Senate House Library

I have finally convinced myself to go to the library...don't ask me why it was that hard, but for some reason I always have a hard time convincing myself to come to libraries... I get more work done in here, but I can't be persuaded to leave the comfort and distractions of my own room... :-)

Anyway, on Monday and Tuesday we had classes (Music, Science, and Shakespeare) like usual with one exception. Our WWII teacher is out of town (in Florence) and so we didn't have that class, sadly. He is very entertaining and of course the subject is very interesting.

Recently I have been reading the Harry Potter books...and they have devoured my life! Once you start one it is very difficult to put it down before you have finished it entirely... But I am between books right now. :-)

Yesterday I came into the library to work on my science paper. When we got a tour of the library, it seemed so complicated and confusing, but I have begun to learn my way around and it was not difficult to find books. Just took a little searching. But it's a great place...especially if your computer does not work... :-P But hopefully I'll be able to get it fixed soon.

So, not too much going on here right now. Just working on a paper and on Sunday afternoon I may go to either Regent's Park or Kew Gardens. Haven't decided which. That's about all for now! Sorry there haven't been any pictures in a while... Since my computer is shot, I can't upload any yet.

Prayer requests: Focus (working on my paper) and sleep. That's about it! Thanks so much for your prayers!

Yay! An update!

Hey, I'm updating on Laura's computer while she's gone. (Don't worry, I asked ;-) ) Just wanted to let y'all know that I am alive and what I've been doing the past four days...

Friday, I went to the Greenwich Observatory with my 'History of Science in London' class as well as Jemima. It was a lot of fun and really interesting. We got to see all the original models of the first clocks (and most of them were still working!!). We also got to see (and stand on!) the Greenwich meridian!! It was a lot of fun and Jemima and I got to hang out more and talk. It was so good to see her again!

Then, I went to see the opera, Carmen, with the rest of my program. It was good and bad... The music was good, of course. But, it had been translated (badly) into English and in addition to that, they had a little screen at the top of the stage that projected the lyrics...just in case we couldn't understand the ENGLISH.... It was very very distracting... Also, they used cinematography that was odd and just suceeded in confusing us rather than adding to the opera. The director (who is actually a film director who was chosen to put on this opera) had cut out a lot of the dialogue (read: ALL of the dialogue) and that made it very confusing a lot of the time. So, while the music was good, that was about all that was good... :-/ But I'm still really glad that I got to see it and hear it. I recognized several of the songs...I'm guessing I've heard them at home. :-)

Saturday, Jemima and I got together at 10:15 to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It was a very elaborate and long performance to change TWO guards who stand in front of the palace... But it was really fun to see all of the people dressed up and to see all the horses. :-D After that we went to the Royal Mews which is where the horses for the royal family are kept as well as the carriages. We found out that mews comes from mutare which is Latin for 'to change' and a mews was where the falcons were kept when they were molting. Once, the Royal Stables, which were at Charing Cross, burned down and King George III moved the horses and carriages to the Mews which was closer (right behind Buckingham Palace). Over time, the mews became associated with horses rather than falcons. But, we got to see some of the horses (!!!!) that served the queen by pulling carriages and things like that. It was really neat! We got to see a bunch of the carriages, too.

That night, I went out with a friend to watch the Rugby World Cup Final between England and South Africa. My friend is from South Africa and they won, so he was really happy. :-) It was a lot of fun to watch a rugby game! I'd never seen a whole game before and it was really interesting and fun to watch. I'll probably try to see UNC's rugby team play when I go back.

On Sunday, I went to church. We had a Filipino guy, Rico, speak and he was really good! We also met some people who were from North Carolina! We found that we had several mutual friends and they invited us to have Thanksgiving dinner with them! Carol, the lady, had gotten pumpkin pie filling, which is unheard of here, sent to her from America. So I'll get to have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving!! Then we headed back here and I made some more Apple Beth. :-D

Today I haven't done too much. Jemima and I had planned to meet up, but sadly, it didn't work out. But I'm not too worried, because she is going to be visiting Paulien and Gijs at the same time that I do. So, I'll get to see her again! :-D I'm really excited about gettting to see them!


Prayer requests: That I'll be able to get my computer fixed soon. It looks like I'm going to have to find a IBM repair center around here. Hopefully I'll be able to find one and hopefully it won't be too expensive. So, you can pray for that. Also, it wasn't the best time for my computer to die, because I have a bunch of papers coming up in the next couple of weeks. Other than that, stuff is going pretty well. Thanks so much for your prayers!

Computer

Well, my computer died.. Something about a User Interface DLL failure... I'm not sure what it is, but I am trying to figure it out. But just to let you guys know, my updates will be sporadic until I can fix it or get it fixed... Just wanted to let you guys know!

Jemima!

Today I didn't have any classes and Jemima called me up to tell me she was in London. I met up with her at Big Ben and then we wandered around Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park for several hours, finding several different places that I could see horses, including the Royal Stables!!!! I am so excited about that!! We were going to go immediately to see it, but it had just closed a couple of minutes before we got there, so we are going to go again later. It was sooo fun to talk to Jemima again! It was good to see a familiar face and to talk to her about stuff and not have to explain who each person was every minute.

We talked about camp and about London and all sorts of stuff! We ended up having a couple of slices of cake on the edge of the Hyde Park pond and then I took her back to Victoria station with plans to meet up both tomorrow (she's going to Greenwich with us!!!!) and on Saturday to see the changing of the guard and the Royal Stables!!! It was so nice to see her and get to talk about camp and all our friends there. It was good to hear about her travels and all that.

Tomorrow our History of Science in London class is going to see the Greenwich Maritime Museum and Observatory. That should be so fun! And it will be awesome to have Jemima along with us!! I'm really interested in seeing all the stuff they have, especially the chronometers. I think it'll be a fun field trip!

Prayer requests: I got a good night's sleep last night!! It felt really good and my tendonitis hasn't been hurting today! It was so good to see Jemima! And I'm really excited that I'll get to see her again tomorrow and on Saturday! Thanks so much for your prayers!

Exploring London

On Saturday I had to register for classes so I decided to stay close to home. I went to Pollock's Toy Museum which is just a couple blocks away from me, I found. It was rather disappointing after all the other museums that I've been to. It was a bunch of toys crammed in a small house, normal size relative to houses here. The toys were all crammed in small cases and covered with dust. But it was still a lot of fun to see all the old toys and all the different countries that they were from. Then I headed back to the flat and registered for classes at 1:30.

Sunday I went to church and then headed back to the flat. That afternoon I made some Camper Stew (which is not made of campers, contrary to the apparently popular belief) and some Apple Beth. It actually turned out much better than I had hoped! I didn't have the right sugar for the 'Yucky Dough' that goes on the Apple Beth, because apparently our 'powdered sugar' they call 'icing sugar' which I found out after the fact... But it ended up very good anyway. I just have 4 different types of sugar on my shelf now...

On Monday I went to the London Aquarium. That was a ton of fun! They had a huge tank in the middle of the whole building that you could see on both floors. There were several places on both floors where you could see the tank. In this tank were maybe half a dozen sharks as well as lots of sting rays and other larger fish. I believe that there were several different types of sharks. Some looked more different than others. They also had freshwater fish, rainforest fish, and tropical fish and there were also small jellyfish and seahorses! There was also a 'petting pool' where we could pet sting rays. I got to pet one, on the top it was rough and felt a bit like sand paper and on the bottom it felt like jello. It was really neat! I had a lot of fun wandering around and looking at all the different animals.

That night, everyone came back from Ireland and France. It was interesting because I had gotten used to having the room to myself and not really ever talking to anyone so it was a shock when I suddenly had 2 roommates again. It took me a bit to readjust and get used to having to talk and having to share 'my' space with 2 other people and having to relinquish the idea that it was 'my' space. It was an interesting adjustment.

On Tuesday I had music class and then we went to a vocal performance at the Royal College of Music by Jennifer Smith and some of her students. It was a very good performance of a bunch of French poems. After that I had science class. We talked about our field trip for Friday. We are going to the Greenwich Maritime Museum. I am excited about that! It'll be interesting to see all of the old chronometers and other developments as well as the Greenwich meridian.


This morning we went to the Cabinet War Rooms which is basically a bunker that Churchill and his close cabinet worked in during the entirety of World War II. That was amazing!!! After the war was over, they had taken only what they needed from the bunker and then sealed it off. Then a while ago it was opened back up and people set it up the way it would have looked with some of the original furniture and wax figures and opened it up as a museum. It was amazing to walk around in there and imagine what it had been like. They even had most of the original maps still on the walls from 1945. Someone had drawn a Hitler on one of the maps in one meeting room and in another room you could see pin marks in the maps marking the progress of sea and air craft. It was awe inspiring to see all of that and imagine Churchill walking around in the halls and talking to FDR on the secret secure telephone that Bell Telephone had installed in a room that had been a broom closet. I spent about 2 hours wandering around and looking at stuff... I was so absorbed by it all that I forgot to take pictures until the very end and then went *back* through and took a couple pictures. It was really amazing.

After that I had Shakespeare class and we talked about King Lear and then we had WWII class and talked a bit about the Cabinet War Rooms since that had been a class field trip. Then we talked about the Italy front during WWII.

And I just finished talking to my sister on Skype. It was fun to talk to her again and catch up. :-)

Prayer Requests: Patience and more sleep. I think that's about it. Thanks so much!!

Craziness!

Tuesday we had music class and after music class, Laura's parents took us (Laura, Heather, David, and I) out to eat! They were really sweet! After that, I had science class and our teacher postponed the field trip. Which was a bit disappointing because that was the reason I was not going to Dublin with everyone else, because I want to go to Greenwich. Everyone had already made their plans for the weekend. So, all of my friends are gone this weekend.

That night we (the whole program) went to see MacBeth at a nearby theatre. I was interested in seeing it because Patrick Stewart was playing MacBeth. It was a very good interpretation of MacBeth. It was set in communist Russia. They had a very stark looking set: a very bare room with white tile walls, a sink, a counter, and a refrigerator with a television on top. It was a very scary play with a lot of blood and a lot of loud sudden noises. I enjoyed it as a play, but it is definitely not something I would have chosen to go to on my own.

On Wednesday I had Shakespeare class and we talked about MacBeth and Love's Labours Lost. I ended up telling our teacher that I went twice and she was very happy that I liked it so much! Then we had a short break so I came back and made guacamole for dinner. :-) Then we had WWII class.

Thursday we (Heather, Chris, little Katherine, and I) had been invited to have dinner with Dr. Oehler and his wife. He gave us some things to get for him. He wants us to get to know our neighborhood better so he sent us to get cheeses and dessert. He sent us to two different places to get each thing. We got to taste cheeses at the cheese monger. It was fun.

Dinner at Dr. Oehler's flat was a lot of fun. At first we were pretty stiff and uncomfortable but after a while we relaxed and had fun talking to Dr. Oehler and Alice, his wife.

Yesterday pretty much everybody left for Dublin (and Tracy left for Paris). I decided that I wasn't going to sit around here the whole weekend and miss them. So I made a plan for myself to see different places that I probably wouldn't go with my friends here. Yesterday I went to the Museum of Natural History. It was a lot of fun! I probably only saw about a fourth of the museum, but it was the fourth that I really wanted to see. Perhaps I'll go back with Jemima when she gets here.

I really loved seeing all the mammals and the birds (surprise, surprise). I also listened to a little recording about the sounds and songs that marine mammals make. It was really interesting to hear all the different sounds. Did you know that whales sing songs that have themes and different phrases within the themes? It was really neat to listen to a whale and hear the theme and the different phrases!

I also spent a lot of time in the bird room. It was a lot of fun to see all the different birds there. I also got to see a bunch of hummingbird nests, which were amazing! But it made me sad when I saw a huge display of hundreds of hummingbirds that had been someone's personal collection. They had tons of the same kind of hummingbirds. It made me sad that so many little birds had to die for someone's whim.

