'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin'

Day 42

Well life has been a little more scholastic than usual this week, owing to the fact that we had midterms on Wednesday and Thursday. Add to the studying the kitchen duty, which is at least 3-4 hours every day, and you'll see why I didn't go any where all of Tuesday, and Wednesday I didn't get out till almost 7pm. Yes, I know we're all here on an academic trip, and we have to do school work, but it still makes us sad when we've come all the way England, and then spend all day inside doing homework. As you can see, we were quite exhausted with all our studying.Wednesday night I finally let myself get out. I went down to the Singles Ward Elder's Quorum activity. A little unusual, I know, but in this case, the activity was a dance lesson, so ladies were invited. We learned merengue (basically the easiest partner dance in existence) and bachata (probably the second easiest). They're from the Caribbean, and you see them at Salsa clubs a lot. I've done them once before, but it was still fun. I just enjoy the atmosphere of dances. To tell the truth, I'm feeling a bit dance deprived. I danced a ton over the summer, and then the past 2 months I haven't danced at all. But I still get weekly emails from the dance clubs at BYU about the activities, so then I miss it even more. So it was fun to dance again, in whatever form.

For those who are curious, this is what my bed looks like. I'm on the top bunk.
And my closet.
And my room. My bed's on the left, and that window is the fire escape.
Thursday we were off for a day in Stratford-upon-Avon, the town where William Shakespeare was born and grew up. This is a view of the English countryside and highway.
Anne Hathaway's cottage. Named after Shakespeare's wife, who grew up here. You can tell this is a real timber frame house because the wooden beams in the house are "wonky" (as our bus driver would say). I got a cool "mangle penny" here (that's what they call the penny squashing machines here). It has the entirety of Sonnet 18 in very tiny print. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..."
Cool archway and wood.
In fact, it's quite possible that Hathaway and Shakespeare spent time here.
This is a willow cottage. It's very popular for wooing couples. Shakespeare makes reference to one in Twelfth Night.
Shakespeare's birthplace. His father was a glove maker and quite well to do, as well as holding several positions in the town.

The town of Stratford.
The house Shakespeare bought after he was rich and famous. We made it here 4 minutes before it closed and asked if we could just run in real quick. The guides were really nice and let us take a quick look, and even gave us a shortened version of a private tour about the history and some of Shakespeare's works. Very very nice of them.

Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was christened, and where he is buried. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go in, but it was a very pretty church.The graveyard of Trinity Church.
Coolest tree I've ever seen in a graveyard.
The river in the town (possibly the Avon? I don't know).
Stratford at dusk.
We found this in one of the shops. I've seen the magnets, but I didn't know they made mugs.
In the evening we went to a play (Shakespeare, of course). We saw Love's Labour's Lost with David Tennant. He's a fantastic actor, who does film as well as plays. He's currently Dr. Who in the British television show of the same name, and he played Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter 4. In Love's Labour's Lost, he played Berowne, and he totally made the play. They say this play is "hard to read, but easy to play," and I'd have to agree. It's not my favorite Shakespeare play, but his character was just so witty, comical, and humorous, that it was great fun to watch. In fact, he's made Berowne my favorite of all the Shakespeare characters I've seen acted. This is what the stage looked like before the play, with the main male characters down at the fore. The stage was a tree with pieces of colored plastic hanging down from the cieling as leaves.
Friday was a free day, but I didn't go anywhere special. I did what I've been wanting to do for a very long time: I went to a park just to sit and read. It was beautiful. Here is St. James' Park.


Buckingham Palace
London
I'm reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. Really an excellent book.

St. James is noted for it's waterfowl. This very large bird sat on a bench and posed for like 15 minutes.
I managed to snap a picture just as the flock was coming by.
On the trip home, we had live entertainment on the tube. There's also a fiddle player, but he's out of the shot.

Going going going

Day 29

"Ladies and gentleman. Due to a person under a train, service on the eastern line is temporarily suspended".

Right. Now I'm not worried about the tube at all. Although I'm told that they actually have an anti-suicide lane you can hide in.

Friday we went to the Tower of London. It's something of a fortress. The White Tower, the oldest part, was built in the time of William the Conqueror.
Here's the portcullis, with variable water levels depending on the tide (the Thames is a tidal river).
There's a superstition at the Tower that if the ravens ever leave the tower, London will fall. During WWII, all the birds but one died, and gimpy little fellow. And obviously, London is still around. The British seem to take this supersition rather seriously though; they have a number of "pet" ravens in the grounds.
The guards at the Tower are affectionately called Beefeaters. They have to meet a whole bunch of requirements, including having served in the military for 30 years. Which explains why they're all old.

We also stopped by the Bloody Tower, which has been home to a number of prisoners over the years. The two missing princes were thought to have been imprisoned/murdered here. This is a restoration of the room as it would have looked while Sir Walter Ralegh was kept prisoner.
The window in Beauchamp Tower. Distinguished prisoners in the Tower didn't have it too bad.
However, they did have a lot of time on their hands. The walls have quite a bit of "graffiti" on them, carved into the stone by the inmates, or possibly someone hired to do it for them. This particular work bears the inscription 'my heart is yours till death'.
These guards are very young guys, but they stand all over and they're fun to watch march around at the changing of the guard.
The Crown Jewels are kept in here. Very. Sparkly.
I don't know if you can really tell... but this lance is really, really long.

After the Tower, we went to go see Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor at the New Globe theatre. It was fantastic. Absolutely hilarious, with an excellent cast. They had a semi-circle of stage built that actually came out into the groundlings, so I ended up watching the show from the inside of the wooden walkway.
Friday night there was a Young Single Adult (YSA) dance. We only got there an hour late, so the party hadn't started yet, but we crazy Americans singlehandedly began the dancing, and half an hour later, when people actually started showing up, it was really swingin. The Brits dance rather similarly to the Americans, but in a much more reserved, controlled fashion. I was actually walking back into the dance once after a short breather, and I thought, where are my friends--oh, the ones throwing their arms in the air and jumping up and down. The music was pretty similar too, though less hip hop and more techno feeling. Maybe a bit older too. I met someone from Ireland there, though it was so loud, I couldn't really tell he had an accent with him yelling in my ear.