"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. 

Singin' in the Rain!

      The nice thing about free travel weekend is that we've been able to do random things we've been wanting to do, but haven't had time. This morning, we started out at the John Soane museum. While he was alive, Soane collected tons and tons of random stuff and kept it all inside his house. He had huge rooms filled with statues, busts, books, paintings, a skeleton, and a sarcophagus! It was pretty cool, but the whole time we were walking through the rooms going, "...what?" The guy was like one of those hoarders on the TLC show! And apparently the sarcophagus in his house is the most valuable one outside of Egypt! It just seems so random that this random guy had the most valuable Egyptian artifact sitting in his house! Anyways, the museum was free, so it was worth it :)
      After that, we went to see the body of Jeremy Bentham at the College of London. Jeremy Bentham is this guy who wanted his body preserved for science in the 1800s, so it's been kept there ever since for people to come look at. It was honestly kinda weird ha. It was like being at body world!
      Next, we went up North to check out Highgate cemetery. The East side of the cemetery is open to the public (after paying some moola of course), and Karl Marx and George Eliot (the author) are buried in that part. That was cool to see their graves! The West side is closed to the public, and the only way to see it is to book a tour in advance. They only let 15 people in a day, so it's pretty exclusive I guess. Amanda and I were the only ones who wanted to go through the East part, and it took us a while to find Eliot's grave. Our tour was at 1:45, so we had to run through the cemetery to make it to the tour on time. Amanda and I have this thing with running late to places, especially in cemeteries! The tour through the West end was pretty interesting, but the only famous person I knew was the poet Christina Rossetti. The cemetery was way overgrown, but it made it look even cooler. I love the old cemeteries here! When we were on the set for Harry Potter, they said that Highgate cemetery inspired the gravestone used in Harry Potter 4! Anything having to do with Harry Potter is exciting ha.
      Right now in English class we're reading poetry from John Keats, and our teacher Nick told us we'd get extra credit for going to his house in Hampstead Heath. I really like Keats besides, so I was excited to go out to his house. The ride to his house took a while though, and we were all feeling a little worn out, so touring his house wasn't the most exciting thing ever. It wasn't even close to being inside Dove Cottage! It was kind of cool though, because Keats fell in love with the girl who lived next door, except for her family lived literally RIGHT next door, as in their houses were connected to each other. If you want to read something cute, look up Keats's love letters to Fanny Brawne. They're a little dramatic, but so cute :)
      We headed back to London to eat dinner, then we went and saw Singin' in the Rain!! I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, because Katherine told me it was all tap dancing and singing and what not. It was based on the movie with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, and the show was getting good reviews, so I decided it would be fun to go with everybody. We got to the box office about an hour and a half before, and got front row seats! And, the show was fantastic! The acting was so good, and the songs were so fun! There was a lot of dancing, but I loved it actually. The scene where Don Lockwood sings Singin' in the Rain was a blast, because it rained on stage and the actor kicked water at us! Then at the end they did one more number where the whole cast came out and danced and kicked water at us. It was so fun! We got pretty wet, and I was just smiling the whole time. It was a fun way to end the day :)

   

"Rain or Shine... It's Potter Time!"

Monday, May 28

• We had our history midterm today, which took about three hours to take. Pretty much the entire morning we spent studying, but then, after dinner, we went and saw Wicked!! It was my first time seeing it, so I was so excited! The set was amazing! The songs were so good too. I bawled when they sang "For Good." We had pretty good seats too, so it was a great experience! It was totally wicked!! :)

Tuesday, May 29

• We had six hours of class today! We had three hours of English, then three hours of History. It was a pretty tiring day. After dinner, we went to Picadilly Circus for a girls' night out. First, we did some shopping. I got a Manchester United jersey, and I was pretty excited about it :) We went to a store called Cool Britannia, which is the ultimate tourism/souvenir shop of London. They have everything Britain that you could possibly imagine, even Will & Kate mugs. We got some ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, then went to the movie theater to see The Lucky One with Zac Efron. It was cute! All of us had been really wanting to go the movies, so it was fun to go out and see a check flick :)

