London : January 11th 2011

Today we went to the British Museum. We wandered around the museum and the first thing we see is the Rosetta Stone, only people are touching it which doesn't make sense. Then we realize as we get closer that this is just a copy of the original, so people could see how it would fell. So then we went and found the original which of course was behind glass. It was great to finally see this in person as i have always found Egyptian hieroglyphics interesting and this is what helped us to decode what the symbols meant. We also saw the Parthenon marble statues which were amazing in the way they were made. There is a big controversy right now over where the marbles should really be on display. Greece would like them back to go with the other collection of Parthenon sculptures. The British Museum on the other hand thinks its important to have them over here to influence their culture. In my opinion i don't mind that the sculptures are split up so much but that the individual sculptures themselves are split up. As i was reading the descriptions of the individual sculptures many would say that the head is Greece but the body was here, or the foot was here but the body was in Greece. That i think is wrong, they should at least trade certain pieces so the individual sculpture can be complete wherever it stays.
Also on special exhibit at the British Museum was the Drawings from Picasso to Julie Mehretu exhibit. Even though i enjoyed looking at all the different drawings by the various artists over a period of 100 years, i thought the title was misleading. There were only a couple of drawings by Picasso and that is what i expected to see more of. I feel like they used his name more than anything to attract people to go see the exhibit.
Next to this, there was a exhibit called Buddhism Across Asia that i enjoyed looking at. Buddhism has always been a religion that interests me and i like reading about all the different kinds of Buddhas.

We also stopped and looked at the Chinese Ceramics Exhibit. Right when you walk in there were the David Vases from the Yuan Dynasty. I had never heard of them before today but apparently they are popular. They were beautiful though with their beautiful blue cobalt dragons details.