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!    

British Museum & Other Cool Stuff

Rosetta Stone

     When I was little, I loved reading about ancient Egypt. Ever since I watched the movie "The Mummy" with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Wiesz, I've loved learning about that kind of stuff. If you haven't seen that movie yet, you should! I was really into mummies, and even got my own mini mummifying kit, where you could make your own mummy doll! So, naturally, I was really excited on our way to the British Museum today. A major scene from "The Mummy II" is actually shot in the British museum as well. We had three hours of class in the morning first, and I was struggling to stay awake. We've had pretty full days lately, so we haven't had much time to do our homework. Pretty much all of us were up late last night reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which is written in Old English, so it's not fun like reading The Hunger Games. After 3 hours of class, we took the tube to Tottenham court road. We go pretty much everywhere on the tube. The British Museum features artifacts from all over the world, artifacts that the British empire has collected over the years. There are exhibits from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Asia, Africa... As soon as we stepped through the front doors I booked it to the ancient Egypt rooms. The Rosetta Stone was the first thing you saw walking into the main room, which was pretty sweet. There were a bunch of cool relics and statues, but I was ready to see the mummies! We went to the rooms upstairs and saw sarcophagi, and baboons, snakes, and cats that had been mummified. We saw human mummies too! They were pretty cool. They have on display one man whose body was preserved, because he died in the hot sand. There's even still hair on his head! We went into the Greek and Roman rooms and saw chunks from the Parthenon. There's actually more of the Parthenon in the British museum than in Greece! Our professor wanted us to go look at ancient European artifacts, and we did, but I just don't think that stuff is as cool as ancient Egypt or Rome or Greece. I was thinking that my little brother Colton would have loved the stuff on the ancient Greeks, because he really likes learning about that kind of thing. One of the coolest things was this man they found in the peat bogs called the "Lindow Man." They found out that he probably died around 70 AD! It's pretty crazy how his body was kept together just by staying buried in some cold mud. One of our professors, Nick, (our other professor is named Matt, and they're brothers) said that if anyone were ever to ask him what his secret to greatness is, he'd say it's the Lindow Man :) We only had a couple hours in the museum, which is definitely not enough time! Hopefully, if we have some free time towards the end of the trip we'll try and go back there.

On a walk through Hyde Park

Peter Pan Statue

     Along with our English and history classes, we have a one-credit class called London Walks. Some of the walks we do together as a group, but some we're required to go off and do on our own. Today, we had to go do one of the required walks, so Katherine Hart, Amanda Ricks and I decided to go walk around Kensington Palace and gardens. It was basically a walk through Hyde Park, so I loved it! It was raining just a little bit, and Katherine called it "powder sugar rain." Will and Kate live in Kensington Palace, so it was cool to walk past and think that they're in there! I was surprised that there weren't any guards standing around like at Buckingham Palace. Amanda and I decided to try tebowing by the river (we just call all water here the Thames), then we took pictures by a statue of Peter Pan. I love, love, love Peter Pan, so I was way happy!
     About half of the group went to see Matilda the musical tonight, so a group of us girls went to a place called Ben's Cookies to get pazukis, or cazukis, or fazukis, or whatever you call them! They call them cookie monsters here, which is way easier to remember. The Matilda goers said that it was awesome, so I'm excited to go! I'll be able to go with another group on May 15. Plays and musicals here are super cheap, so we're trying to go to as many as we can without breaking our budget. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures! I've been putting all my pictures on facebook, but if you don't have facebook, hopefully someone who does can show you what I've been up to! There'll be more to come! 

Westminster Abbey & Les Mis

As you can tell by my title, today we went to Westminster Abbey! All but four monarchs have been crowned there, and most of them have been married there, including Will and Kate! Besides this, the Abbey is still used as a church, and there are lots of monuments to soldiers, monarchs, poets, and authors. Outside the main entrance above the door are a bunch of statues commemorating important people from the 1900s, and our guide pointed out Martin Luther King Jr. for us, which I thought was pretty cool! The ceiling in the part of the church called the nave is 101 feet high, and 3,300 graves are found in the Abbey. When you first walk in is a grave marking the “unknown soldier,” which not even the Queen is allowed to walk on. It’s a tradition at royal weddings for the bride to lay her bouquet on the grave. This grave is honoring all the unnamed soldiers who died in WWI. WWI to England is like what WWII for us—it’s a much bigger deal here than in the States. Also towards the front is a monument to FDR, as well as the oldest piece of furniture in Britain still used for its original purpose—the coronation chair. The chair was built in the 1300s, and is still used in the coronation ceremony today. I have no idea how it hasn’t fallen apart! 

There are so many famous people buried at Westminster Abbey, and that was my favorite part about it. Some of the famous scientists buried there are Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and Clark Maxwell. They also have monuments to past prime ministers, and I found out that some people in Britain call policemen “bobbies,” because Robert Peel was the prime minister who started the police force. Interesting to finally know where that comes from! One of my favorite parts was seeing the grave of Mary I and Elizabeth I. I wish I could have taken pictures inside! Mary and Elizabeth were half-sisters born to King Henry VIII, (Hampton court guy, king who beheaded all his wives) and they didn’t get along. Mary (known as Bloody Mary for killing so many Protestants) tried to have her half-sister Elizabeth killed, because she was afraid Elizabeth would try to take over the throne.  When Mary died, Elizabeth became the queen. Elizabeth was afraid that Mary, Queen of Scots (different from Mary I) would try to overthrow her, so she had Mary put on trial and killed. After Elizabeth died, James VI from Scotland (son of Mary, Queen of Scots) took the English throne and became James I. James had Elizabeth and Bloody Mary buried next to each other, which I think is hilarious! I’m sorry for all the history, and I know it’s confusing, but I had to explain it so that it makes sense why it’s such a big deal that the sisters are buried right next to each other. “Divided in life, but together in death.” I think James did it just to spite Elizabeth, who killed his mom! Anyways… my favorite part in the Abbey is a place called Poets’ Corner. Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English Literature, was the first poet buried there, and ever since, famous poets and writers are represented there: John Milton, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, Edward Spenser, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, D. H. Lawrence, Longfellow, Keats, Shelley, Robert Southey, T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, Wordsworth, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Coleridge, the Bronte sisters, Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling, just to name a few J It was so awesome! All the other English majors and I were freaking out, because those are all major writers that we’ve studied! Oh, and as a side note, the oldest door in England, made in 1050, is in a part of the Abbey called the Chapter House :)