Wednesday, May 30

• Today was the first day of free travel weekend. About half of us decided to stay in London and do all there is to do here, and we started out our day (after class) by taking a double decker bus to Warner Bros. Studios for a tour of The Making of Harry Potter!! They have on display tons and tons of props, sets, make-up, and costumes in the studio. The tour started out in the Great Hall-- yes, THE Great Hall!! There were mannequins of Hagrid, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Filch, Snape, Trelawney, Mad-Eye, and Flitwick, wearing their costumes from the movies! Around the Great Hall were the robes of the different houses, including the robes Robert Pattinson wore! A tour guide took us through the Great Hall, but then after that the tour was self guided. There was so much stuff to see! They had props from every movie, and information about the directors and filmmaking. They had the sets of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, the Gryffindor common room, Dumbledore's office, Hagrid's hut, the Potion's classroom, the Burrow and Diagon Alley. Outside, they also had the Knight Bus, the skeleton statue in the cemetery from Goblet of Fire, #4 Privet Drive, the bridge at Hogwarts, and Godric's Hollow. I saw the invisibility cloak, all the wands and broomsticks they used, Mad-Eye's trunk, the sorting hat, Basilisk, Aragog, Buckbeak, dobby, all the horcruxes (not including Harry and Nagini), and tons more! We were all freaking out the whole time! We got some butterbeer about halfway through and it was sooo good! It was basically like cream soda with whipped cream, but better! After the tour we stopped in the gift shop to get some chocolate frogs and fizzing whizbees. I really wanted to get Nicholas Flamel's wizard card, but I got Dumbledore, which was still way cool! It was so exciting to see all the props that were used in the actual movies! After the tour we were talking about why Harry Potter is such a big deal, at least to us, because the books and movies have been with us almost our entire lives! We've grown up with Harry Potter, and now it's so sad that the books and movies are over! We're watching Harry Potter 7:2 right now actually :) It was fun to just be a nerd with lots of other girls who are just as big a nerd as me :) I'll for sure be putting up some pictures when I get better internet. 
• After the tour we went to an Asian restaurant called Wagamama's. It was super good! All in all, today was super amazingly awesome! I just love that London has something for everyone. No matter where we go we always end up having a crazy fun adventure. I loved being able to go and do something today that was uniquely London, something that I would never get to do back home. Mischief Managed :)

       

Northern England/Scotland

Ok, I'm going to do this blog a little differently, because I'm so far behind. Here we go!

Monday, May 21

• The picture is of Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth's home for about a decade. Such a cool experience to eat dinner there!
• The day started out with a coach ride to Preston, where the first Saints were baptized in England. 
• We got a guided tour of the MTC in Preston, then went to see the temple there. It's so pretty! 
• We drove into Ambleside, which is in the Lake District, the most beautiful place I've ever seen! It was amazing!
• That night half of us had dinner in Dove Cottage. We were the second group ever to eat dinner in there, it's not something they normally do. It was so cool! The food was pretty good too. We had this stew called Coleridge stew, mashed carrots, and potatoes.
•  That night we had room assignments, and I roomed with Kayley and Emily in a cute little bed and breakfast.

Tuesday, May 22

• We went hiking pretty much all day this day. We went hiking to a lake called Loughrigg Tarn, (Tarn means lake here), which was beautiful! On the hike back we passed by two other lakes, which were also very beautiful.
• We got to explore Ambleside a little bit. It was such a cute little town! 
• We hiked to a waterfall that nigh, called something Force (force means waterfall). I felt like I was hiking through the mountains in Utah a little bit actually :)

Wednesday, May 23

• Wednesday, we got to go to the Wordsworth museum to look at some old manuscripts. We got to see first and second editions of Lyrical Ballads, an early version of Frankenstein, Keats's poetry, Wordsworth's copy of Paradise Lost, and old letters between Wordsworth and his wife. This part was so cool! It was awesome to be able to handle such old manuscripts! 
• This night, we drove about five hours to Edinburgh and checked into our hostels.
• We ate dinner at the Elephant House, which is where J.K. Rowling started writing Harry Potter! It was cool to eat there, although the food wasn't very good at all haha.
• We hiked to Arthur's seat, which I think is the highest peak in Scotland. This is where Orson Hyde came when he was a missionary to dedicate Scotland to the Lord for missionary work. It was a mostly uphill hike, but it was so worth it! The view up there was amazing!
• Staying in the hostel was not a great experience haha. It wasn't very clean, and there were 8 of us staying in one room in bunk beds. At least I got the experience though!

Thursday, May 24

• We got most of this day to explore Edinburgh. We took a guided tour of Edinburgh castle, which was cool!
• We got a few hours of free time, which we spent shopping for souvenirs and stuff. There were guys in kilts on almost every street corner playing bagpipes, which I was so excited about! The city was cool, but I would have liked more time there, and especially more time hiking. We didn't get any time in the highlands, and I wish we could have gone up there. It was still fun though!

Friday, May 25

• We spent this day in York, an old medieval city in Northern England. There's still an old medieval wall surrounding the city, and we got to walk around on it. There's an old street called Shambles, which is where the phrase "going to shambles" is called, because the street is so old that the roofs are slanting over the street, making it seem dark. I bought a way cool Marvel bag there! I'm king of in love with it :)
• We drove back to London this night, then got all day Saturday to do whatever. 

Saturday, May 26

• We did quite a bit of shopping yesterday. We went to Lillywhite's (a sports store), Camden Market, the Disney store, Britannia, and saw Hailey and Brad of youtube fame on the street! It was a good day! :)  

Hosh Kosh Bigosh

            The past few days have been kind of low key, so we got to do some things we’ve been wanting to do on our own. On Friday, we went to Abbey road to get a picture walking across the street! I didn’t realize that that road is still used, so we had to wait a while before it was clear enough for a picture. There were a lot of other people there trying to get a picture, and we all probably looked really funny walking back and forth across the road so many times. We wrote our names on the wall outside Abbey Road Studios, which, to be honest, I didn’t know existed before this! We sang Beatles’ songs while we were there, so it was fun!

