I've just finished my second to last week in London *sniff sniff*
Last Monday we watched an old silent film called Trapped by the Mormons. It was made in the early 1900's, and features a dangerous Mormon missionary with mesmeric powers, who goes around spiriting innocent young maidens away to his holy city in the west, and the films particular duped damsel in distress is only saved by the timely actions of her dashing and debonair fiance. It was so ridiculous it was hilariously funny. We were laughing through the whole thing, especially the lines about "all conquering manhood". It's sad that people really thought the Mormons were such awful charlatans and kidnappers (occasionally even murderers). However, as we learned in class this week, due to a brilliant campaign of Mormon sports team and musical performance groups, their reputation has vastly improved since the era of silent film.
Tuesday night I went to Spamalot with a friend. It's a musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I remember a discussion with my friends in high school when we first heard it was coming out, and since Holy Grail was the source of endless delight and quotage within our group, we decided it would be awesome to go to Broadway to see it, and even whimsically proposed a series of elaborate plans, codenamed Operation: Killer Rabbit. Well, four or five years later, Operation: Killer Rabbit has been executed, haha. It was fun. It was actually a well put together performance with good music. They also used projectors on the curtains and parts of the stage, which I've never seen before.
Wednesday we went to the Cabinet War Rooms. It's a big underground bunker where the Prime Minister Winston Churchhill, his War Cabinet, and a number of staff members lived underground during the bombing of London during WWII. It was kept secret for years, and is located under a building near Westminster, where they sneakily managed to bring in enough concrete to poor a slab six feet thick under the building and over the bunker to protect from blasts.
This is the door, cleverly disguised as a toilet, which leads to the room where Churchill had an encoded phone that let him speak directly to President Roosevelt in the U.S. Even many of the people living in the bunker never knew about the phone.
One of the many wall size maps that can be found in the Cabinet War Rooms. This shows the coast of Africa. They used to use pins to mark locations and hold notes to the map.
A close up of that African coast shows how many pins were used in just this one spot over the course of the war.
Churchill had personal rooms here (as well as a dining room and kitchen) and he made many radio broadcasts to the country from his armchair. However, he only spent the night two or three times, though apparently, being something of a risk taker, he would often go up on the roof of the building over the bunker to watch the bombings in progress.I thought it was really fun that the donation box at the Cabinet War Rooms was full of American money.
In the evening we went and saw Handel's Messiah performed at the Barbican Theatre. I really enjoyed it, particularly the parts that I knew, like the Hallelujah chorus (where we all stood, in honor of the first performance, attended by the king, when he rose from his seat and remained standing through the Hallelujah chorus), also the bit about "he shall be called wonderful, counselor, the everlasting God", and the "and with his stripes we are healed." Don't ask me why I know those in particular, but I do.
Thursday we went to see Stomp! It's basically a percussive group that uses common every day items as their instruments. Trashcans, push brooms, paint brushes, buckets, kitchen sinks, plastic tubes, match boxes, inner tubes, etc. It's really cool. And it was fun too, because the percussionists interacted with each other. The stage is set up to look sort of like a ghetto area, and they acted out the part of good natured teasing and goading within a group of friends. Like, "Hey, look what I can do, what have you go? Haha, pathetic man!" All without speaking, of course.
Friday we went to the London Temple.
It's smaller than I expected, and right now the spire has a lot of scaffolding on it because they are (finally) getting the Angel Moroni put on top this next week. It's a simple temple, with pretty English garden grounds.There were a lot of us, so I actually ended up doing confirmations in a children's play room instead of the official Confirmation Room. We did a bunch of baptisms too. The sole guy in our group ended up doing all of the baptisms, and when you consider that about thirty of us went and we each did ten baptisms... yeah, poor guy. He was trying not to laugh during mine, but it was a struggle for both of us. I got "Jane Bond" and then "Mary Potter"; aka, the female versions of the book characters James Bond and Harry Potter. What are the chances of that?
The Visitor's Centre is also new, and they pointed out the mural, painted by a local artist, to us. If you look at the earth, you may be able to see that unlike the murals for other Christus statues, this earth is turned so that England is facing up.
I was glad I got to go. It was really a very sweet experience.That evening I went to another Brittania Singles dance and the Hyde Park chapel with some of the girls from the program. It was fun, and much needed. Everyonce in a while it feels good to just dance.
Saturday I stayed in all day writing papers. Eww.
Sunday we made it to church without incident. Despite having only 5 kids in Primary, it was crazy. The two little girls (who have always been quiet and perfect) suddenly decided to come out of their shells and ran around stomping on the stage, spinning circles, and shouting to me and the other BYU girl. The two older boys sat sulkily the whole time. We did make it through Nativity play and the songs a few times though.
They are absolutely adorable though, aren't they? From left to right, Rachel, me, Shania, and Sedoni (sp?).
Playing bus.
Being snowmen
We finished off the evening by watching that Christmas classic, Elf, with Will Ferrell. I have to admit, I didn't like it much the first time, but on subsequent viewings have enjoyed it immensely. It's just so funny and ridiculous. His character is just to far out of the accepted norms that it's slightly awkward, but endearing and funny. I giggled uncontrollably through the whole movie.