Tonight, after a delicious meal of ribs in the centre, we went as a group to Les Miserables! I’d never seen it performed before, so I was so excited to see it! It was amazing! The songs were beautiful, and they all had good voices, especially the actor who played Jean Val-Jean. I had seen a spoof of it done at the Desert Star with my grandma and cousins, so the whole time I kept thinking of “Jean Levi Jean!” It was really good, but I think I’m still more excited to see Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. I don’t know if anyone can beat Gerard Butler, though, but we’ll see :)

Hampton Court

     Today, we went to Hampton Court Palace, the favorite palace of King Henry VIII. He had about 60 other palaces, but this one was his favorite. He's the king that had 6 wives, and beheaded almost all of them, because they only had daughters. His second wife, Anne Boleyn, is famous, because she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth. While I was walking around, I kept thinking of an SNL skit where Kristen Wiig acts like a tudor girl and calls herself the "other, other Bolyen girl." The palace was amazing! We put on these medieval-looking robes that made me feel like we were in The Village, and walked around the palace, listening to our audio tour. We toured the king's kitchens, his private rooms, the great hall, and also the William and Mary part that was added on later. The tour said that the servants had to prepare dinner for 600 people! I thought, man, I'm never going to complain about washing the dishes ever again! King Henry himself even came walking into the courtyard when we were there, and we got a picture with him! He was actually kind of intimidating! My favorite part of Hampton court was the gardens. They were so beautiful and huge! I took about a hundred pictures, so don't worry. There's a maze in the gardens that we were all excited to go through, but it cost about 4 pounds, so we decided not to. We had a nice sunny day too, so it was perfect! I decided to wear my rain boots for the first time today, and of course when I do, it doesn't rain. I walked through all the puddles though :)

Hanging out with the wooden courtiers 

Beautiful gardens at Hampton Court

     Tonight, a few of us went to see The Avengers. I won't give anything away... but I will say it was awesome! I'll probably end up seeing it again in the States. I feel like seeing a movie here was an important cultural experience. You should all go see it... when it comes out in America :)
   

Bill Shakespeare

Yesterday was so fun! On our way to Stratford, we stopped at a little town called Chipping Norton and had a quick lunch of pizza and apple turnover. The drive to Stratford was about two hours in a coach, and the English countryside is beautiful! England has about twenty different shades of green, and we passed these huge golden-yellow fields, but I'm not sure what kind of flowers they were.

 First, we stopped at Anne Hathaway’s cottage. The house was built in medieval times before Anne’s family lived there, and you can still even see the fingerprints in the walls from when it was built! Pretty cool. Shakespeare famously wrote in his will that to his wife, Anne, he left nothing but his “second best bed,” and upstairs they had that bed displayed. Shakespeare was only 18 when he married 26 year-old Anne, and their marriage had to be done quickly, because Anna was already 3 months pregnant. Or at least, they think it’s the same bed. In the kitchen they still have the original floor laid down by Anne’s grandfather during the reign of King Henry VIII. More about good ole king Henry will come later. We learned some interesting things about how the household was run back in Shakespeare’s day. The tour guide told us that husbands were allowed to beat their wives as long as the stick they used was smaller than the width of their thumb. This is where the phrase keeping someone “under the thumb” comes from. Also, husbands were only allowed to beat their wives during daylight hours, so as not to keep the neighbors up. The house has no foundation or cellar, so I have no idea how it’s still standing! And, apparently, 13 generations of Hathaways lived in that house. Pretty cool! The gardens at the cottage were also so pretty!

Stratford-upon-Avon

 We drove the rest of the way to Stratford-upon-Avon, and visited the birthplace of William SHAKESPEARE!! I was sort of geeking out the whole time, but it was so exciting! Next to his childhood home, they have a birthplace museum, and right outside it is a garden with every flower, herb, and tree ever mentioned in a Shakespeare play. We walked through Shakespeare’s house, then, once we were outside, a lady in costume recited lines from Romeo and Juliet from an upstairs window! How cool is that? We then went to Trinity Church, the church were Shakespeare is buried. It was so awesome! Outside the church is an old cemetery, and it amazes me how these old buildings and headstones are still there! My camera died right when we were outside of the church, but I designated Katherine to be picture taker, so I’ll have to get pictures from her.

Graveyard at Trinity Church

Before going to Twelfth Night, we walked around Stratford for a bit, then got some dinner at a little café. The theater we went to does a bunch of Shakespeare plays year-round; it’s not the famous Shakespeare theater, The Globe, but we are going to go to a play there later in the trip. Our seats were up in the nosebleeds on the side, but because the way the theater was set up, we could still see everything. The play was so good! It was hilarious. The actor who played Malvolio (the bad guy) did such a good job! He reminded me of the Duke in Moulin Rouge. The play was a little difficult to understand at some parts, but because I’ve read the play a few times, I didn’t get lost. I'm so glad I was able to visit the famous Shakespeare spots; they're places I've wanted to go my whole life! This place is a dream come true!