            Saturday morning we went on a tour of the Houses of Parliament. I mostly liked hearing about the history behind Parliament, but when the tour guide starting explaining the voting process I was lost. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, which is understandable, but I wish I could have! The rooms inside were way cool! After the tour, we went to take pictures in a red telephone booth with Big Ben in the background. It’s a pretty big touristy thing, so there was already a line to get in the booth when we got there. Once it was my turn, I stood next to the booth for a picture, when all of a sudden these two guys dressed up as silver cowboys came and stood next to me! They didn’t say a word, just came and stood next to me giving a thumbs up! Well this family walking by thought the silver cowboys were funny too, so they all jumped in my picture with me! I had waited in line to get my turn with the phone booth, and I wanted my picture! I just stayed right there and smiled for this random family’s photo! I think that picture should probably go on the awkward family photos website haha. We went to Portobello Market next, which was so fun! I bought some good stuff for me and people back home :) They also have really good crepes there!

        Last night, Jared, Trent, Cree, Katie and I went to see a play called Woman in Black. They just made a movie called Woman in Black, and we had heard that the play was super scary, but we were all wondering how a play could be scary. We went to the theater about an hour before it started and bought tickets, then went and got dinner at an Indian place called Sagar. It was delicious! Curry is now one of my favorite foods I think. So, we get to the theater and all our seats are random, so none of us are sitting by each other. My seat was on the floor, in the back row and the very end seat. I thought for sure they’d have people walking through the audience to try and scare us, and because of where I was sitting I thought they’d come for me first. I was so freaked out before the play even started! The play was really well done I thought. It was just two guys the whole time (plus the woman in black), so it took some imagination, but that’s what plays are all about right? It was SO scary! The story line goes something like this: A ghost of a woman in black haunts a small town, and every time there’s a sighting of her, a child in the town dies! They used loud sound effects that made me jump so bad, and doors that opened by themselves, and rocking chairs that rocked by themselves. I jumped so bad at this one part at the end that the guy sitting next to me starting cracking up and didn’t stop till it was over! It really was pretty funny. There was a crazy twist at the end of the play that made it even better! I now know how plays can be scary!

        I realized I haven’t explained about my ward here very much. I’m really loving being back in Young Women! I can still remember the Young Women theme, so that’s good :) The teacher is an older lady named Daphne, and she’s really good at being there every week. We had two young women in class today, and one of them is an investigator. It’s kind of intimidating to have an investigator in class, because Daphne will sometimes ask us to share our feelings or an experience we’ve had that goes along with the lesson. Most of the people in the ward are converts, so they like to hear the experiences we’ve had growing up in the church. Today we learned about the Priesthood, and Daphne asked us to share about blessings we’ve received from the Priesthood. I’ve always had the Priesthood in my home growing up, so it wasn’t hard to think of how it’s blessed my life. It’s cool to have an investigator though, because I feel like a missionary! One of the missionaries in the ward came to class with her today, and he had an American accent, so we got to talking about where he was from. He said he was from Utah, so I asked him what city. He said Kaysville, and that he had gone to Davis high! Isn’t that crazy? What a small world! He graduated a year later than me, but his older brother, Seku Holder, graduated my same year from Davis. I told him I knew his brother, then we played the “Do you know so and so?” game. He listed off a bunch of guys I went to school with, including Matt Whittle, who’s in my home ward! It’s so crazy that I ran into someone from Kaysville, Utah in London. That just goes to show how tiny the Mormon world is!

        It’s crazy to think that we’re already halfway done with the program here. I’ve loved my time here so far, and I plan to make the most of my last month! Being in this ward has taught me so much, and I’m so grateful I’ve grown up in the church. I hope all’s going well back home. I miss all you guys! Tomorrow we’re going to Scotland for a week, and I’m so excited! We’re stopping in Preston on the way there, which is where the first members of the church in England were baptized. We’re also going to the Lake District, which is supposed to be absolutely beautiful. I can’t wait! 

The Olympic Games!

