If You Say So....

I was skyping with my oh so loving boyfriend, this morning and he asked me what I had done yesterday. I said my usual, "not much, read a lot, walked around town a little, ate at some point....nothing exciting" and we then started talking about movies and football and I forget what else (sorry, Javi). Towards the end of our conversation I said something along the lines of "oh! at the Natural History Museum yesterday I saw...." to which he replied, "Kristin! you said you didn't do anything!" Now in my defense, I was only there for about 2 hours and I wasn't nearly as in love with this museum as the Imperial War Museum but I know what he meant. After (gently?) reminding me that some people actually do care about what I do on a day-to-day basis out here I decided I would blog a little about this museum as I've now been there twice this week. 
For starters, I wish I had not begun my tour of the museum with the "creepy crawly" exhibit. It really, honestly was creepy AND crawly and I certainly did gag a few times at the life size spiders and MASSIVE crabs. However, I did enjoy learning about how much more dominant female spiders are over their male counterparts! I'm pretty sure I knew this at one point but reading it and seeing videos showing it was pretty cool. This crab here on the left is 3meters and all I could think was, "I really, really, really hope I never ever, ever, EVER see that in real life." That shouldn't be too hard as I'm pretty sure this guy lives at the bottom of the ocean BUT point being, I was disturbed. Even worse in this exhibit was finding out about the bugs that live in ALL (it continually said nearly all but that means all right?) of our eyelashes that are supposedly necessary to keep our eyelashes clean. I hate the idea of that so much I wanted to cry right there on the spot but hey! I guess I haven't noticed them up until this point so I'll keep letting them do their thing. *insert shudder here* 

After being sufficiently scarred by this exhibit I moved on to.....DINOSAURS! Why is it that something so far removed from our past still continues to fascinate us? I know I came home and immediately started googling more about dinosaurs. How crazy that these animals ruled the world before humans were even a possibility! 64-65 MILLION years before humans are known to have been on earth. Oh history, you never fail to blow my mind! Anyways, I of course spent much more time among my new prehistoric friends than among the creepies and crawlies and actually learned a lot about the different types of dinosaurs and what they ate and who would have one battles against who.....Don't ask me to tell you any of it offhand because I won't be able to but it was fun to read about! This "little" guy over here on the right was probably one of the smallest replica's of dinosaurs they had on site but I thought he looked funny because he looks like he's searching for someone or something. I think he would have been one of the more friendly dinosaurs but what do I know.... 

Today I ventured back to the Natural History Museum for lack of anything else to do and not in the mood to wander to another museum today, and I walked upstairs to the exhibit on Darwin. Now, as controversial as this may be to some peope, the man makes a point! First off, I loved walking in on the side with all the cute lil monkeys!! I love monkeys! Probably because I wish I could move among the trees like they do, I just loved climbing trees as a kid! Ask my parents, I'm pretty sure I gave them a heart attack or two growing up. They'll probably claim more than that. I digress... DARWIN. Although the exhibit started with him and talking a lot about his ideas I was more intrigued by the comparisons between humans and the many different kinds of apes humans, or should I say homo sapiens, have similarities with! There are of course significant differences that distinguish us from the monkey family but did you know that some species have the same size brain as us?! Did you know that some of them even know how to make tools? There was even a video example of how certain monkey's understand the idea of seeing something from someone else's point of view. In the example it showed how a female monkey was hiding behind a rock with a male monkey who was not the dominant male monkey of her group so she should not have been with him. On the other side of the large rock the dominant male could see only her but not the other male monkey. It was all quite scandalous really, I guess it didn't matter since the screaming children were more interested in running around and through the exhibit hitting each other rather than actually reading anything about it. Though in fairness to them, a lot of them weren't tall enough to read the signs anyways...Side tracked again....
ANYWAYS. I didn't stay long at the museum today because I was tired and need to pack because tomorrow I fly to GERMANY!!!! 
I cannot express how excited I am to be going to see Thorsten (for all who don't know Thorsten is Javi's sister's boyfriend and he lives in Bremen, Germany) and spend time in the Christmas markets and enjoying more time traveling abroad! It still amazes me how easy it is to travel around Europe and reminds me on my more homesick days why I want and love to be here! I do have class tomorrow so I need to get off to bed now but I of course will keep you posted on my next adventure!


Love from London,
Kristin