Two Weeks Behind...One Day to Go

First, the pictures I promised you from Kew Gardens. They can't even begin to capture how beautiful and amazing it is.

Saturday 28 May

I let myself sleep in, had lunch with a few of the girls, then finished reading a play for class and posted a response online. The whole day was spent in anticipation, however, to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing!

For those of you who don't know, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are both very successful actors in the UK. David Tennant is better known and you might recognize him from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where he played Barty Crouch, Jr. But they are both well renowned for being the Doctor and Donna in "Doctor Who"! Now, think about Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado, if you know the story line, and then think about Donna and the Doctor.....EXACTLY!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Doctor Who, here's a wonderful, hilarious clip showing how amazing their chemistry is together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxB1gB6K-2A

Anyway, I was really excited to see them together. I bought my ticket a whole month in advance, and they said there was only one seat available then! I felt really lucky to have gotten in. I found out later that better tickets became available and four members of my program that decided they wanted to go on that day got better seats than I did, but that's beside the point...

I absolutely loved the play, but I wouldn't recommend  it to everyone. Were it a movie, there is one set of scenes I would skip over, because they were completely unnecessary and not done in good taste. The play was set in the 80s, which was interesting, and there were bachelor and bachelorette parties that were very 80s, if you know what I mean. They didn't need to be in the performance, and I wish they hadn't been.

But other than those unfortunate two scenes, it was an absolutely amazing performance! David Tennant and Catherine Tate were beyond hilarious, but Tennant's scenes stole the show of course. During the costume party, he was dressed in a sequined mini skirt and leggings (wearing a wig and crop top, of course) and Tate was dressed in a FBI-esque outfit. I was bent over laughing. In another scene, Tennant was wearing cropped shorts and a tight superman t-shirt which, through a HILARIOUS course of events, became covered with white paint, which was also all over his face and his hair.

Anyway, I loved getting to see them! It was so much fun! I only regret that I didn't stay afterwards to get an autograph. 

Sunday 29 May

It was stake conference, but I wasn't feeling very well. During the two hours of stake conference, however, I sat in bed and read conference talks and did scripture study. As most Sundays, there was a lot of sitting around and talking to people as well as napping. The fireside that night, though, was amazing. The three men in our group (Preston, Patrick, and Addison) spoke about their missions and shared their experiences for  us. All three of them were following the spirit and the feeling in that room was almost overwhelming. You could feel the love they had for the people they served, the Lord, and the rest of the people in the room, and we could all feel the love Christ has for all of us. More than ever I know how important it is for young men to serve missions. They may be hard, but they will change your lives forever.

Monday 30 May

Class in the morning (so much fun, as always) then lunch and hanging out at the flat until we were supposed to go to a show that night. Unfortunately, we received an e mail around 5:30 telling us that somehow our tickets for the show hadn't been purchased.....sigh. Some people went to other shows, but I stayed home and worked on my book. It was sad, but when you think of all the shows we've seen we can't really complain :)

Tuesday 31 May

Beautiful, sunny day, with just the slightest bit of rain over us. Quintessential London weather! At around 9:00 AM, we all made our way to the train station (one of the many) and hopped on a train to Kent. There we met the Stake President, and he took us on a walk through the Kent countryside. It was beautiful! I didn't take pictures as we walked because I wanted to enjoy it more than anything else. When we reached the Shoreham Church, however, I wandered through the graveyard and took pictures of a couple of the markers. Since I knew I had ancestors in the area in the early to mid 1800s, I was looking for family names. Admittedly these are very common names, but given the location and time I think they might be distant cousins. I was praying very heavily to be guided by the spirit as well, and I almost didn't take pictures of either of these stones. Something told me too, but I haven't done any research on the people yet.

The Resting Place
of
George Knowles Field
Master Mariner
Born March 1861 -- Died May 1928
Home is the Sailor.
Also
Winifred Mary Field
Wife of the Above
Died 29th Dec 1932
"And Peace at the Last."

Franklin
White
1892-1975
Olga
1897-1958

 You could probably read that second one, but I thought I'd put the captain anyway.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm related to these people at all, but I felt that I should take pictures of their tombstones and research them. Maybe they are cousins, maybe they aren't. Either way, they were real people on this earth who lived their lives like everyone else.

Wednesday 1 June


Exciting day!! We got up at 6:00 AM (yes, 6:00!) and got on a coach (not a bus, mind you) to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace! Our bus driver (excuse me, coach driver) was named Tony, and he was very funny. Even though some of us immediately went to sleep, he entertained the rest of us almost the entire ride up. This was great for me since I'd forgotten to charge my iPod. Then Patrick stole my camera and took some pictures of people on the bus, so I thought I'd include those here ;p

Desi (asleep) and Amber

Chelsea

Like I said, everyone sleeping

Oh Patrick...

Our first stop was Coventry Cathedral. For those of you who don't know, the cathedral was bombed during the Coventry blitz of World War II, and since then has become a great symbol of renewal and rebirth and, by extension, the resurrection. Crosses have been created from the rubble, representing how Christ will return at the end of the world, and a new building has been built attached to the ruins. The ruins are left there as they were found after the bombing, though the rubble is obviously cleared out. People still have church in the ruins, as well as in the modern cathedral attached to it. This was such a powerful sight for me, because it tells you a lot about the people of England and what they went through. It's amazing how they were able to pick up their lives after all the devastation of the blitzes, and I felt the spirit very strongly as I sat in these ruins.