        One of our classes while we're here is called London Walks, and all we have to do is go on walks around London and then write down what we think is cool or interesting about it. Yesterday, for one of our walks, we went on a guided tour of the Olympic sites! Our tour guide was this funny old guy who said he was born in Ireland, even though he had a British accent. When we go on walks we're supposed to take notes in our little notebooks called commonplace books, but I forgot mine, so I took out a scrap piece of paper to write on. My scrap piece of paper I found in the bottom of my bag was a map for the Louvre, which I think is pretty funny!  
        Our guide told us about these camera shots called honey shots. They're those shots where there's a break in the game, and the camera roams around the fans and stays on one person for a few seconds. Our tour guide, Tom, told us that these shots are called honey shots. Well, they want the people at the games to be attractive to make London look good, so everyone is given an "attractiveness" number, which is put on the end of their Visa card. When anyone applies for a ticket to the games, their bank is contacted so they can look up their "attractiveness" number! You have to have a certain number to be able to get into the games! Isn't that crazy? He said that the number for synchronized swimming is low, like 2 or 3, but you have to have a pretty high number for the races. I actually don't know if I believe that, but everyone else thinks it's true, so I guess it must be! My professor, Nick, said, "So what does it mean if the last number on my card is 9?" Ha!
         Our guide told us that London's been getting ready for the Olympics for the last five years. The games were supposed to be in Paris, but Tom told us that at the big conference where all the delegates voted on the location, the Paris delegate whispered to the guy next to him, "Good thing the games aren't in London, because the only food that's worse than English food is food in Finland!" Unfortunately for the Paris delegate, the delegate from Finland was standing right behind him. Hence, the games are in London! Again, I don't know how much of this is factual, but it's funny :) Tom told us that the reason the marathon is still in miles instead of being in the metric system, is because of the Queen of England during the 1908 Olympics. She wanted the marathon to go past a school so that the kids could see the people running, and the course for the marathon ended up being exactly 26.2 miles, and it's just stayed that way. 
        The Olympics are going to be in the East End of London, which is the poorer and more ghetto part of London. They're having the Olympics here to get money into the East End to try and fix it up. On our walk through the sites I wasn't super impressed by the area. It does't look like they've done a lot of cleaning up, but maybe in the next three months they'll get a lot done. On the site where they built the actual stadium, Tom said they found 6 unexploded WWII bombs, and 4 bodies!! Crazy stuff! Random facts about the stadium: The stadium fits about 80,000 people. A hotel room that normally costs $40 by the Olympic stadium will cost about $750 on opening night. NBC has been here for the past 6 months getting ready to film the Olympics. The Olympic village where the athletes will stay has 17,000 flats, and later will be used as a school and medical center. They really are trying to pour money into this thing to try and fix the East End up. It will be interesting to see if it works! Tom said it will take about 10 years to see the results though, so we'll just have to wait and see!


        Yesterday night, we went and saw the play War Horse. They had a life-size puppet horse that was actually really cool! It took a little bit to get used to watching a huge puppet horse being operated by three guys ha, but they made it work. If you've ever seen Lion King, it was like the opening scene where all the animals come out. They made the horse move and sound like an actual horse. It was a good play! I've never seen the movie, but I think the play follows the same plot line. I'll have to watch the movie when I get home!       

Bath Time Stories

        Every day I'm so surprised by how much we can fit in in a day! We just read Sense and Sensibility for our English class, so this morning we took a coach to Chawton, which is where Jane Austen lived out the last few years of her life. We saw the church she went to, the estate her brother lived in, and the cottage where her and her mom and sister lived in. I bought Emma at the gift shop there, which is cool, cause she wrote it there! We watched a little video at her house about her life, and it mentioned her fling with Tom Lefroy! It made me so happy, but also a little sad, because I realized that the movie Becoming Jane is almost all fiction, and I love that movie!

       
        We went next to Stourhead Gardens, which are these gardens at the Stourhead estate (pretty complicated, I know). This is where they filmed the scene in Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth and she turns him down! When we got to the pavilion where the scene was shot, we just started screaming because we were so excited! I feel like this was mostly a day for the girls in the program, because almost all of it was centered around Jane Austen. We took so many pictures around that pavilion, but it was hard not to, because it was SO beautiful! I know I say this every time, but really, I think this was the most beautiful place I've seen so far. It's so hard to capture it in pictures too! The hike around the lake made me feel like I was in a fairy tale or something, as cliche as that sounds. I finally got a picture put up! The internet is so slow that I only got one up, but hopefully you can see how pretty it is there. It's so green!
        Next stop after Stourhead was the city of Bath. Jane Austen lived with her family in Bath for a while, but she didn't like it at all. One of her books, (Persuasion, which I love!) is set in Bath. It's named Bath after all the Roman baths left there from when the Romans were in Britain; the Romans thought that the hot springs had healing powers. They've got a museum built up around the baths, so it was cool to see them. You can't go in them, but they do have clean bath water that you can drink. It sounds gross, because it is! It tasted like hot metal! Haha I had the hot cool-aid Julian Smith video going through my head the whole time. After exploring the baths, we went to this place called the Royal Crescent, which is a bunch of apartments built in the shape of a crescent. It's the biggest attraction in Bath besides the baths, but I wasn't really impressed by it. I did my presentation on the Royal Crescent in our prep class, and I though it was going to be a lot bigger. For dinner we ate at an Irish Pub, and it was really good! I just got a burger though, so nothing too exciting :) After that it was time to head back to the bus and then head back to the center. Today was another full day where I saw and did things that I've always wanted to! I'd say that today my horizons were widened :)
                 

Is the First Word Tomato?

        Ok, I just have a few random things to post about. Yesterday, we went to a play as a group called "Written on the Heart." It was about the translation of the King James Version of the Bible. It went back and forth between William Tyndale and the time while they were translating the Bible. It was actually pretty good! It was a little hard to follow, and I would have been totally lost if we weren't learning this stuff in class. It was interesting though!
        Tonight, we went to see the musical Matilda! It's been playing here for a while now, and it was SO good! It was hilarious, and just so much fun! The dancing was amazing, and the songs were so catchy. I think I'm going to buy the whole soundtrack off itunes, because I loved it so much! The little girl that played Matilda was really good too. There's this one part where Miss Honey writes "I can read books" on the board, and Lavender tries to read it. She says, "I've got it! Is the first word... tomato?" Miss Honey goes, "No, but tomato's a very good word!" Lavender just does this huge fist pump and goes "YESSS!" Haha oh man it was so funny! Once it comes to the States, I'm so going to see it again! :)
        We're leaving bright and early for Bath tomorrow morning, so we're staying up and watching Pride & Prejudice tonight :) Bath is where Jane Austen lived while she was writing, so it's going to be super cool! I can't wait!!    

