Baklava

This week would best be classified as Theatre Week! Only in London can you see four plays in six days. The first was Les Miz, and it was incredible. I’ve listened to the music my whole life, but I’ve never seen it on a professional stage like that before so I was blown away (Bountiful High just isn’t the same :) ).

We’d been planning on going to Lion King on Tuesday night for a week, but were most disappointed when we got to the theater and they told us they weren’t doing student discounts (again) because they were too busy. We didn’t want to go home empty handed, so we decided to try and make it over to Billy Elliott and see if we could get tickets. We only had a half an hour, though, to make it all the way across town during rush hour! We were running through the stations and were crammed onto the crowded trains, but we made it just in time! Our student tickets didn’t get us very good seats, but the theater was only half full so we got to move over to decent ones. I’m glad it worked out – it was a fun musical! The 12-year-old main character was amazingly talented – I don’t think very many adults could sing/dance/act the way he could!

The next play was Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which we got to see in the replica Globe Theatre. I wish I could say that I was fully alert and knew what was going on 100% of the time, but I cannot. Even though I was confused some of the time, though, I still enjoyed my experience! The language is beautiful, and the actors were really good. The next afternoon our group did a tour of the theatre, which was fun to do after seeing the play! As part of the tour, we also got to see a rehearsal of Much Ado About Nothing. (The actor who plays Geoffrey in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was one of the actors in it!)

Globe Theater

For the last play, Alison and I finally made it to The Lion King. We bought the restricted view tickets on the fourth row, so we got great seats for a good deal! It was so worth it to sit up close, because the looking at the costumes is the best part!

We had a few group day trips this week. The first was visiting Hampton Court, a huge palace just outside of Central London. Its first and most famous resident was King Henry VIII, who happily took over the palace when his advisor, Cardinal Wolsey, fell out of favor. This palace is unique in that half of it is Tudor, and the other half Baroque - the two sides were built more than 100 years apart from each other, from two very different architectural time periods, so it’s pretty much a two-for-one experience!  (If anyone has seen Pirates 4 yet, Hampton Court is the palace they take Jack Sparrow to see the king at the beginning of the movie! The outside they show is the Tudor side, and the inside of the palace is Baroque. It was weird to see that in the movie two days after we were at the palace!)

Tudor Side

Baroque Side

With King Henry VIII (Hampton Court Disneyland style)

After Hampton Court, the bus continued onward to Down House, the house of Charles Darwin. Normally, this house wouldn’t be especially exciting for me, but our literature class had just finished reading a non-fiction book about Darwin and his wife. It was amazing to see all the places I had just been reading about in the book!

Wednesday our group took the train out to Cambridge to tour the university. We were very lucky to be able to do this, because Cambridge is in the middle of their final exams, and they are usually very strict about letting in visitors. Cambridge is much different from universities in the States in that instead of taking finals at the end of every semester, they only take their tests at the end of three years. No pressure or anything. BYU has a program at Cambridge, though, so the BYU professor there was able to get us in! And then the BYU graduate students there took small groups of us on tours throughout the university. Since they are students they were able to get us into places we wouldn’t usually be able to go. The Cambridge culture is so completely different from what I’m used to, so it was so interesting! It’s been there for almost 500 years, so there is so much history and tradition. For example, some of the colleges have formal night every night for dinner, where the students are required to wear their formal robes (exactly like Harry Potter!). Also, only the professors, called fellows, are allowed to walk on the grass. Sometimes they may invite special students to walk on the grass with them, which is considered a great honor. There is one exception though: there’s a part of the grass at St. John’s College that students are allowed to walk on during the Easter term only. So I actually got to walk on the grass! I felt so special!

Cambridge is right on the banks of a small river, where many tourists go on boat rides, or “punting.” Punting is where the driver of the boat stands on the back and uses a huge pole to steer and to push the boat along the river. They let us do the punting! I don’t know why they trusted us to do it – it took fifteen minutes to get away from the dock, and it was bumper boats the whole time. We only had one casualty – Professor Miller’s wife fell fully clothed, purse and all, into the river! I felt so bad – the water was dirty and cold. But she got right back up and did it again in her soaking wet clothes!

For dinner, a few of us went to eat at a pub called The Eagle. Not only did they serve amazing fish and chips, this was the place where Tolkein and C.S. Lewis sat around and discussed their book ideas, and where Watson and Crick first announced that they had discovered DNA.

There are these Barclay's bike stations all over London, where you can rent a bike for 24 hours for just one pound. A group of us rented some bikes to do one of our required walks, and it was so much fun! It was slightly terrifying trying to maneuver on the streets, but most of it was through the parks so we survived! 

Bike group at Buckingham Palace

I finally made it over to Harrod's - it's overwhelmingly huge and completely over the top, but so fun to see! (My Crandall relatives would be horrified to know that I had never heard of this place before this trip : ) ) The store is six levels of luxury items, and is full of designer clothes/shoes/purses/etc. It also has a candy shop, pizzeria, gourmet food section, a toy store, pet shop, jewelry (Tiffany's of course!), a hat section, and this is just what we saw on three of the floors. Any time we would pick up one of the shoes (some of them were well over 500 pounds) or look at a hat, a sales person would rush over to see if they could help us. Help, meaning they wanted us to stop touching the very expensive products. Of course the highlight was the food section - there are so many beautiful things to look at! I loved the cupcakes and chocolates.

Harrod's

$2000 Teddy Bear : )

Yesterday we went to the Borough Market – it was my favorite so far, probably because it was full of delicious food! We tried so many different things (cheese, jam, nuts, to name a few) and I had an amazing lemon-garlic chicken baguette sandwich for lunch. My very favorite thing that I ate was some cinnamon baklava. I never really thought twice about baklava before yesterday, but now I have to say that I really, really love it! I love it even though the man who sold it to me very sneakily put me out 10 pounds two minutes later. The stand with the baklava also had this incredible array of candied nuts, and after Hillary and I tried the hazelnut cinnamon nuts we decided we had to buy some. As he was putting them into a container for us, he gave us another sample of the honey macadamia nuts, and they were great too, so we added a few of them in. Then he had us try yogurt raspberries, and we decided since we were splitting the cost, it couldn’t hurt to throw them in too. I’m sure our faces were priceless after they weighed everything and told us the total. Here’s what the Turkish salesman taught me about sales techniques: first, don’t list your prices clearly, and second, give your customers many delicious free samples so they can’t say no. Oh well, the nuts were delicious! 

Best sandwich ever.

Other highlights: 

• Seeing Pirates at the theater where they filmed part of Notting Hill
• Teaching Primary. Today, my fellow BYU student brought her fake Kate Middleton ring as a visual aid, and cute 7-year-old Poppy put it on and exclaimed, "I'm getting married to Prince William!"
• Finding out that me and the girl sleeping in the bunk next to me sleep talk to each other! Our mumbled conversations with each other have kept the other four girls in our room very entertained. So funny - I'm sure Lizzy could've warned my roommates about this.
• Meeting Dean and Kathy Hughes. Brother Hughes is the author of nearly 100 books, and has written a lot of popular LDS historical fiction. His books include the Children of the Promise series, which were some of my favorite books in junior high! Sister Hughes served in the last General Relief Society Presidency and gave an incredible talk at the fireside at the center tonight. Brother Hughes, along with speaking at the fireside, also spoke to our literature class about writing historical fiction. 
• Meeting up with my dear friend and roommate Anna McKean! On her way to her study abroad in Spain...
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A trip within a trip...

More things I’ve learned:

• It's IMPOSSIBLE to say no to a Ben's cookie. Really. I will be determined to say no, and then I end up with one anyway
• It's necessary to add at least 30 minutes to any of Professor Miller's estimated arrival times
• The gentle rocking of our bus cruising down the English country lanes will put me instantly to sleep
• Thinking about the  £ in terms of $ only leads to unhappiness. So I just try not to. 

The first notable activity of the week was riding the London Eye! It was one of the more expensive half-hours of my life, but completely worth it. The view was amazing – we could see all of the major sights! And we went at sunset, which I think made it extra beautiful.

On Tuesday morning, the group packed up for our first trip! My best description is that it was a four-day jaunt through the English countryside. We spent a lot of time on the bus, but I didn’t mind because the view out the window was beautiful! (That is, I was able to enjoy the view when I was awake. My level of exhaustion is such that if you put me in a comfortable chair for more than 15 minutes there is a really good chance I’ll be asleep.)

First stop: Stonehenge. It was surreal to drive over the hill and see those famous rocks sitting in the middle of a field! As we walked on the path around it, Professor Miller said, “All you need to know about Stonehenge is that there isn’t anything to know.” And it’s true! Scholars know basically nothing about these standing rocks; all they can do is guess. And still the mystery has intrigued the world for centuries, bringing millions of people to the sight. There is definitely something captivating about these unexplained rocks that have stood there for thousands of years.

Our next stop was a small country town called Avebury, the sight of more awesome standing rocks. Think Stonehenge, but with rocks that are spaced much farther apart, making some of the circles almost a quarter mile in diameter. Avebury has nearly 900 stone circles! I think it’s probably safe to say that you haven’t heard of this place because most people’s interest in standing rocks is maxed out with Stonehenge :). (Except for my History 201 professor. One day he spent a half an hour – eternity – talking about standing rocks.)

After our Day of Rocks, we finally arrived at our youth hostel in Bristol. I’ve been sitting here for five minutes trying to think of interesting things to say about Bristol. There’s a cool bridge. The university there looks like Hogwarts on the inside. We saw some Banksy art. (He was basically a graffiti artist who has interesting works all over Bristol. Look him up!) The hostel was surprisingly quite comfortable, even though the shower kind of looked like a gas chamber. That’s about it for Bristol, folks.