Today I am going to go to Pollock's Toy Museum. I found out that it is really close to me! After that I have to register for classes for next semester. I also might call up on of my friends who is here in London now and get together with him. I haven't seen him since summer 2006, so it'll be neat to see him again.

Tomorrow, after church and lunch, if there is time, I want to go to the London Aquarium. On Monday I am planning to go to see the London Zoo! I wanted to go horseback riding in Hyde Park, or in any park that I can in London, but I am finding that it is extremely expensive. I guess I'll just wait until the end of the semester to see if I have enough money left (which is looking very very unlikely) and then I might be able to go... We'll see.

Prayer requests: That everyone would have safe travels this weekend. That registering for classes would go well this afternoon (morning, EST). Thanks so much!!!

Tower of London, the Ritz, and Spamalot

On Monday I met Papa and Ann at their hotel at noon and we went down to the Tower Bridge and had lunch at a little restaurant. I had Shepherd's Pie, which was really good!

Then we went to the Tower of London and got a tour with one of the Beefeaters. He was really funny and told us a ton of interesting stories about the people who had lived and died there. It is really interesting because all of the Beefeaters who give tours actually live in the Tower of London, so it is still making history.

After the tour, since it didn't cover everything, we went to see the Royal Jewels. They were beautiful! We went on the Tower Walk and saw where different people had been imprisoned. We also saw several crowns that had had borrowed jewels in them that had been removed. They looked so sad. They didn't look at all like what they should have been. They were pitiful to see.

After the Tower of London, we went to high tea at the Ritz! That was a lot of fun! The food there was great and so was the tea! We had a bunch of different finger sandwiches as well as scones and pastries. Ann told me that the original reason for high tea was because back when women wore corsets, they were so prone to fainting (because they couldn't breathe) that they had to eat before the regular dinner around 8 pm, or 20:00 as they would most likely say here. The Ritz was very very fancy, of course, and they had live music.

After high tea, we went to se Spamalot. That was a lot of fun and very funny! It was the basic plot of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, only with more songs and with a few minor changes. It was really funny! We really enjoyed it.

After that, I got the stuff that Mama had sent me :-) and then said goodbye to Papa and Ann since they were leaving on Tuesday and I had class then.

Every Nation and Cheese

Today, I went to church with Papa and Ann. Some other people from the program showed up, Katherine, Katlin, and David. Laura also showed up with her parents, who are very sweet! Church was really good. It was very refreshing and afterwards I got to briefly meet some other students. I am thinking about going on their student retreat, but it costs 40 pounds and I don't know if I can afford that. I am thinking of making a budget for myself so that I know I can make it through the semester. That will be interesting.

After church, we went out to eat at the Hamburger Union. It was very good! We all enjoyed the food and it is really close to my flat, so I might end up going there again, providing my proposed budget will allow it. :-)

After that, they went back to the hotel and I came back to the flat and read some more Bleak House and then took a little cat nap while Tracy banged around. Then I made a quick spaghetti dish for myself and then headed over to the Winston House.

Tonight Dr. Oehler and his wife, Alice put on a little cheese tasting. They had four different kinds of cheese from around England. They were pretty good although there was really only one that I really liked. It was called Seator's Orkney. It was soft and buttery and didn't have a strong bite to it. I enjoyed it. Ann and Papa came and got to meet a bunch of the people in my program. Then there was a movie that they were going to show, but Ann and Papa decided to head out since they were so tired and I decided I didn't really want to see another war movie... Since I've been here, in the last two or mabye three weeks I have seen: The Gladiator, Braveheart, and The Wind That Shakes The Barley. I figure that is enough gory, violent movies to last me for quite a while. So I came back here and watched Evan Almighty and was very happy to get look at my cousin. :-) Yay, Jesse!!!

Prayer Requests: That Ann and Papa's luggage will get here....very very soon...before they leave... Because it has a bunch of stuff that I need and they need clean clothes... I think that's all for now. Thank you so much!

Love's Labours Lost...Love's Labours Lost....

So, Thursday night I went to see Love's Labours Lost at Shakespears' the Globe with everybody in our program. It was fantastic! I really enjoyed the whole performance. I was really disappointed when it finished. I wanted to see it again....so I decided to go again! I went Friday at 14:00 to see it again. It was just as good the second time around.