Paris Day 3

        Sorry for the information overload, but so much happened in those three days in Paris, and I just want to get it all down! The third day there was pretty rough. We had to be down for breakfast at 8, then be ready to check out at 9. We dropped our luggage off at the train station in lockers, then set off for the Louvre! The Louvre was cool, but I think I was too tired to appreciate it as much as I should have. It was cool to see the Mona Lisa, but I was surprised by how small it was. They had it roped off, so we could only stand from far off and look at it. Still, it was pretty legit!

        We were so tired of standing on our feet after a couple hours at the Louvre that we decided to go on an ice cream run. We went to this ice cream place that was supposed to have the best ice cream in Paris, and it didn't disappoint! The caramel ice cream was amazingly good! It also felt good to sit and rest for a bit. We went to an art museum called the Orangerie next, which had huge Monet murals on the walls. The nice thing about this museum is that they have benches where you're supposed to just sit and stare at the paintings, which we did, gladly. I would have been a bad pioneer I think. My feet were just throbbing! We had one last museum to hit up after the Orangerie, which was Napolean's Tomb. I told myself that it might be pretty cool to see, so that at least gave me some motivation. Napolean's Tomb is part of a bigger building that used to be both a hospital and an armory, which kind of cracks me up. We walked into the smaller building with Napolean's tomb and saw his monument right away to our right. The name "Joseph Napolean" was inscribed on the side, and we were standing there thinking aloud how we never knew his name was Joseph, when we realized that that wasn't his tomb... His real tomb was in the middle of the huge room down on a lower floor. We had heard that there were actually 8 different coffins surrounding Napolean, but I don't know if that's true. The monument to Napolean was bigger than I thought, but honestly, I was so tired by that point that I just wanted to go sit down and eat! Like I said, I would have been a terrible pioneer :)
        We went and ate dinner at the first restaurant we saw that was close to Napolean's tomb. It was a cafe on the street corner, and it was the most French place we ate while we were there. I ordered quiche, but my friend Lauren got duck, so I tried some of it and it wasn't bad! At this point in the day, we still had about two hours til we had to meet up at the train station. We decided to go to Pere Lachaise, a cemetery where Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Rossini, and Chopin are buried. There was glass all around Oscar Wilde's tombstone, because people kept coming and writing on it. People had written all over the glass still though--they were mostly quotes from things he had written. There was a nasty old tube of pink lipstick laying on the ground, so I used it to write my name and Amanda's on the glass. Amanda is an English major too, so she was just as excited as me to be at his gravesite. We realized after how funny it was that we had written our names together on a known homosexual's grave. Haha! :) Around then a van came driving by and the lady inside said that the cemetery was closing soon, so we needed to exit (sortie) immediately. We still hadn't found Chopin's grave yet though, so we ran in and out of the graves trying to find it while running away from the white van lady patrolling the cemetery. It was pretty great! We found Chopin's grave and left the cemetery before it closed, so no worries. We were then running a little short on time though, so we booked it back to the metro.
        By the time we got back to the train station, my feet were so sore and blistered that I was basically waddling. Cobblestones are not the greatest surface to walk on. All I wanted to do was to sit down, but when we got there, our profe stopped us and said that someone had lost their ticket, so we all had to give him our tickets. He said they all needed to be accounted for, then he'd pass them back out. Our tickets were in our backpacks in our locker, so we had to go get those out, then give our tickets up. Please Note: Before we left for Paris we were given our tickets to and from Paris, so we also still had our tickets from London. Well, lucky me, I got the ticket FROM London TO Paris that someone accidentally turned in to our profe. Everyone else got through while I waited on the other side, because I had the wrong ticket. My professor said he'd figure it out, so I just waited on my sore feet and watched the time tick away. I started getting nervous and thought the train was going to leave without me! Then, with 13 minutes left to go til the train left, my professor came back with the right ticket. Phwew! Well, the fun doesn't stop there. Once we arrived back in London, I couldn't find my Oyster card. My oyster card is what lets me ride the tube in London, so without it, I couldn't get back to the center. I was so frustrated! I came close to just buying a new card, but my friends told me to just buy a one time pass and then look for my card later. So, that's what I did. Thankfully I did find my card the next morning, so that was good. It was just so frustrating piled on top of everything else, piled on top of my sore feet! Literally!
        Last thing... Amanda, Kayley and I were starving, so we stopped at burger king to eat something. This British guy probably in his early thirties came and sat with us, named Tim. We just started talking and then he asked us if we were going to go out for drinks that night. We all looked at each other like, "Who's going to be the one to talk about the church?" We told him that we were Mormons and we didn't drink. He told us he'd heard of the church before and had actually gone to a meeting once before! He said it hadn't been the right thing for him at the time, but maybe now he'd check it out again. We just said, "Yeah, yeah you should!" That was my first real missionary type encounter in London! It was awesome! I hope I get more opportunities like that :)        
   
