May 17th: London

Today our class battled jet lag and got on the tube at 8:00am London time (3:00am NY time) to go to Wembley Stadium. Wembley stadium is one of the soccer facilities in London and hosts the FA cup games. It also was the site of the 1908 and 1948 Olympics. Although the stadium had been rebuilt multiple times since that time, a piece of the original stadium of the 1948 Olympics is displayed, the Roll Call of Honor. This is where the medalists and their sport are engraved. There was also banners and information signs listing prominent gold medalists from the '48 Games. One of them was Fanny Blankers-Koen, "The Flying Housewife" from the Netherlands. She won four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles, and the 4x100m relay, all while pregnant with her third child. After learning Wembley's Olympic history, we took a tour of the stadium where we saw the players locker rooms, press room and sat in the Royal Box seats overlooking the field. 

After grabbing lunch, we then made our way to the British museum. The first sculpture we looked at was a Minoan piece from 1550-1450 BC called "Man Jumping Bull." This sculpture is one of the first indications of man playing sport. Another interesting sculpture was called "Bronze Girl Running," from 6th century Yugoslavia. This sculpture may be evidence for women in sport at this time. Before even getting to our trip's stop in Greece, we learned some Grecian history. This is because the British museum  houses the marble from the Parthenon. The marble was salvaged by a British man at is kept in the museum. Engraved on the marble is a parade and at the end of the parade line is a family. This is unusual and to this day people are unaware of why the family is there. At the museum we also got the opportunity to see the Rosetta Stone as well as ancient Egyptian artifacts, including mummies!