But there was one hilarious incident in the second showing... At one point the actors are throwing bread around on stage and then they stand still and talk in small groups because they have heard sad news. Well, since it was during the day, some pigeons spied the bread and started landing on stage! At that point, the actors had completely lost our attention, so the girl who was in the middle of her monologue stopped and walked over to the pigeons and stomped to drive them away. They all flew away in a flurry and she returned to her spot and waited until we had finished laughing and then said, "As I was saying..." and continued with her monologue. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed that moment and admire her presence of mind.

Today Laura and I got up at 5:15 to go to the airport to meet her parents and Papa and Ann. Her parents got in about 5 minutes after we got to the international arrivals part of the terminal, at about 7:50 or so. Then they decided to wait with me for Papa and Ann to arrive, which was supposed to be a 8:00 originally. We decided to get some coffee and sit and talk while we waited for them because they had moved the flight up to 9:03. Well, we waited until about 10:00 and then talked to the people at information who told us to wait 20 more minutes... We waited until 10:30 when I decided to find the DELTA information desk and make sure Papa and Ann were actually on the plane that had landed at 9:01, allegedly. They told me that Papa and Ann had been rerouted and that they had just landed. Well, I went back and we waited until 11:30 or so when they finally appeared, without luggage... Their luggage has been lost. It is supposed to be delivered to their hotel tomorrow morning.

I had a lot of fun talking with Laura and her parents. They are such sweet people! They were so friendly and very talkative. :-) I really enjoyed talking with them.

Once I got Papa and Ann to their hotel, we decided it was time for lunch since it was about 1:30 and I hadn't eaten anything aside from a croissant and some tea on the train, the Gatwick Express at about 7:00 or so. We headed to the Thai restaurant that I went to on my first day here and we sat down and had a really nice lunch. While we sat there, some guy walked in, sat down for a minute and then walked out. We all wondered what he was doing... We found out when Ann went to get her wallet out to pay... He had lifted it from her purse that she had hung on the back of her chair. Papa was able to go get some money and pay for lunch. They went back to their hotel and I came back to the flat.

We met up again at 19:30 for dinner. Ann and Papa had wanted to get naps, but had to spend all that time contacting credit card companies and getting all that straightened out. We had a nice dinner at an Indian place. It was a nice little place and the food was good, if a little spicy for me.

Tomorrow they are going to church with me and then we are going to the British Museum. That should be fun!

Prayer Requests: That Ann having her wallet lifted doesn't make this a bad visit... :-( Also, that she is able to get all of that stuff straightened out. All three of us are pretty exhausted, so you could pray for a good sleep for all of us tonight. Thank you!!

Class and the London Symphony Orchestra!

Tuesday I had class as usual: music class and science class. Yesterday I only had one class: Shakespeare. We did not have our World War II class because we were all going to hear the London Symphony Orchestra play!

We heard a violin concerto by Elgar and we heard Mozart's Requiem. The concerto was alright...the solo violinist got kind of squeaky at points, but overall it was pretty good. But I loved the Requiem! It was beautiful. The soloists were really good! The soprano was my favorite. The tenor was probably the worst...he was kind of reedy and didn't seem to know the music very well.

I just got back from a free concert at Bishopsgate where they have free lunchtime concerts. It was a violinist and pianist playing Bach's Partita for Solo Violin No. 2 in D Minor, Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor Opus 30 No. 2, and Tchaikovsky's Waltz-Scherzo for Violin and Piano Opus 34. They were really good! Sometimes the violin was a little shrill, but overall they were great. Both the violinist and pianist are 21. I thought it was interesting that the pianist was born in Israel and had come to London in 2002. I thought they both did very well considering their age, but then I'm not an expert on how good people usually are at that age. :-)

Tonight we are going to see Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe which is right on the other side of the Thames from us. I've walked past the Globe a couple of times. We will be groundlings, so we will be right up near the stage and we will be standing the entire time... Thankfully it is not one of his longer plays. But I am excited to get to see a Shakespeare play in the Globe! :-)

Prayer Requests: I am still really tired. Andrew got out of the hospital yesterday afternoon and was able to go with us to hear the London Symphony Orchestra!