   
       

Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart

Day 1: Tour Eiffel and Seine Cruise

     Alright, here we go! We left the center at 6:15 Wednesday morning and went from the St. Pancras train station heading to Gare du Nord in Pairs. That trip was just fine and I didn't even notice when we went under the water. Paris is one hour later than London, so we didn't arrive until about 11:20. We walked to our hotel,  got checked in, and had about ten minutes to freshen up and stuff before we headed out as a group. Nick (our program director) said that the hotel was rated about a four star by European standards, but by American standards it was about a 2. It was a pretty tiny room, and the hair dryer was a hose coming out of the wall. It made me think of every movie where they end up in a shabby European hotel like in European Vacation or Just Married haha. It was fine though, because at the end of the day all we needed was a bed!

Arc de Triumphe

     We had been given a metro pass the night before, so we used that for the first time in Paris to get to these gardens by the Louvre called the Tuileries. The metro is a lot dirtier than the tube in London, although we didn't notice that til we got back to London. The Tuileries were beautiful--just big and open, and there were so many people out and about. It was also a beautiful day! We hadn't seen the sun for a while, and it was so warm with just a little breeze. It was humid, which I wasn't expecting. After strolling the Tuileries, our professors set us loose in Paris, telling us to walk down Champs Elysees to find something to eat. Champs Elysees is a big, famous street in Paris with lots of clothing stores and places to eat. We strolled down the street and got some euros out at an ATM, then explored a side street til we found this little cafe to eat at. None of us speak French except for Kayley, but fortunately the guy behind the counter spoke English. He was so funny! We were being super touristy and taking pictures of our food, so he came and jumped in our pictures and was teasing us when we said Merci. After eating, we walked down the rest of Champs Elysees to Arc de Triumphe, which was awesome! It was a lot bigger than I thought, and when we went inside and climbed to the top, the view was incredible! I wish I would have known more about the history behind it before we came to Paris. We were supposed to meet up with the group at 8:15 by the river Seine, so after the Arc de Triumphe, we headed on Avenue Kleber to the Eiffel Tour!! The Eiffel Tower was not a let down at all. It was so tall and beautiful! I don't know what makes it so beautiful, because it's just made of iron, but it's amazing! We have a goal to take a jumping picture at every main attraction that we go to, so we took pictures of us jumping in front of the Eiffel Tower. Then we actually went and climbed the stairs all the way to the top! Well, you can only climb to a certain point, then we had to take an elevator the rest of the way. We could see so far from the very top! We could even see the Statue of Liberty (the much smaller one that's on the Seine) :) We went out for dinner after that to a really good pizza place, and then met up with everyone else around then for a cruise on the Seine! It was just about sunset, so it was the perfect scene. Tons of people our age who were just chilling on the side of the river waved to us as we went by. Paris is such a happy, hippy city! And it really is so romantic! Being on the river with all the lights was romantic enough, but right as we were passing the Eiffel Tower on our way back, it started sparkling!

Paris holds the key to your heart

Yeah, sparkling! It was already lit up and looked amazing, and then it started sparkling all over with flashing lights and looked even cooler! I think that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It was quite the experience! We headed back to our hotel after that and planned the next day out hour by hour. There were some things we were required to do, and some things we wanted to do on our own.

Day 2: Fifteen Hours!

