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 10th or 11th 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!
No comments:
Post a Comment