Half Term Week

Hello!  It’s me, Wilfred -- still living in London with my two dads! 

                                              

(This is me on our street)

This week is half term week at Ravenstone Prepartory.   At Ravenstone, the year is divided into three terms.  Fall term is September to Christmas, winter term is January to March and spring/summer term is May to July.  We get four weeks off in April (almost the whole month!) and we get a week off halfway through each term.  Winter term is already half over.  Can you even believe it?

The one sad thing about this half term break is that my teacher, Miss Moylan, is leaving us.  She is going to have a baby, so we will have a new teacher in Form 2 after half term.  On the last day of school before break, Form 2 had a big party for Miss Moylan.  We had lots of treats and dancing music and we wore funny masks that we made in art.  We are all sorry to see Miss Moylan leave, but she has promised to come back and visit us with her baby.

                                           

(Me and Miss Moylan)

Lots of my classmates are going away for half term week.  Mir Ali is visiting his brother at his brother's school in Scotland, and some of my classmates are going to visit their families in Paris, but Poppy and Daddy and me are staying in London.  This week, Poppy is busy with his work (he is a guest at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), so Dad gets to play with me all day long! 

The first day of break started with a great big bang.  Our upstairs neighbour is having some work done on their flat, getting a new floor-- and guess what happened?!  A workman fell through my bedroom ceiling!  Dad and I heard a HUGE crash and we ran to my bedroom door and a workman’s legs were dangling through a big hole and there was plaster dust EVERYWHERE! 

(This is the hole in my ceiling after they blocked it up)

The next day, plasterers came to fix my room, so Dad and I had to find something fun to do to get us out of the flat.  I told Dad that I wanted to go to the Natural History Museum.

The museum is only two blocks from our flat, so Dad and I can walk there.  On the way, I showed Dad what I had learned in my pedestrian safety class.  When you cross the street, you have to find a safe place.  On our street, cars park on both sides and down the middle.   Every block or so, there is what is called an island crossing.  You look right, then left, then right again.  Listen and THINK.  If you can’t see  or hear traffic coming, you can cross to the island, where it is safe to wait and where you can look again.

Our street, Elvaston Place, takes us to a wider one, called Queens Gate.  On the other side is the Imperial College London.   There is a different kind of crossing there called a zipro crossing (because it looks like a zipper).   At a zipro crossing, the traffic has to stop for pedestrians to cross, but you still have to be really careful because not everybody stops – especially taxis!  There are lots of visitors to London from all over the world and not everybody is used to cars being on the wrong side of the road.  Daddy and Poppy say it is tricky remembering to check for traffic coming the opposite way you expect – so at intersections, the city has painted a reminder of which way to look.

To get to the museum Dad and I walk through the Imperial College.  In the olden days, the College had five towers.  In the 1960s, they decided to tear the old college down to build a modern one.  The people thought it was too beautiful to wreck, so they saved one tower – the Queen’s Tower.  It has bells in the top, one named Queen Victoria and the others named after each of her kids (she had lots).  On royal anniversaries, they ring the bells and it plays a song that goes on for an hour of beautiful bell music.  The Queen’s Tower is one of my favourite things.  I am glad they didn’t tear it down.

(Me and the Queen’s Tower)

Close by is the Natural History Museum!  It has all sorts of neat stuff that explains everything about nature.
                 

(Me at the Natural History Museum)

When you go in, you go up an escalator that takes you right through the middle of a big sculpture of the world.  The first exhibit is all about how rocks are made from lava.  It explains volcanoes and shows them erupting and has really cool displays with lots of buttons to push and things that light up.  My favourite part explains what an earthquake is.  It has a room that looks like a Japanese supermarket and the whole room shakes and things fall on the shelves just like a REAL EARTHQUAKE!

                                          

(Me in a Japanese Earth Quake)

There are lots of other displays that explain wind and water and oceans and animals (and BUGS).  The museum is very old.  One of the oldest exhibits – back from Queen Victoria’s days – is a whole room full of stuffed birds in glass cases.  Some of the birds don’t even exist anymore.

There are lots and lots of really interesting things, but sometimes, the most fantastic thing is the building, which has great walk ways suspended in the air that make it more modern. 


And sometimes, it is just huge and amazing – like Hogwarts in Harry Potter.

               

If you ever come to London, you should definitely go! 

(I took this picture of Dad)

That is all for now.  I will write you next week and tell you what other exciting things we did on the rest of my Half Term break.   Talk to you then, Wilfie.