So this week’s post pretty much revolves around my trip to Bath and Stonehenge... or at least the title of this post does. It was a pretty typical week… for being in London! Pah! Haha. Still lovin’ life and everything’s going beautifully for me. I’m really really really missing my friends and family back home. I feel so torn in that respect. I mean, I feel like I could easily live here and make a great life for myself, but I get so terribly homesick sometimes and I just miss America, although the Brits are much nicer to me than I expected they would be. I thought everybody hated America right now. I guess I owe thanks to President Obama. Thanks Obama. You kind of saved this trip.
Anyway, school at the Cavendish was pretty fun this week. I switched back and forth between year 1 and year 2 and two of the students still think I’m from Australia, which is weirdly cool, but I’m learning names and getting on with the staff even though some of them are convinced my name is Florence. According to my last post, I left off at Feb. 5 so to keep on truckin:
Feb. 6:
Today I went to the Tower of London and it was absolutely brilliant. I went with Ashley and Nickie, which was a really fun trip. We took the tube and I finally figured out where Elephant & Castle is because a very good friend of mine used to live near there and I was just curious. I love that name- Elephant & Castle- it’s so British!
Anyway, the Tower of London was basically where we got our load of medieval English history. My favorite exhibit was the one about torture and war, but of course the crown jewels were pretty awesome, too. Only one of guards, called beefeaters over here, yelled at me for trying to take a picture. I knew you weren’t allowed to take pictures, but I was like, “At least I’m not the one storing all this pure gold for people to arbitrarily peek at when people are starving in the world!” and I felt better about “my crimes.” Ashley was a bit embarrassed to walk next to me after that, and I couldn’t blame her, I was quite obvious and shameless with the camera. You can see the picture I took down below.
It was a beautiful day so Nickie, Ashley and I took some pictures in front of Tower Bridge, my camera died, though, so I’ll have to steal some of their pictures a little later. After the day at Tower Bridge, we went back to the flat and started playing drinking games. We never made it out that night, but it was a very interesting evening. Seriously, how many different versions of kings are there!?
Feb. 7:
SuperBowl Sunday. The game didn’t start until 11p.m. over here so I waited all day for that and did a little HW. I randomly skyped with some friend from DPU and I talked to Chance, one of my good friends from camp at the YMCA, for the first time since I’d been to England and he showed me snow! LOTS AND LOTS OF SNOW! And a Hitler parody…. It was a great convo.
I also had dinner with Emily at her dorm because 1) I needed a break from working and 2) I really hadn’t seen her in a while and 3) I wanted to stop by Baker St. to see the hours of the Sherlock Holmes museum—gotta plan a day when I can go check that out.
Also, I purposefully avoided talking about the end of the Superbowl. It still hurts…. But that halftime show, huh? What a winner! The Who? Yeah….
Feb. 8:
It snowed today! But it didn’t stick….
I had work all day today. It was fun. I gave a lesson on “what babies are.” At another time in my life, I might have seen what I did today as a complete waste. Oh how I am growing!
Feb. 9:
Today I had my Shakespeare course. I did not want to go. I mean, I really really really really did not want to go. It’s not that I dislike the class, but I just kept thinking of other things I’d rather do in the city. This city is so weird. It’s easy to learn here, but it’s hard to sit in a classroom… for 3 hours.
Finally, I convinced myself to go and, honestly, it was the best lesson we have had so far. We continued talking about Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, but instead of going over our group discussions from our boring online assignments we acted out bits of the play. There were a couple people who had stage fright in the class so I kept taking their turns. In a matter of speaking, their loss was my gain, right? It was brilliantly directed by the circle of students around us. I mean, I felt like I was working with real professionals. These kids are really smart. Not that I don’t feel I can’t compete, but, whoa…they are so intelligent. I’m truly blessed.
Feb. 10:
I went back to work for my full day of classes. I helped with reading and literature again. And they had a history lesson on the Regent St. Bridge or something like that, which I was useless in assisting (obviously) because I’ve never heard of it, but apparently it’s a big deal if you live over here, so maybe one day I’ll care, but not today… I instead went in the music room and helped some 2nd graders with the lyrics to Supercalafr…. Mary Poppins songs.
Later this evening I saw War Horse, which was very interesting. The play’s central character was (yep you guessed it) a horse, made out of wood and controlled by puppeteers. The horse, named Joey, didn’t speak or anything and it wasn’t incredibly Disney-fied, but I was blown away with how realistic the movements of the horse were. I mean, these actors, these puppeteers gave this pile of wood life. It was absolutely brilliant to watch. The two characters, Joey the horse and Albert the boy who takes care of him, become grossly attached and then one day Albert’s dad sells the horse to the army. So Joey is a horse in the British Army, going to France to fight Germans, and he is a completely neutral character, but it’s interesting to think how the horses were victims during this war, too, and it’s even worse because they had no choice in it. I don’t know, it’s just one of those plays that while you watch it, you don’t really take advantage of it, but then you leave the theatre and you can’t stop thinking about it. It was very vivid and it may have been the best play, I’ve seen so far.
