Natural History Museum

Hello everyone!

Unfortunately didn't get any work today, but I have already locked in Monday and Wednesday of next week as well as my usual Thursday Friday - yay!

So I made sure as usual to use my time well. Firstly I woke up and got a few things done. I then made a five minute video about my experiences this year, which is going to be shown to this year's teaching graduates at Monash. My tutor had said to me this time last year to message her in a year and perhaps make a video. She asked me to when I emailed, so I made one! I put it on Facebook to try and save it on my laptop, and everyone commented saying my accent sounds really British. I can hear a difference in a couple of words but I don't think it's that much different!

After a couple of productive hours I decided to get out and go to the Natural History Museum. It's in South Kensington and was the third and final one of these (the other two are the Science Museum and the V&A Museum) that I wanted to go to! The Natural History Museum opened in 1881 and houses a ginormous collection of specimens. I spent a great two hours here! The building itself was lovely, I took some photos of the inside and outside. 

As soon as you walk in there's a Diplodocus cast (a dinosaur) which is from 150 million years ago. In 2017 the blue whale skeleton will be here, it's being restored now!

I found the museum really interesting and learned a few good facts along the way, as well as seeing some pretty impressive things too. I saw the only complete mammoth skull ever found in Britain, which was found in Ilford. That's where one of my job interviews was in March! I saw an elephant bird's egg which has a circumference of 88cm and has a capacity of 9L, 200 times that of a chicken egg. These were in the foyer. I next went to a space and earth area where you ascended via an escalator into a model of the earth. Through it was an exhibition about volcanoes and earthquakes. I saw lots of pictures of Eyjafjallajökull which is the Icelandic volcano that erupted in 2010, and whose glacier I climbed in March. I read that the Haiti earthquake killed 220,000 people, the most an earthquake has killed since records began. And there was also an earthquake simulator, simulating what the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995 was like. I can hardly imagine how terrified people must have been, the simulator alone gave me goosebumps and picturing everyone running for their lives made me want to cry.  

My favourite section of all (after passing through a space section and couple of others) was the dinosaur section. There was an upper walkway that allowed you to see all the casts and skeletons and it was brilliant. I saw the most complete stegosaurus skeleton ever found, 90% of its bones were found all together and it took 18 months to dig up! Saw the heads of a T. rex and a triceratops - massive!! Tyrannosaurus means 'king tyrant reptile', and their bite was 8 times stronger than a lion's. When 18 years old the T. rex had a growth spurt of 2-2.5kg a day which meant they grew from 1 tonne to 6 tonnes! There was even a moving model of the T. rex and that was terrifying enough!!

I then walked through an animals section and saw lots of different stuffed animals including a giant deer who had antlers weighing a whopping 45kg. I learned that 500 million years ago an ocean split Britain in two and the Lake District and Scotland would've been the same distance apart as Britain and America are today!!

Last stop was a Giant Sequoia tree trunk that was 1335 years old, and then I headed out. I did some grocery shopping on the way home and then got ready. Tonight I headed out for dinner for my housemate Kate's birthday. Cecilie, our old housemate came too. We had dinner in china town near Covent garden, I had duck pancakes. Was yum but expensive as expected, ah well!! Was a good night meeting some of Kate's friends. Got the bus home and it is now pouring rain!!

Fingers crossed I get work tmro but if I don't I've seven teaching jobs sitting there waiting for me to apply!!!

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox