2 May
Happy Wizard's Independence Day!!! Okay, so it was my birthday too, but that's not nearly as exciting. So the first thing we did was go to class (class is every Monday and Wednesday from 9:30-12:30). Here's the church building we have class in:
It was fantastic, as always! We had a great and very controversial conversation about All's Well that Ends Well by Shakespeare. For those of you who haven't read the play (skip the next couple of paragraphs if you really don't care, like you Dad ;p), basically a girl named Helen (or Helena depending on the version you have) cures the King of France of a disease, so he grants her a husband of her choosing. She chooses Bertram, who she knows, but he has no interest in her. By the king's insistence they are married, but Bertram runs off to the war in Florence before consummating the marriage. Helen follows him, is soon presumed dead, and intervenes in a planned affair Bertram was going to have with a girl named Diana by taking her place in bed (it's dark....apparently he couldn't tell the difference). So when she turns up a few months later pregnant with his child (and there's a whole other stream of events I won't touch on), he accepts her as his wife.
Needless to say, there was no one in our class who had anything positive to say about Bertram. First of all, it's made entirely up of women aside from the three guys in the class, and second of all we're all Mormon. But there was a lot of debate on whether the character of Helen was just stupid or not. I was on the team of "she is a complete idiot", and was not about to change my opinion. There were some good points brought up in her defense, but I don't understand why anyone would force someone to marry them when they were completely aware that the other person didn't return their affections, and then why they would be okay with the fact that their husband thought he cheated on them....needless to say, I do not believe that "all was well" at the end.
Anyway, that discussion over (as well as a discussion about the gospel in the arts), me, Ashley, and Holly headed over to the Victorian Albert Museum where we got some good but cheap lunch and met up with
one of Ashley's friends who is living here in London. Since it was my birthday, I went ahead and got a meringue with clotted cream. It was interesting, and yummy, but I don't need to have it again.
Then came the part of the day I was most excited about: HARRY POTTER TOUR!! And no, this was not a guided tour; I was actually in a way the tour-guide, bringing in a group of people from the program that was constantly changing as people joined and left us. It was so much fun!! All of these are places that the Harry Potter crew used in creating the films, and feel free to compare them against the movie! I went online and looked them all up, and very successfully guided everyone else to them, might I add.
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| Platform 9 3/4 again! Patrick, Meisha, Amber, Carly, Kristen, Elizabeth, Chelsea, Addison, Bree, and Camille |
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| Where they actually filmed the movie (Platform 4) Everything at King's Cross is under construction |
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| Elizabeth, Meisha, Me, Kristen, Camille |
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| Elizabeth, Amber, Kristen, Carly, and Chelsea all holding Patrick... |
DIAGON ALLEY!!
(definitely the coolest part)
It's an actually market, but since it was a bank holiday no one was there. We plan on going back later when it's open
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| The Leaky Cauldron from Philosopher's Stone (Imagine it black....see!!!) |
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| Chelsea (cause she's beautiful and it's a cool shot) |
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| Grimmauld Place! Camille and Me (Number 12 should be between those two) |
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| The Australia House Inside of this building is where they filmed the interior of Gringgots, but they don't allow tours....sad :( |
So that was the Harry Potter tour! We missed a couple of places, and we haven't gone to the zoo yet where they filmed the Python (we're going sometime later as a group....still hasn't been completely planned) and there were a couple of things that didn't occur to me to look for, but that will be mentioned later....
So once that was over, I headed over to the Savoy Theatre to see Legally Blonde: The Musical! The theatre itself is really interesting because it's attached to a hotel and completely underground. The stage of the theatre was the floor of the hotel. It didn't feel like it was when you were in there, but we were kind of buried in the ground. It was a cool experience! The show was great too; I already knew I loved the music, but I almost wish I hadn't already known it all when I got there, because I already had an idea of how is should sound in my head and it was hard to adapt to the UK's version of things. They actually changed a lot of words from what the Broadway version performs, because some of the jokes are extremely American and their audience wouldn't get it. There is one song, however, that had the audience roaring in laughter: "Gay or European". It didn't occur to me until after they started singing that song that I was in Europe ;p
To sum up, I have no complaints about my birthday. It was pretty much the perfect day, and definitely the best birthday I have had.
3 May
Now to today!! Although we didn't have class today, it felt like we did. Almost everything we did today we did with the programme, and it was a blast despite how crazy busy it was! At 10:00 we met at the British Library, one of the best kept secrets of London. We went immediately to their "Treasures Room", and were all completely amazed! In this small room, they have an original copy of the Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio (the only reason we have any of his plays), Handel's "Messiah", Leonardo de Vinci's notebooks, the Gutenburg Bible, Jane Eyre, and many, many, many other unbelievably old documents that shouldn't have survived this long (like I said, these are all original). There's also a section within the room dedicated to the Beatles, where they have an enveloped with the song "Miranda" written on the back and a spare scrap of paper with the working lyrics to "Help", along with other cool things.
The part that made my jaw drop (aside from Handel's "Messiah") was in the religious texts section. In the middle of all the bound books, there were two scraps of papyrus that I wouldn't have been able to discern anything from, but apparently others did. Both of them were written in Greek, and they date back to the 3rd century. Guess what? One contained the Gospel of John, and the other a passage from Psalms. These are two of the earliest sources for the text in the bible, and they were sitting right in front of me, just inches away under the glass. What also floored me was the fact that the sign read that the translation from this papyrus was "incorrect" when compared with the Gutenburg bible. Really? Which came first, huh?
Anyway, after that we split up for lunch and met back together at Trafalgar Square before going into the National Portrait Gallery (which was really cool, but nothing super cool to point out). Trafalgar square was beautiful, and I took a lot of pictures!
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| The National Gallery |
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| Famous pidgeons of Trafalgar Square |
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| Camille, Patrick, Amberly, Amy, Ellie, Andrea, and Desi |
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| BIG BEN! (We were super far away, but I have an AWESOME camera!) |
When we had finished wandering through the galleries on our own (and lounging in the sun in Trafalgar Square), we headed over to.......THE GLOBE!!! Tonight we were going to a lecture on All's Well that Ends Well (that horrid, horrid play) before watching it performed in Shakespeare's own theatre! (Yes, I know it's not the same exact theatre he used, who cares?) It takes a while to get there, so we decided to leave early to take out time and sight see. On our way, we stopped by St. Paul's Cathedral and took a few pictures.
Next, we crossed Millennial Bridge to get to the other side of the Thames. It wasn't until we were about to cross it that I realized I'd left out a stop on our Harry Potter tour: it's the bridge the death eaters destroy in the beginning of the sixth movie. If that were really to happen, it would be quite a shock to the British people, and I'm sure some of them felt that shock watching the movie. It has some really cool architecture, but I couldn't figure out how to get a great shot of it. Here's what I got, though.
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| Patrick (he tends to get in a lot of my pictures cause we both walk slow) |
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| Steps leading to the pathway along the Thames you can take at low tide....as you can see, it is not low tide. |
While on the bridge, I looked over and saw the Tower Bridge, and again used my camera's amazing skills to take a picture that made it look like I was much closer than I actually was.
It wasn't until we were partway across the bridge that we finally saw it: SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE!
It was so surreal seeing it in person! I never thought I would be a huge Shakespeare fan, but this study abroad is proving me very, very wrong. The lecture that we went through was interesting, but not entirely engaging. But then we actually got to go inside and take out seats!!!
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| View from where we were sitting (Almost every seat in the Globe is restricted view in some way) |
It was amazing!!! Like I said before, I really did not enjoy this play and was just mildly interested in seeing how it was performed. The fact that we were in the Globe, however, got me excited, even though I already knew I didn't like the story. When the play began, I was still on the team of "Bertram is a player and Helen is completely daft", but by the end my thoughts had done a complete shift!! The actor who played Bertram played him so sympathetically that (strangely and disturbingly) all of the girls in our program were trying to explain away his actions, having fallen in love with him unwillingly. At the end of the second act (there are five acts in a Shakespeare play, and the intermission is between 2 and 3 usually), there's a line where Helen asks Bertram to kiss her. In most productions, he either completely refuses or starts to and his friend stops him. All of the girls in my programme practically jumped out of their seats when he actually kissed her! I'm sure the guys were laughing at us all through intermission when we were talking about how much our opinions had changed!!
It was such a testament to me of what a difference the director can make in a production. In Shakespeare's plays, there's not a lot of background given on the characters, and Shakespeare doesn't usually tell you outright what you should think of the character or what their intentions are. There are a lot of different ways to read his stories and his characters, and this director took a man that I absolutely hated and made him extremely attractive (and not just physically, which he was). That's also the danger of life; even though something looks and seems attractive, you still have to use caution. No matter how much I try to explain away everything Bertram does, you really can't simply throw aside the fact that he was willing to (and believed that he did) have an affair. Even still, I was smiling at the end, which I had hardly expected.
Anyway, I think that's enough for one night! Two absolutely crazy and insanely cool days back to back! I still can't believe I'm here!
Fun reading Tiff and great pictures! Thanks for including all the people. I always knew you would ne a good blogger!
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