Feb.11:
Today we discussed War Horse in class and we watched a video on the making of it. It was positively inspiring to watch these men take an idea that seemed to be complete madness from the start and develop it into something truly unbelievable. These life like horses were truly a vision and I wish that everybody could see this play. It was beautiful.
Feb. 12-14- weekend at Bath and Stonehenge
This weekend was really fun. I did a guided tour to Bath and Stonehenge and had such a wonderful time. Especially, since it only took about an hour to get to Stonehenge and then another hour to get to Bath. Stonehenge was impressive, but I really only needed to be there for about 10 minutes. Our group stayed there for about 45 minutes.
You could tell when we were getting close to bath as the hills got steeper and before you knew it they were turning into these great mountains. I looked over the edge as we were driving and you could see these great rolling hills down below us containing cute little picturesque houses. We arrived and parked at Bath Abbey so we could just get off immediately and walk around. The city was booming. It was a little chilly that day so I stopped off for some hot chocolate and kept right on walking. Then of course, I went to check out the Roman Bath house. It’s now a museum, but two grand bath rooms still contain the water that the hot spring empties into. The hot spring in Bath is the only hot spring in the whole country so it was cool to be there. Of course, there were contemporary spas all around the place, but the famous Thermae was too expensive for me. Maybe next time. Anyway, I had fun just walking around the city. I found a park and I walked through it, made a video of that and of a street performer, juggling fire nearby. It was an incredibly wonderful day. I had such a great time.
Feb. 15:
I have no work this week because there is this holiday called half term where the students get a week off in February. I guess the significance when they come back is that it is a new quarter. I don’t know. I didn’t really argue with it because it means that today I get to tour the city again! I went out with two of Rhoneesha’s friends who were visiting her from their study abroad places. Stevie, who’s studying in Dublin, and Diana, who’s studying in Vienna, wanted to go buy tickets for musicals. We went to Piccadilly to try and get some discounted tickets and they bought tickets for Les Miserable and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, plays I’ve already made separate plans to see! Can’t wait to go! Then we hopped on a bus to Harrod’s so we could go look around. I had not been back to Harrods since the first night I was there, so it was cool being back after all I now knew about London fashion. We went to the chocolate kitchen, too, that’s inside of Harrods and we had a field day! It was great. Eventually I made it back to the flat and did some homework for my Shakespeare class. Got a paper coming up! Shan’t get behind on that!
Feb. 16:
Shakespeare class today. Our professor invited us to go see another production of Measure for Measure, which is what we are currently studying, so I’m thinking about it…
Feb. 17:
Today was a busy day, but also a very productive one. Since I did not have to work today, I got to sleep in a bit, then I woke up and did some homework. I’m officially caught up on everything! So far this semester, I’m holding steady between the classes, work, and social activities. Usually, this far into the semester I’m so exhausted and ready to be done with it already, but I feel so energized every day, I just keep going. It’s really amazing. It also helps that I’m in a city where you never have an excuse to be bored.
When Ashley came home from work, we went over to Emily’s for dinner. She’s going to Stockholm this weekend, I’m going to Paris, and we probably will not see each other again until her 21st birthday!!!! So we had pizza, vegetables, and wine. It was a lovely meal and it was great to see Colleen, Kelly, and Amanda again. It’s been almost a week now… Haha. (Wolf pack)
After dinner, Ashley and I had to get going to go see this week’s play, “Every Good Boy Deserves Favor” by Tom Stoppard. It was a 65 minute show, so it was relatively short, but it was quite good. It was about a man who hears an orchestra in his head (the orchestra is actually on stage and they play at various points throughout the play), but nobody else can hear it besides him and, obviously, us, the audience. He has a cellmate… excuse me, roommate… who is charged for being insane because of some political uproar he caused. They are very different characters, but there musings were very funny. I enjoyed it, although I must admit, I was a little confused from time to time. The orchestra took up most of the stage, because it was a full orchestra, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for the show. I had also never been inside the Olivier before. It was again, at the National Theatre, where I saw Pitman Painters a few weeks ago, but that was in Lyttleton… this show was in the Olivier, named after Laurence Olivier. It was grand. And there was a museum in the hallway of the entrance, which was fascinating. I definitely plan on going back.
*Sorry for spelling or syntax errors. This was written in kind of a hurry. But what d’you want from me!? It’s my blog, so don’t complain. Just kidding, but seriously… don’t do it.