Pictures from Canterbury

This is the Canterbury Cathedral, right inside the wall that surrounded it.
This is Laura, David, Heather, and Mary! You can see some of the fish and chips which were mostly consumed at that point. We ate that "junks" up fast! :-)

This is the 'Rose Compass' alter cloth. It was on the alter in front of the quire, where the choir sits.
This is the cloister at the Canterbury Cathedral. Cloisters always look like such quiet peaceful places to be. They are always very very green, too.

This is the oak ceiling in the Chapter Room. It is made of oaks that grow very very slowly, making them very hard hardwood. I think they were brought from Ireland.

This is part of the shrine to Thomas Becket. It was a rather scary looking shrine and I decided to play with my black and white setting on my camera... I think it makes it look even more dramatic. The two smaller swords with their shadows are supposed to represent the four knights that killed Becket and the large sword is supposed to make a cross with the thing that holds all three actual swords.

We saw this on a truck (delivering muffins, I assume) as we got out of the tube station back in London. "Hey, driver, give me all the muffins in your truck!!" :-)

Canterbury Tales

Yesterday we (Mary, Heather, Laura, David, and I) took the National Express bus to Canterbury. We left at about 9:30 and it took about 2 hours to get there.

When we got there it was rainy and pretty miserable. But we grabbed some brochures and things from the information center and decided to get some lunch as it was past 12 at that point. We had lunch at a little fish and chips place that seemed to be a local favourite. Next to where we had lunch was a exhibit for the Canterbury Tales. We looked at it and Laura, who had seen it before, told us it was odd and an a bit funny.

After lunch, we got tickets to get into the Cathedral and then decided that we wanted to have a guided tour. The next guided tour was at 2:30 so we bought our tickets for that and then left to go see more of the city. We wandered around a bit and talked about what we thought would be fun. The Canterbury Tales place kept coming up in conversation...

So we finally decided to go into the Canterbury Tales exhibit. It was hilarious! It was a series of rooms, in which was a different story, or tale. They all contained wax figures and it supposedly smelled the way that it would back then. It was a very musty, dank, and stifling smell. But it was a lot of fun. It did not have a lot of light, each room would light up a bit as we went in it. It was rather scary to see life-sized wax figures and hear voices in the low lighting...and when they shout behind you...that can be rather scary as well... But we had a lot of fun in it and talking about it afterwards. :-)

Then we went back for our tour of the Cathedral. It was a very interesting tour. Our tour guide talked a lot about all the archbishops of Canterbury who had been killed (totaling 5). He told us the story about Thomas Becket, one of the archbishops, who was killed in the Cathedral. It is a beautiful cathedral with lots of different styles of architecture and lots of different styles of stained glass all over the place.

Afterwards we all went to get coffee, tea, and hot chocolate at a cafe chain that is everywhere in England it seems, Cafe Nero. It was very good and our servers were nice and very generous. We sat around and talked and laughed and warmed up for a bit.

Then we wandered up and down the cobbled roads for a bit longer until 5:30ish when David, Laura, and I decided to go to Evensong at the Cathedral. It was beautiful! They had a good choir and I really enjoyed the service. It made the Cathedral a resting place for the soul. It was really refreshing.

Then we met back up with Mary and Heather and decided to get supper before heading back to the bus station. It took us waaaay too long to decide where to eat...everyone had to compare prices of the little pubs and cafes along the road... We finally decided on a nice little Italian restaurant next to a small river or stream that went under the road. The food was really good... Then we went to the bus station and headed back to London. It was a really fun day trip to take!

Prayer requests: Andrew is still in the hospital. They are planning to discharge him on Wednesday at some point. We are hoping that they won't have to push the date back any more. Papa and Ann are flying out to visit me this weekend so you can pray that they get here safely. Also, I've been pretty tired and a lot of the people in the program are getting sick... So you can pray for sleep and that the sickness won't spread. I think that's all for now. Thank you so much!!