update!

I have been dreadfully unfair to my faithful readers. Lo siento. Get ready for the update of this past week. I'll start with Tuesday, since you already heard about the Tower of London on Monday.

tuesday:

We had class this morning - our Brit Lit class, which consisted of a discussion about the Sherlock Holmes novel we read this past week and then an hour-long grammar lesson. Apparently there were some problems with our papers that we turned in last week....

After class, I took the Tube by myself for the first time, which was rather exhilarating. I took the tube to Tottenham Court Road to get to the British Museum, where I met up with RACHEL AND WALLIS!!! (They are my roommates from BYU, for those of you who don't know. Rachel lives in England, about 45 mins away from London. Wallis came to visit Rachel for a week.) So, I met up with them and it was a surreal thing to hang out with them...in London. Still it was awesome to catch up with them!

The British Museum was awesome, too. I saw very amazing things, like the Rosetta Stone, Parthenon Sculptures, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and mummies. I forget how much I love history until I am face to face with it.

After the British Museum, we went to the National Gallery, since Wallis hadn't been there. I love the National Gallery. So far, it's my favorite museum in London. We went through and caught some of the more famous paintings. I think that I will have to go back one more time to finish up at my leisure.

After our museum time, we got yummy 99pence ice cream cones and ate them as we chatted and stolled through Leicester Square. That is how cool we are. Unfortunately, that was the end of playing with roommates in London, since I had to be back at the Centre for Evensong at 4:45, but I had the best time with Rachel and Wallis!

For our post-dinner adventures, we went to Picadilly Circus (the times square area of london) to get tickets for a show called "39 Steps." It was a mystery play (a.k.a. we got extra credit for our british mysteries class for going), but it was very funny. The amazing thing is that there were four cast members and they played several parts each. I love going to plays here and that one was just delightful.

wednesday:

Anyway, today we hopped onto our coach to drive a short (it felt short compared to our long excursions last week in cornwall – it was really about 1 ½ hours, which still isn’t bad) distance to Oxford. I have been so intrigued by English universities. Here is how English universities work, including Cambridge: it’s made up of lots of different colleges that are like their own little teeny university and altogether they make up what is known as “Oxford.”

I wish we had had more time to wander around and explore Oxford and I wanted to find the bookstore, but instead we enjoyed the wonderful scenery and I’ll buy a sweatshirt on Portobello Road. We got a tour of one of the colleges by a student who actually goes there, which was really fun and interesting. She was super cute too! I love the English fashion scene…well, a lot of it.

Anyway, Oxford is beautiful! The college we saw had quads where you can’t walk on the grass and it’s so pristinely kept and the building are so old. Lucky us, we saw a boys’ cricket team in uniform, which was great. Everything was so old, though, and you could tell it was absolutely seeped in tradition and history. We toured the Cathedral at Christ Church college at Oxford, which is the smallest cathedral in England. Also, the place where they filmed the Great Hall for Harry Potter was closed to the public (lame), but I consider a pilgrimage mostly complete for we took a picture by the stairs that lead to the Great Hall. Yes, the very stairs. Yes, I am a Harry Potter fanatic.
After Oxford, we drove only a little further to Bleinheim Palace. May I just express and emphasize how much I LOVE castles and palaces…royal residences. It was stunning, breathtaking, awe-inspiring! The palace is still in use by the 11th Duke and Duchess of M---- something….Anyway, they still live there, so we tour the other wing that is open to visitors. The palace was gorgeous inside – don’t laugh, but I kept getting real visuals for my novel! It was so ornate and so elegant!

AND THE GROUNDS!!! The gardens and fountains were stunning! They had paths, and pristine grounds and a LAKE and I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!! It was so expansive that I just wanted to run forever and fly kites and frolic and skip and laugh! I feel so free here!!!

thursday:

After class, I went with several girls to the Imperial War Museum, even though I’ve already been, I only saw the last floor when I went. Today I went to the other floors, which included the Holocaust Exhibit. It was an extremely sobering. By the end, I nearly felt…hmm, what’s my word…sick. Sick about what a horrible thing it was. I found it to be good to go, but it’s not a pleasant experience.
So, to establish emotional equilibrium, we got ice cream after the museum and then went to Primark, which is a huge store full of wonderfully stylish cheap clothes. I bought black tights (a London fashion must-have), black sweatpants, grey tights, and black flats. I’m not emo, I promise. :)
We ate a wonderful spaghetti dinner and then a few of us went to see a musical called “Blood Brothers.” I had never heard of it, but we had excellent seats and I quite liked it. I was unfamiliar with the music, and it wasn’t particularly memorable music, but the story was shockingly tragic towards the end. The acting was fantastic, as the actors portray themselves from ages 7 to late 20s. I thought they were super talented.

Apparently, thursday was our half-way day. And I'm feeling pretty sad about that, actually. Still so much to see and do in London!

friday:

hello! this morning we went to the London, England Temple!! We took the Tube to Victoria Station, and then we a train to East Grinstead, where we took a taxi to get to the temple. All in all, it's about an hour and a half each way. The temple is absolutely beautiful and the grounds are amazing. It was a perfect clear day today - a perfect temple day. Also, we planned and scheduled with the temple ahead of time, so that there would be enough workers in the baptistry. It was a wonderful, fabulous experience!!!

Starting today, I am on kitchen duty, which means I help with dinner prep starting at 4 in the afternoon. I was in charge of washing dishes after they were used in making the dinner and then using Hobarth, the sanitizer.

happy london!!