nice happy buzz as I walked through campus later that evening on my way home.