     The hotel gave us breakfast in the morning, which was nice. As soon as we finished breakfast, which was about 8:30, we headed out for the city! The first place we hit up was Notre Dame. It looked exactly how I pictured it,  and all my knowledge came from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame. The inside wasn't all that unique, but the outside was cool! We crossed a bridge to the other side of the river, and found a bookstore called Shakespeare and Company, which apparently Hemingway used to go to when he lived in Paris. I loved it because it was just a little house with staircases leading up into little nooks. We went to Saint Chapelle next, which is a church known for its stained glass windows. Each window depicts a scene from the Old Testament, and the windows are huge! It was pretty cool. We then went to La Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was kept before she was beheaded. We saw the cell she was kept in, and inside they had a black shawl over a mannequin that was supposed to look like her sitting in there. It was so creepy! Pretty interesting, though. We got some lunch at a little stand back by Notre Dame, and got these sandwichs called croque monsieurs. Basically it's a toasted ham sandwich with cheese on the inside, and cheese on the outside. So good! We decided it was like a heart attack waiting to happen though. It probably isn't the best thing for you, but man does it taste good.
     After getting those places crossed off our list, we headed off for Versailles! We took about a 45 minute train ride to get there, but it was worth it. The palace at Versailles was easily the most  impressive palace I've seen yet. It wasn't just the building though, it was the grounds around it! The grounds probably go for a mile or more behind the palace, and there's even a lake/pond back there. It was another beautiful day, so we bought raspberry sherbet and relaxed in the shade for a bit. It felt great! Then, we decided to just check and see how much it would cost to pay to go in a row boat on the lake/pond. Split up between four of us, it only cost about 2.50 euro! We had a little bit of trouble at first getting away from the dock, but then Kayley took over the oars and we went a-rowing away! Kayley is a pro rower, thanks to all her many years of girl's camp :) Rowing in a rowboat at Versailles was one of my favorite things we did in Paris! So, that was great. After that, we went and saw Marie Antoinette's house out back, but we couldn't figure out why anyone would live there when you could live in the Versailles palace.
     The trip to Versailles took about five hours of our day, but it was okay, cause we had planned for it. We had a museum pass as well that got us into all these places for free! Well, kinda. It was all pre-paid with our program money. On our way back we had to buy a ticket, cause we were out of our zone for our metro pass. Some nice guy came and helped us out, because we couldn't figure out how to buy the tickets. We don't read French very well. We went to the Musee d'Orsay that night, which was pretty cool, except we were worn out from walking around all day. Oh, I forgot to mention... this day we celebrated like it was my birthday, because I wanted to have my birthday in Paris! I decided that all I wanted for my birthday was to lie under the Eiffel Tower and watch it light up. After the museum we wanted to go to this bakery that's supposed to be really good, but I knew we wouldn't make it to the tower if we went. We broke off from the group we were with, and just the five of us started booking it to the Eiffel Tower. The tower sparkles for five minutes every hour, so we had one shot to make it by 10 o'clock, because we had to be back at the hotel by 11. It was about a quarter to ten when Amanda and I decided to run. We ran through the streets of Paris for probably a mile before we finally turned a corner and saw the base of the Eiffel Tower! We collapsed on the grass and about thirty seconds later it started sparkling! I was so happy we had made it! We were extremely tired and gross from running, but it was worth it. We lied there for the full five minutes and just watched it. It was definitely the best birthday ever! :)
     We were on our feet for fifteen hours that day, so our feet were killing us once we got back to the hotel, and we were exhausted. I'll blog about the third day tomorrow, because it's going to take me quite a bit of time. My first two days in Paris were probably two of the best days ever! I've got church early tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep. I got called to be in Young Women's, and I loved my first Sunday last week! I'm excited to go tomorrow. Hopefully some of the young women show up this time, cause last week no one came but the presidency!

Word, Sworth!

Platform 9 3/4 

Fish and chips at Cafe Diana

We started out the day with three hours of history class, then headed to Cafe Diana for fish and chips, which I loved! After that, we took the tube into King's Cross station, yes, THE King's Cross station, and went to platform 9 3/4! We got pictures there with a cart sticking out from the wall with a plaque saying Platform 9 3/4. It was so cool! That's one thing I can now check off my bucket list :) We went to the British library next and saw some really cool things. We saw original Shakespeare folios, original manuscripts of Jane Eyre, Paradise Lost, and Wordsworth poems. My friend Amanda and I have a joke where we say "word!" then add "sworth," so that it sounds like Wordsworth. She's an English major too, which probably makes more sense :) We even saw Jane Austen's real writing desk with her notebook! We saw one of Beethoven's original violin sonatas, and Handel's Messiah! One of the coolest things on display were the original lyrics to songs by The Beatles like "Yesterday," "Michelle," and "Ticket To Ride." The lyrics to "Michelle" were written on the back of an envelope. It was so cool to see!
     After the museum, we went shopping at Primark. It's always so hot and crowded in there, and today was a little bit hectic. It was a successful shopping day though! I got two pairs of shoes for 7 pounds! We couldn't stay long at Primark, because we had to head back to the center for dinner. We went to see Phantom of the Opera after dinner, and it was so amazing! The first half was good, and then the second half was even better! I thought all the actors had amazing voices, especially Christine. The Phantom was a little shaky on the high notes, but other than that he did great. I just think of Gerard Butler so highly that I don't know if anyone can compare! We all agreed that the set and the music was great though. I think that's been my favorite play/musical we've seen so far! After the play had finished and we came outside the theater, there were four guys setting up for a dance routine, so we stopped and watched them. They did cool break dancing and were really good! It was so fun to stand in the square outside the theater and cheer along with everybody. Today was a really good day :)
     Now, we're all packing for Paris tomorrow!! We're leaving at 6:15 am, which means another early morning. We'll be taking the tube to a chunnel station, called Eurostar, then taking that into the heart of Paris! I'll get to see the Eiffel Tower tomorrow! I won't be taking my laptop with me, so I won't be blogging for the next three days. I'll be sure to write down what we do though, so I can post about it. This is such an awesome experience, and I can't wait till tomorrow!

"Wait, The Queen's Dead?!"

