"Life, London, These Days in June"

Well, I made it back home to Kaysville after an amazing 7 weeks in London! It's weird writing about London now that I'm home, but I wanted to blog about our last few days there. It was such an amazing experience, and I don't want to forget anything!

Sunday, June 10

• Sunday was a really fun day, but also a sad one because we had to say goodbye to everyone. It was sad saying goodbye to Isobel and all the leaders in Young Women. I hope Isobel decides to get baptized! It sounds like she's on her way, and the ward has a Facebook page so I can keep in touch with all the members that way :) It was tough saying goodbye to the ward missionaries even though we'd only known them for a few weeks. I can't imagine how hard it would be saying goodbye to everyone going home after a mission! We got so close with the members even though we weren't in the ward long. We said goodbye to this one guy in the ward who always called us the Brigham Young angels. He'd always say, "It's amazing how Brigham Young's dead, yet he can still send us angels!" He was one of our favorites :) We also got to say goodbye to the young men from the ward after church. There's only a couple young women in the ward, which is why I think the young men loved us so much haha. They're such cool guys! We had so much fun outside taking a bunch of Zoolander and gangster pictures with them and just being funny. After saying goodbye to them, we went back inside the church and ate lunch with the bishop and his wife. They made us really good cucumber sandwiches, which is totally British. They have the cutest little girls ever! It was sad saying goodbye to their family; the bishop was awesome and so nice! I'm so glad I was put in that ward and hopefully I can keep in touch with some of the members :)

Monday, June 11

• Not many people can say they got to celebrate their birthday in London, and just the fact that I was there made my birthday pretty awesome! Monday morning we had our English final that lasted about two hours, and then we had a three hour history class after that. The rest of the day was spent studying for our history final. We did take a break between the test and class to go out for Fenton's one last time, and it was hilarious because it was pouring freezing cold rain! I've never been in school for my birthday, and I've never had it pour rain either! After studying all day, Kate, Katherine, Lauren, Kayley, Kennedy and I went out that night to get Gelato Mio for my birthday, but wouldn't you know it, it was closed. Go figure! We went to get frozen yogurt at Yogurtland instead, and frozen yogurt is actually one dessert that the states do better. It was still good though! We also went to a grocery store called Sainsbury's and stocked up on treats to help get us through the long night of studying. It was still raining that night, and we were all so tired and just went crazy hyper walking around the streets in our rain jackets eating frozen yogurt. It was so much fun to just go crazy and get rid of some of the stress from finals! It was a completely different birthday than what I'm used to, but the girls made sure it was fun for me :) I love those girls! 

Tuesday, June 12

•   We took our history final Tuesday morning at 9, and oh man was it rough. It took most of us three hours to take, and during the test one of the girls threw up her arms and just went into hysterics yelling "I can't do this!" over and over. Haha! That's what we all felt like doing I'm sure. We were all cheering her on saying "C'mon Whitney you can do it!" This whole time our teacher was sitting in the next room and he didn't say anything. It's even funnier looking back on that now! It felt so good once I turned my test in. I was so happy to finally be done with school! Tuesday during the day we packed, cleaned up, and went out for last minute souvenirs. That night we went to see Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe Theater, our last play with everyone there together. It was so cool being at the Globe! It was so exciting just thinking that that was where Shakespeare himself used to have his plays. The only thing not fun about it was that we were down in the groundling area, so we had to stand for the whole three hour play. That was pretty rough, but it was a good experience! We walked past the houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and St. Paul's for the last time after the play and got to see them all lit up. St. Paul's looked so beautiful with all the lights and it really hit me then that I was leaving the next day. It made me so sad to think that I might never come back, but then I realized I'm not losing all the friends I made over the trip! I'll still be able to hang out with a bunch of them over the summer, and then I'll be able to see them at BYU in the fall. London was such an amazing experience, and I'm so glad for the friends and memories I made! 

Wednesday, June 13 - Thursday, June 14

• A bunch of us had flights leaving at the same time Wednesday morning, so Nick scheduled a shuttle to take us from the center to the Heathrow airport at 6:30 am. That morning we had time to say goodbye to everyone, and it was so sad! After living with the same 40 people for 2 months you get really close! It felt like we were all a big family! After saying goodbye to everyone we took the shuttle to the airport, and had to wait a while before boarding our plane. Our plane ride was 8 1/2 hours from London into the Atlanta airport, and it was a long, long flight. I was so tired, but I couldn't fall asleep because I was so uncomfortable. I had to wear my rain boots on the plane because they wouldn't fit in by bag, so that was super annoying. The guy sitting next to me took up a lot of room, so I couldn't exactly stretch out my legs. At least I got the window seat! I watched three movies on the plane ride and they were all really good. I watched War House, which made me bawl! I was already so emotional because I was so tired, and the movie was so good! I was sitting there laughing at myself for crying at a horse movie, and the guy next to me probably thought I was so weird ha. I watched the new Mission Impossible and Singin' in the Rain too, all movies I had never seen before. After finally landing in Atlanta, I just about died walking off the plane into Georgia humidity in my Oxford sweatshirt and rain boots. We had a two hour layover there, then got back on the plane for a four hour flight into Salt Lake. I got to sleep a little on that flight, so it wasn't so bad. I woke up at 6 am that morning in London and didn't land in Utah until 2 o'clock London time, so in all it was about 19 hours of traveling. My mom and grandma were there at the airport in Salt Lake to take me home which was so nice! It was great to finally be at home again! I didn't want to go to sleep right away, cause I was afraid if I did I'd wake up in the middle of the night. So, my sister Courtney and I stayed up watching Vampire Diaries until 1 in the morning, which means I stayed awake for 26 hours straight (besides the nap on the plane). I slept through the night though, so that's good! :) Hopefully I'm not too jet-lagged today. 
• I had an absolutely amazing time in London, and I'm so grateful for the time I was able to spend there. The trip made me realize to be thankful for my own home, and its made me want to find the things about Utah that are unique and fun about it. Hopefully I can find some things :)       

Imperial War Museum, Sweeney Todd, and Oxford

Wednesday, June 6

          On Wednesday, we had our last day of English class, and it was actually kind of sad! Nick is a good teacher, and he’s also hilarious. On one of the first days of the program when we were introduced to Nick and Matt’s families, Nick told his kids, “Ok, you can go to school now, go to home school. Go to awkward training.” Haha he just has a funny sense of humor like that. On Wednesday he started class by saying “Let’s get down to business!” which we finished by singing “We are men” from Mulan. Anyway, after class we finished the Mrs. Dalloway walk, then went to the Science museum where they have an exhibit called “The Planets.” They recorded the London philharmonic playing “The Planets” by Holst, and in the exhibit they’ve singled out the instruments so you can go sit in a room and listen to just that instrument playing its part in the piece. I wasn’t that excited about going to the exhibit before, but once we got there I was totally into it! “The Planets” are really cool sounding, and of course I had fun watching the conductor go all out :)  

            We got back to the center for dinner that night, and then Kayley, Amanda, Katherine and I went to see Shrek the musical. It was a funny show, and it followed the movie pretty closely. It was definitely a show for kids, but they put in some parts that older people would appreciate too. They had a lot of things in the show that were making fun of other major musicals. In one song that Lord Farquaad sings, he sings a line from “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, and also the “I feel pretty” song from West Side Story. In one scene where Shrek and Donkey are traveling to go save Fiona, they pass by a giraffe that’s singing the opening song from Lion King, and he sings, “There’s a green maaaaan and a donkey!” Also, all the fairy tale creatures revolt against Farquaad, and the big bad wolf comes out waving a flag with a picture of the girl from Les Mis, but she’s wearing a Peter Pan-type hat. There were just little things like that that made it so funny! The actor playing Farquaad was good too. He walked around on his knees the whole time to make it look like he was super short, and every time he ran really fast across the stage it was hilarious. The songs were cute too! The only thing was that Donkey wasn’t very funny. It might have been though that I was just comparing him to Eddie Murphy the whole time, and you just can’t beat Eddie Murphy at that role! Overall though I liked it!

Thursday, June 7

          We went to the Imperial War museum on Tuesday, which is a huge museum on, you guessed it, war. We’re learning about WWI and WWII in our history class right now, so one of our assignments was to go to this museum. This museum was one of my favorite things we’ve done in London. They had a whole floor dedicated to WWI and WWII, with tons of things on display, like uniforms, guns, pieces of old fighter planes, and propaganda like posters and old documents. The coolest part was a recreation of the trenches they used in WWI. It was short, but mind blowing to see how it might have been for the soldiers down in the trenches. I felt like I was waiting in line for Indiana Jones at Disneyland actually, just because it was so narrow and dark and cold. Being down in the trenches would have been terrible! They also had a blitz experience part of the museum, but the wait to get into that was 40 minutes, so we didn’t have time for that. We went onto another floor, which was the Holocaust exhibit. The exhibit was really powerful. It did a good job of showing the state that Germany was in when Hitler came to power. The people were all for Hitler coming in and taking control. Every time I learn about the Holocaust though, I’m just amazed at how people could treat other people that way. They used to measure people’s skulls to see if they fit the correct “Aryan” size proportions, and they wouldn’t let some people have kids if they didn’t fit the size measurements. They showed a layout of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and had a replica of the gas chambers. There was a big glass case filled with the shoes of Jews who had died at Auschwitz, and it was hard seeing so many little kids’ shoes in there. The exhibit was good, even though it was hard to see how the Jews were treated. A quote on the way out of the exhibit was by Edmund Burke and said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” It just reminded me to stick up for what’s right!

After dinner that night, about half of us went to see Sweeney Todd. The only thing I knew about the story beforehand was that it was about a barber who killed people, and then made them into pies. That was basically what the play ended up being about, just more complex. They actually made it pretty funny, and the first half of the musical has this great song all about people being made into pies. It’s kind of weird, cause you find yourself laughing, and then you remember that you’re laughing at a song about killing people! The second half was a lot more dark and a lot more people died. It was a little weird, but I actually liked it! Imelda Staunton, who plays Umbridge on Harry Potter, was one of the main characters, and she was amazing! She was so funny, and had a great voice. They actor who played Sweeney Todd, Michael Ball, was Marius in the original cast of Les Mis. The singing and acting was fantastic, even if the story was kind of creepy. They were handing out pins for free afterwards, so I got one that says “I heart Miss Lovett’s hot pies” :)

Today, June 8

            

          We started out the day by heading to Blenheim palace, a palace given to the Duke of Marlborough after he won the Battle of Blenheim in the war of the Spanish Succession. I remember this mainly because we just got back from the tour only a couple hours ago ha. The weather at Blenheim was miserable! It was pouring rain, and cold, and super windy while we were trying to tour the grounds outside. Our teacher Matt quoted Winston Churchill and tried to motivate us by saying, “We will tour it in the cold! We will tour it in the wind and the rain! And we will not surrender!” It was better when we got to go inside, although the inside wasn’t too exciting. We saw the room where Winston Churchill was born, and got to walk past the doors where the current Duke of Marlborough lives. I think he’s the 10^th or 11^th Earl. So Blenheim Palace was beautiful, even though he weren’t very excited to be walking around in the freezing wind and rain.

            We went to Oxford next, and it was still just as cold there, but the wind and rain had died down a little. We did our souvenir shopping and got Oxford hoodies! A tour guide took us around the university later, and he was hilarious (we keep getting the funniest tour guides!) We passed a statue of a naked man and he said, “I was actually the model for this statue, but it’s far too cold to show you anything just now.” Ha! Oxford university is made up of 38 different colleges, and each college has its own church. Inside the Lincoln College chapel we were looking at some stained glass windows showing the story of Jonah, and the tour guide explained it this way: “Look out Jonah! There’s a damn great fish about to eat you!” Our tour guide pointed out the Oxford library, which is used for the library scenes in Harry Potter (unfortunately we weren’t allowed to go in), and he showed us the tree where Draco Malfoy gets turned into a ferret! I’m sorry if I made London sound like a huge Harry Potter tour, but it’s a big deal here and the tour guides know that Americans (me) want to hear that kind of stuff. After the tour, we had a little bit of time to walk around Oxford, but it was so cold that we just looked around a bookstore until it was time to leave.

      We were scheduled to go see Stonehenge after that, but the storm was so bad last night that huge old trees along the highway were uprooted and the whole road was cracked. This is the second time that something has kept us from going to Stonehenge, so it must be fate keeping us from seeing it! It’s a bummer not being to go cause it’s such an iconic place, but apparently it’s not that cool in person. Still, I wish we could have gone! We were able to get back to London with an open Friday night though, so that was good! We have a history paper due on Saturday and our two finals next week, so we’ve mainly been studying for those. Not too exciting, but hopefully we’ll get to party tomorrow for our last Saturday here! 

This Could Be Para, Para, Paradise

Monday, June 4:

• I know that Coldplay deserves more than a bullet point, but I have four days to blog about, so this is going to be pretty quick! I went to the Coldplay concert on Monday with Kayley, Mallory, Paige, and Romm. This concert counted as my birthday present to me :) There were other people from the group that went too, but they had bought their tickets earlier, so they were waiting at a different portal than us. While we were waiting in line we met a girl named KayCee who's here with the Theater study abroad group, so she came in with us. The concert was at Emirates Stadium, where the football team Arsenal plays. The two opening acts were by girls named Rita Ora (Britain's response to Rihanna), and Robyn (Lady Gaga-esque). They were both kind of weird ha, but Coldplay finally came out after hours of waiting, and it was so worth it! They sound amazing live, and we were probably within 30 feet of Chris Martin!!! They sang mostly new stuff, but had songs from their older albums as well. They sang all the songs I wanted to hear the most: Princess of China, Speed of Sound, Yellow, Clocks, Viva La Vida, Violet Hill, Up in Flames, Fix You, Every Tear a Waterfall, the Scientist... they sang more songs, but those were my favorites. The concert was very well done--they had five huge screens, lasers, neon lights, confetti, fireworks, balloons... the British know how to put on concerts :) We met these two nice 17 year old British boys at the concert, and went to get food with them after. It was fun talking to them about the differences between school and stuff here and in America. The streets were filled with drunk people after the concert, but they were being super funny and singing Coldplay songs. It was pretty great ha :)

Tuesday, June 5:

• Today is when Kaylie and I were going to go with the missionaries to teach, but we didn't realize that we were going to the Churchill museum that day. Also, the trip out to Catford would have taken a good hour, and it was just impossible to fit that in our day. I was so disappointed at not being able to go though!! I was so excited to have a missionary experience! When Kaylie and I called the elders from our ward to tell them we couldn't go, I felt like I was an investigator calling to cancel with the missionaries, which made me feel even worse! Hopefully I'll still have the chance for missionary experiences sometime. I'm glad that I've had the chance to help teach Isobel in Young Women on Sundays.  
• We had class in the morning, then went to the Churchill War Rooms museum in the afternoon. I actually liked this museum more than I thought I would. One part of the museum showed the bunker that Churchill and his cabinet stayed in during WWII. In one room they had a recorded speech from Churchill to the public playing, and I tried to imagine how it would be hearing your Prime Minister on the radio during such a scary time. The other part of the museum was all about Churchill and his life. It was really interesting! I could have spent hours in there!
• We just finished reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf in our English class, and it's set in London. One of our assignments was to take a walk around London to all the places she goes to in the city. It was fun to get out and see the actual places we had just read about. We only got part of the walk done though, because there was a Jubilee parade going on, which made it impossible to go anywhere fast.
• We eventually made our way back to the center where we ate scones with jam and clotted cream together while we watched the Jubilee parade on TV in the servery. There are just so many people that go to these things that it's impossible to see anything. Some girls in the group got to see Will and Kate and the Queen though! I'm so jealous! Our little English party in the servery was fun though. Alvaro and Thais had decorated the entire downstairs with British flags, so that was fun. And the scones were delicious!   

God Save the Queen

      Today was such a good day! The elders in my ward, Elder Oviatt and Elder Manga, invited us to come with them when they teach one of their investigators this week! So, another girl named Kaylee and I are hopefully going with the missionaries on Tuesday to teach an investigator for the first discussion. The elders are going to call her on Tuesday morning to make sure that we can still come, then hopefully we'll be able to go! I'm kind of nervous to go, but I hope so bad that it works out, cause that'd be awesome! The only girl in Young Women that usually comes is named Isobel, and she's an investigator, and I've really liked being able to teach her and watch her learn. Next week is our last Sunday here, which makes me really sad! Even in the short amount of time I've been in the ward I've made friends with some of the members, and I've learned so much from them. Today in sunday school, one of the deaf members asked me if I could write down the lesson for him as the teacher was speaking, but then someone came who could sign. Phwew! Apparently American sign language is way different from British sign language, like as big of a difference between English and Spanish. Some of the girls from the program knew sign language, so they got to help out a little bit. After church we had a little lesson in British sign language from some of the boys in the ward, and it was super fun to get to talk to them!

      Our church ended at noon, so after that we took the tube to the river Thames to watch the Jubilee celebration! Today for Jubilee 1,000 ships sailed down the Thames, and the queen was on one of them! The Jubilee celebration is for the queen being on the throne for 60 years, which has only happened one other time! We went down to the Thames, but people had been lining up there since early morning, so we couldn't see anything at all. It was almost more fun to watch all the people decked out in patriotic stuff and waving British flags. We boosted each other up so we could see over everyone and got to see the boats, so that was fun! It was also freezing and raining, so we didn't stay too long. We went back to the center and watched some of it on TV where we could actually see the boats. It was fun to be there though just for the experience! God save the Queen! :)

Every Snog Begins with Harrod's

      Today was the last day of our free weekend. We started out the morning by going to Borough Market, and it was just as good as I remembered! I got a raclette at the same place that I got the grilled cheese sandwich last time, and the girl standing behind me in line explained a raclette to be a "molten block of cheese" on top of a potato. It was cool to watch how they make them. They cut a big circle of cheese in half, then cook the top of it and scrape it all off onto a potato! It was SO good. It was probably a heart attack on a plate, but it was good :) We also bought some raspberries, and sampled pistachio turkish delight, checken, cheese, and bread with olive oil. My lunch was made up of the samples there ha. I really could spend my whole morning there, but we decided to go to Covent Garden instead.
      Covent Garden is more of a big market than a garden, but it's got a lot fancier stores than a market like Portobello or Camden. I went with Katherine and Lauren, and they had been once already, so they knew a store that had really good macaroons. I got a carmel and sea salt macaroon, and it was delicious! Covent Garden is in the movie My Fair Lady at the part when Eliza Doolittle is selling flowers, and Henry Higgins sings the song "Why Can't the English Learn to Speak?" I thought it was cool to be at the same place as Audrey Hepburn! We walked around the shops in the market for a bit, then on our way back to the tube stop we passed by a frozen yogurt store called Snog. We thought that was a hilarious name for a store! We were making jokes about it, and I asked Lauren if she wanted a snog, and this old lady walking past us gave us the weirdest look haha.
      We took the tube to Picadilly Circus to do a little bit of souvenir shopping, then we headed back to the center to take a break and figure out what we wanted to do with the rest of our day. We decided to go to the V&A (Victoria and Albert) museum, which is a museum about life in Britain from the 1950s up to today. Some other girls in the program told us that you could go and try on corsets and hoop skirts there, so we were wandering around trying to find that part. We ran into a tour guide and asked him where in the museum it was, and we ended up talking to him for about 40 minutes! We talked to him about how the police in America use plastic bullets, Abraham Lincoln, Obama, the debate about the right to carry a gun in America, and how JFK used to be in the mafia. He was a weird guy! He never even told us where to go for the corsets, he just told us things to go look at that might interest us. We walked away from him as fast as we could and left haha.
       We decided we need to save our money for really important things, so, naturally, we decided to go shopping at Harrod's! Harrod's is quite possibly the biggest and most expensive department store in the world. There are six floors, and it's got almost everything you can think of: clothes, food, shoes, TVs, athletic gear, furniture... I thought that maybe I'd look at the scarves just for fun, and they were about 700 pounds. Haha! Lauren and I walked through the clothes part and planned my wedding. Hopefully you're ok with that parents! :) Lauren and I bought cupcakes, so I can say I've bought something from Harrod's.
      We came back home after that and watched a movie called Bright Star, which is about the poet John Keats. It's such a cute movie! Keats is one of my favorite poets, so that made the movie even better. Only 10 days left of the program and it's such a bittersweet feeling! I'm going to make the best of my last week and half here. Oh and happy Jubilee weekend! This weekend is a big holiday called the Diamond Jubilee, celebrating the Queen being on the throne for 60 years. This has only happened one other time in history, and it was during Queen Victoria's time. Pretty cool! Tomorrow there's going to be some fun Jubilee festivities, so it should be fun!        

Grelfenwilfich & Pelfetelfer Palfan

      This morning, my friend Kate and I went to the National Portrait Gallery. They have portraits of lots of authors, musicians, philosophers, and even newer ones of Princess Diani, Prince Charles, McJagger, and Paul McCartney. I think those were my favorites, but there were also paintings of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, James Joyce, TS Eliot and tons more. We were supposed to go to the Gallery as one of our assignments, but it was actually pretty cool to see!
   
      After coming home from the gallery, we took a boat down the Thames to Greenwich. The boat ride was probably the funnest part of the trip. We went past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and went under the Tower Bridge, which I realized is in the Mummy 2, so that made me pretty excited! After the boat docked at Greenwich, we went to find this restaurant called Big Red. Big Red is a double decker bus that they turned into an Italian restaurant! So we ate pizza in the top of a double decker bus! It was pretty cool :) After that, we went to the Planetarium and Royal Observatory, which is at the Prime Meridian! At the Prime Meridian latitude and longitude are at zero, so that's pretty cool. They also have the official measurements for a foot, six inches, two feet, and a British yard. Not very exciting stuff, but it was cool to see! It cost 5 pounds to put your toe up to the "official" line at zero latitude and longitude, so we just stood outside on the "nonofficial" line. We went to go see the Cutty Sark next, which is an old Viking ship where you can walk under it. We thought it was going to be free, but when we got there the sign said it cost 16 pounds just to walk under the boat! Yeah right! Since that didn't work out, we decided to head back home. On the boat ride home we were getting pretty hyper, because we were all so tired. Amanda taught us how to talk in a way like ebbie debbie language, but instead of putting a 'b' after every vowel, you put an 'lf' after every vowel. We were already really hyper, so it was so funny trying to talk like that! My title says Greenwich and Peter Pan in Amanda's weird language :)
      
      After we got off the boat, we took the tube back to Bayswater, which is one of the three tube stations we take to get to the center. Kelsey and I got frozen yogurt, then we came back to the center to chill and do some homework. The homework hasn't been too bad, we just have a lot of reading. Next week is our last full week, so it's probably going to be pretty busy with getting ready for our finals. Anyways, we decided to watch a movie tonight! We're watching Peter Pan right now, which is one of my all time favorite movies :) I've missed watching movies, so it's fun to watch it with some girls who haven't seen it before.  


"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you. That's where I'll be waiting." --J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.