SLU 301—London, Oxford, Normandy

Wow, what an amazing trip. There was barely 3 minutes of downtime, but that was good. Who wants to do nothing when there is so much to do?! I went with a program called Student Leadership University. This is the third step to the program. SLU 101 is in Orlando, 201 is in D.C., 301 is in London/Paris, and 401 is in Rome. Though the sites and culture were incredible, the teaching and sessions that I attended were spectacular. God is wonderful. Anyway, I got to hear, listen to, speak with, get to know (etc.) some of the most incredible Christian leaders and speakers and meet some quality kids my age.

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Day 0: June 15 (we got there a day before the group). Well, we arrived in London at the Gatwick airport at 6am after losing more than half of our night through the time zone change. Needless to say, I was exhausted. Mom, Dad, and I went through customs, etc. (which, btw, are extremely lax in London compared with the US) and then rode the train and took a taxi to our hotel. It was fun riding on the left side of the road, and our taxi driver was cool. Being a taxi driver is a lot more prestigious in London than it is in New York...let's just leave it at that.

After getting to our hotel and taking a little nap (but not too long--we wanted to get over the jetlag quickly), we set off to eat lunch. We walked to a restaurant called... Texas Lone Star. HAHA. Yeah, it wasn't so great, but it was fun to see all these British people try to make a Texan restaurant. After that we walked to Kensington park. Whoa, it was SO big, and since the people living in the area had no beach, they adopted the park as their beach. Many people were in swimsuits sunning themselves. We then walked over to Kensington palace and looked at that. We didn't go in, or anything. We were basically just trying not to fall asleep on our feet. We were SO tired.

Then we went BACK to Gatwick to pick up Amanda who was coming from Belfast. We picked her up, went back to the hotel, ate dinner at the restaurant at the hotel, and then crashed.

Day 1: June 16. Amanda, Diane a.k.a. "Lady Di," Chris, Brent and I took the tube to go pick up all the rest of the kids from Heathrow. When they all started coming out of customs, I held the sign and directed all of them where to go. It was fun--one boy named Topher (short for Christopher) thought I was on staff. Virgin Atlantic had bumped 22 of the people in our group, so they joined us about 5 hrs later. I do not understand how these kids stayed awake all day. I'm so glad that we got there a day early. We drove around and took a tour of London and finally ended up at Tower Bridge to board our Lunch Cruise down the Thames. Our destination after Lunch was Greenwich. We went and saw the Prime Meridian, and I got to know some of the other teenagers on the trip.

We took the bus back to London and then went and saw Les Miserables at the Palace Theater. It was amazing. I had never seen the play live before.

Day 2: June 17. Today was one of the coolest days, not because of any of the speakers we had (the reason the days were usually awesome), but because...well...I'll just tell you the story of the day...

We got up, ate breakfast, and boarded the busses for the Cabinet War Rooms (which were pretty cool. It was amazing to be somewhere that so much had taken place. We learned about Churchill and Hitler as well), and then we went to Westminster Abby. Westminster was amazing. As I was looking up at all the stained glass and listening to the echoes in the building, I look down and think to myself, "Wow, that girl looks just like Elsie from Wheaton....No, it couldn't be...wait! There's Anne!" It was such a God thing. Wheaton's program in England was at Westminster at the same exact time! I saw Jeff and Kevin, too, and we went outside and took a picture. It was definitely fun times for all. I don't know, I was just thinking about how I missed all my friends up at school the day before we went to Westminster and then...there some of them were! God is good.

For lunch we went to the original Hard Rock Cafe in London. It tasted exactly like any other Hard Rock Cafe, lol. Then we went to St. Paul's cathedral and climbed all

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