Cross of nails (in the middle there)
Made from nails in the roof of the original cathedral

Wish the sun didn't have such a glare...grr...

Cross of Wood
One of the men cleaning up the rubble found
two beams from the roof that had landed
in the formation of a cross and tied them
together. It's now a focal point of the ruins.

"Reconciliation"
A statue added to the ruins

Statue of St. Michael and the Devil
Representing triumph over death. This was my favorite thing
at the cathedral because of how symbolic it is of the British people
 triumphingover the destruction of World War II.

Ruins (left) and the new cathedral connected

After Coventry, we went to Kenilworth Castle. Kenilworth Castle is also in ruins, and I honestly can't remember the history behind it. But it sure looked cool!

We practically climbed all over everything. Not as
much as at Urquhart, but it was still cool!

There's a picture of me on facebook somewhere, but I can't find it at the moment...I'll ask Ellen about it ;p

We were there for a couple of hours, and then it was time for us to actually go to Stratford and see Shakespeare sights! The first one we went to was Anne Hathaway's cottage. Anne Hathaway as in Shakespeare's wife, not the modern actress. It was really cool to see a cottage still standing from that time period and how the people would have lived back then. The gardens were also beautiful and there was a little maze...though it wasn't much of a maze....but it was nice and relaxing.

Amber

Willow Arbor, where you're supposed to contemplate unrequited love....*sigh*

Maze

Then we went to Mary Arden's farm. Mary Arden was Shakespeare's mother. At first I thought it would be similar to Anne Hathaway's cottage, but it wasn't. It was a real, working farm, and there were animals everywhere. The house was tiny, but there was a huge amount of land. The coolest thing about it, however, was the falconry demonstration!! There were real falconers there who were talking to us about the art of falconry back then and in modern times. They also told us about different kinds of birds they fly and demonstrated with a Ghost Owl (the white one with the heart face) as well as a small falcon. 

It was fascinating and so cool! It was really great for me because there is some falconry in my book, and I was able to get a better sense of how it works. It also made me want to learn it myself. The birds flew right by me, their wings touching my ear. The owl actually landed on Kiersten's hat, and it flew over Bree and Addison, "The Married Couple". Apparently it was, and still is, used in wedding ceremonies to give the new couple good fertility. Good thing they're Mormons.

The apprentice holding the Ghost Owl
(Called the Ghost Owl because it hunts at night
and flies silently. After it lands, however, it lets
out a loud, kind of scary sounding, screech,
and for years people thought they'd seen a ghost,
because they'd only seen something white pass them.)

The master with the falcon

It was stretching its wings and it looked so cool! I wish I could have gotten a better picture.

A buzzard, another one of their birds

HUGE owl! They also had a 5 week old one of these, and it was so cute but already huge!!

When we'd finished at the farm, we went to our bed and breakfast and checked in. Some people took naps, but I went with a group to a local pub to get dinner. They were out of fish and chips by the time I ordered, so I got mozzarella fish cakes instead--yes, mozzarella fish cakes. They were delicious!

Then we went to see Merchant of Venice at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The theatre is right next to the river Avon. Needless to say, we all expected the show to be absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, we were very disappointed. It was set in Las Vegas, which I actually think could work, but none of the ideas were carried through. The acting was also in general pretty mediocre, and one of the main characters was one of the worst actors I've ever seen. The only good thing about the performance was seeing Patrick Stewart live, and he actually did a fantastic performance despite everything else. (He was Professor Xavier in X-Men, if you need a reference)

Thursday 2 June

We had breakfast at our bed and breakfast---a "traditional English breakfast"---and then headed to Shakespeare's birthplace! The house itself wasn't all that special, but it was really, really cool to see the exhibition they had. It talked about the history of Shakespearean theatre and everyone who performs him today. It was amazing.

As we were waiting for everyone to finish going through the house, two actors came out and acted out different scenes from Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth. As theatre students who had recently studied both and who were going to see Macbeth that night, we all thoroughly enjoyed it.

We then went to New Place and Nash House (more Shakespeare sights...) and the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried. Oh, and we also went to Hall's Croft. Just another house, but his daughter lived there, so....

After going to the church, a bunch of us stumbled upon rowboats on the Avon, and we all jumped in. We had a little bit of a problem with the oars at first, but eventually we figured it out :)

After shopping a little bit (there was a lame Harry Potter store) we went back to the bed and breakfast (me and Caroline) for a short nap before going to Macbeth that night. We meant to only sleep for about an hour or so and then work on papers for class, but both of us didn't wake up until my alarm went off at 6:30....oops.

So, after the disappointing performance of Merchant of Venice the night before, we weren't exactly sure what to expect of Macbeth. A lot of us were worried that it would disappoint us as well, but OH MY GOSH!!!! It is in the top three performances I have ever seen in my entire life. They didn't use the weird sisters, though---they used WEIRD CHILDREN! When they first came on the scene, they were hanging from the ceiling and we all thought they were dummy corpses. Then they MOVED! AAAAAH!!! At first I was skeptical, but it sheer genius!!! Oh. My. Gosh. This show seriously changed my life, no matter how bloody it was. XD

So that's one week. So I don't post the longest post in history, I'll break here and do the third through today in the next post. Sorry I'm so behind!