Ending.

What an exhausting week! I don't know how anybody visiting London for a week does it. I've been here for five months and I still have so many things I never got to see.

I came to a conclusion about my list of things to do: it's not as important as spending time with my friends. I've been crossing things off the list, and it's been really great. I went to the Kew Gardens the other day, and it was probably one of my favorite things I've done in London. It's absolutely beautiful. The Kew Gardens are the largest botanical gardens in the world, and I got to see plants and flowers from all over the world. It was a hippie-nature-lovers dream. I went to the Fashion and Textile Museum, which had a cool exhibit on Tommy Nutter but I hadn't realized that the exhibits they hold are the only things in the museum, so it was slightly disappointing. I went to Bushy Park, which was another Royal Park off my list, but it definitely wasn't my favorite park at all. It seemed very vast and boring at first, until I found a gated woodland area which I loved. I have decided to not go to Liverpool because Izabela and I thought it was far too expensive to get there, and too far away so we wouldn't get to spend a lot of time there. Brighton looks absolutely wonderful, but I wouldn't want to go there alone and I can't find someone to go with because everybody went there on the ISA trip (which I skipped because I was sick). I still want to go to the Freud Museum and Richmond Park, but that's it for my list.

The thing is, I've been doing so many of these activities alone... which I truly don't mind. I don't need to be with people to enjoy myself. London is always going to be here though, and I will always have the opportunity to come back and do all the things I never got to do and all the things I want to do again. However, I will never be here again with this group of people. The friends I have made here are some of the best people I have ever met, and it kills me that I have so little time left with them (and it kills me even more that I wasted so much time not with them when I was so stuck on hating London). We have a fancy dinner out together tonight, but that very well may be the last time I see some of them, and I hate that.

I have so much prep-work to do before going to Milan, and I have so little time to do it all, and I have so many things I could fill my last days with before I leave London... but none of that seems as important to me right now as making my remaining memories with the people who have helped me through this entire experience, the friends I've made that if it wasn't for them, I would have gone home a long time ago. I'm so glad I didn't, and I'm so glad I have them.

Well, that's about as sappy and sentimental as I can get. Take it or leave it, guys.