Buckingham Palace

Lion Statue at Trafalgar Square

     Today was a very jam-packed, but super fun day! We didn't have anything but class scheduled today, so as soon as that was done we headed off into London to see a few things on our own. I went with Katherine, Amanda, and Kayley to Buckingham Palace, which was cool! We got to see the guards with the red jackets and tall furry hats, but they were inside, so we couldn't go right up to them. There was a pretty park next to the palace that we walked around in called St. James. There was a cool statue of Queen Victoria and some other smaller statues and fountains outside the palace, so we got some pictures there. We decided to walk to Trafalgar square from there, and on our way we passed a statue that said, "Queen Elizabeth, 1900-2002." One of us, I can't remember who, said something like, "She was 102 years old?" Then, I said, "The Queen's dead?!" I promise I know that the Queen is still living, but her name is Elizabeth, so you can see where the confusion might have come from.    Anyway... Trafalgar Square was awesome! It was actually one of the places I was most excited to see, because it was a place that President Hinckley visited a lot on his mission. We got a picture with one of the lion statues, and it ended up being a lot higher up than we thought! We had to help each other up, and we probably looked hilarious struggling to get up there. They've also got a clock counting down the time until the Olympics. Only 81 more days :) We won't be here during the Olympics, but we are going as a group to take a tour of the Olympic sites, and that'll be cool! We went to the National Gallery of Art next and spent a couple hours there. It was amazing! I'm not sure why we're not going there as a group. My favorite paintings were ones from Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Da Vinci. Going to the gallery made me even more excited for the Louvre, which we're going to on Thursday! I'll blog more about Paris later :)

     One of our favorite places to eat is a little cafe called Pret A Manger, and they're all over the place. We don't know how to pronounce it in French, so we just say it like it sounds. It sounds pretty funny to say it like that! We got dinner there, then took the tube to the University College of London to see something pretty interesting. This guy named Jeremy Bentham donated his body to the university when he died, and they keep his body on display in the school! It's stuffed with straw, and he only has a head made of wax, because rival schools kept stealing his real head. Gross, but cool! We walked all the way to the university to see him, then when we got there he was stored away in a box! Usually he is on display, but we think that maybe he was put away because it was a bank holiday today. None of us know what a bank holiday is, but most everything was closed today because of it, so we just kept blaming everything on the bank holiday. After that disappointment, we walked to this gelato shop that Katherine wanted to show us. Do you know the muffin man? The one who lives on Drury Lane? :) We walked down Drury Lane on our way to get gelato, which was kind of cool! The gelato place is called Scoop, and it was worth the walk! We were going to go to Covent Garden next, which is in a scene from My Fair Lady, but it was getting dark by then and it had been a long day. We want to go back sometime though. I always love coming back to the centre after a long and tiring day. Even though I come home exhausted, I feel like I'm getting the most out of my experience here. I just love walking around London and finding things I didn't know about before. I'm thinking I should probably find out what a bank holiday is though :)

Husband Hunting

Brighton Pavilion

A briny beach

     This morning, we woke up bright and early and traveled to Brighton, the famous vacation spot in England. Our professors told us there was a beach in Brighton, so we all got so excited to go! In Pride & Prejudice, one of the characters says that Brighton is the place to go to find husbands :) After a two hour coach drive we get there and it's about 46 degrees and windy. But at least it wasn't raining! We went to the Brighton Pavilion first, which was built by King George IV. His dad is George III, who was the king during the Revolutionary War, and who ended up going crazy. George IV built this huge pavilion on the beach in Brighton to get away from his wife, and his insane dad. The Pavilion was huge! I heard "pavilion" and thought of the little dinky thing behind our stake center back home, but this place was like a palace! Some rooms had pink carpet, pink wallpaper, pink furniture... It was designed in the oriental style, so there were dragons all over in the rooms. It was pretty cool actually! This is pretty random, but we learned that makeup back then was made of beeswax, so if the women got too hot, their make up would slide right off their face! This is where the phrase to "have a long face" comes from. Bet you're so glad you know that now! After touring the palace, we went to the beach. It was freezing and windy, but still kind of fun! I've never walked around on the beach in my rain jacket and rain boots, so it was a new experience stepping in the ocean in my boots. There were people swimming in there, which blows my mind, because it was so cold! We walked around Brighton Pier for a little bit, got some food, and watched a parade that was going through town. At first we thought it was a protest, cause we've seen a lot of those lately, but this was just some fun parade with floats and little kids.

Canterbury Cathedral

     We got back on the bus and drove another two hours to Canterbury, to see Canterbury Cathedral. This cathedral is famous, because in medieval times a priest was praying inside at the altar and was murdered by four knights from the king. You can even still see the blood stains on the stones! Just kidding, you really can't :) But, you can see where the stone is worn down in front of where his shrine used to be, where people would crawl on their hands and knees to worship in front of it. The cathedral has been in use for over 1,400 years! I couldn't get over how old it is. We got to do something pretty unique while we were there. We went to a service called Evensong, which I think they do every night. This choir of boys from ages 8-13 sang to us, and we got to sing a hymn with them at the end. I tried to imagine my little brother wearing a robe like those boys and singing like that, but I just couldn't! The boys were actually pretty good. They could sing super high! As part of the service, the whole congregation recites a written-down prayer together, and we read along until this part that says, "We believe in the Catholic church." It was really interesting, and I'm glad I got to go to that. It was cool singing inside a chapel as old as that one.
     Tomorrow is my first day in my new ward! We were supposed to get an email with our callings, but our bishop never sent it. I guess we'll find out tomorrow, though. Church starts at 9, and we've got about an hour of travel to get there, so it's going to be another early morning. I'm excited though! I think this is going to be one of the best things about the program. Cheers everybody!