On Wednesday, the group headed to Bath. This is the location of the only hot spring in Britain, so people have been coming to the city for centuries to relax and use the water for its medicinal purposes. The Romans even built a huge bath and temple over one of the hot springs. Much of that original site has been excavated, and we were able to see where the ancient Romans came to relax.

The Khaki 3 at the Roman Baths

After our tour of the Roman Baths, we spent the rest of the day exploring the city. The upper class has been the primary occupants for most of its history, resulting in fancy upper class architecture. We saw one townhouse, a small place by American standards, that was on sale for over $3 million! Our tour guide explained a continuing argument between the residents of a neighborhood about whether the windows should be changed back to their original Georgian style, or if the Victorian style should remain. These are the big issues in Bath.

Jane Austen: Bath's most famous resident

The next morning we drove to Wales (the land of my forefathers!) to see the ruins of the beautiful Tintern Abbey. We got there early enough in the morning so that we had the whole place to ourselves. The pictures really don’t do it justice – it’s located in a quiet valley, completely surrounded by trees and there is just something so peaceful about the ruin, I can’t explain it! The abbey has been the inspiration for Wordsworth and many other poets. It’s one of my favorite places we’ve visited so far.

Later in the day, our Professor took us on a 4-mile walk near the small village of Chipping Camden. I felt like I was in Pride and Prejudice the whole time! The view of the hills was beautiful. We were literally walking through fields with sheep grazing and meadows of flowers. Again – I loved it.

A charming sign in Chipping Camden

Friday we started to make our way back to London, making a slight detour to see the southern coast. We walked along the cliffs by the ocean to see the Durdle Door arch. I feel so repetitive saying this, but it was absolutely beautiful. We sat on the beach, and some people put their feet into the water, even though it was freezing!

Even though it was a fun trip, we were so happy to make it back to 27 Palace Court. It really felt like we were coming home! 

The group at Tintern Abbey

St. Paul's, Greenwich, and Portobello Road

Here's a picture of the BYU Centre I forgot to put on last week! 

One of the highlights of the week was taking a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s enormous and beautiful, and so much brighter and happier than some of the other cathedrals I’ve been in! Our tour included hiking up the 528 steps to the top of the dome, accomplished in three sections. When you get to the top of the first section, you’re in a balcony on the inside of the dome, around the bottom, called the “Whispering Gallery.” Someone can walk all the way to the other side of the dome and whisper something to you and you can hear them perfectly! The next two sections included climbing up tiny, twisting little stairs and narrow corridors crammed with people, but it was totally worth it! The view from the top was incredible.

Step's of St. Paul's ("Feed the Birds"!)

View from the top

Before we got to London, a few girls invited anyone who wanted to go to go see the ballet Cinderella at the Royal Opera Theatre. I’ve had my ticket for a while, so it was fun to finally be able to go! Our tickets were almost in the back, so I had no idea how well we’d be able to see, but they actually turned out to be pretty good seats! And the ballet was so good – the stepsisters, played by men, were so funny.

On Wednesday our group took a river boat down the Thames to Greenwich to visit the National Maritime Museum and the Prime Meridian. Here’s a secret – TECHNICALLY we didn’t actually get to see the Prime Meridian. Our professors set us free as soon as we got to Greenwich, and when we hiked up the hill to the Prime Meridian museum, we found out it would cost ten pounds to get in. That’s almost $20 to see a line on the ground. We were able to see through the fence, though, and you could see exactly where the line would cross on the path, so we stood on it and took a picture. It counts! 

 Standing on the Prime Meridian :)

One of our destinations this week included walking over Millennium Bridge. This will be exciting only to my fellow Harry Potter maniacs. It’s the bridge destroyed by the Death Eaters in the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!

One night the group went to a Baroque Orchestra concert at the St. Martin-in-the-fields chapel in Trafalgar Square. We’re so cultural! I loved it because they played a song I spent months and months on, Vivaldi’s “Summer,” and I could really appreciate how they good they were. They did a much better job with it than I did :)

This week’s Fine Art’s assignment included going to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s largest decorative arts museum. It’s this huge museum that has pieces from every time period all over the world. It has rooms full of sculptures, ironwork, silver, jewelry, architecture, paintings, glass, and costumes. Honestly, its enormity is completely overwhelming – I was there for three hours and was power walking through by the end. But there were some really cool things! The theatre costume section was my favorite. 

Saturday is officially market day, and this Saturday we went to the Portobello Road Market. This is one of London’s most famous markets, and you may recognize it as the market in the movie Notting Hill. It’s huge – we walked down for almost two hours and didn’t even get to the end. There are so many different things! They have your typical flea market and souvenir stuff, but also a whole section of antiques. And again, the food was amazing. They had all the booths with fresh fruits, vegetables, and breads. There was a store I loved called The Hummingbird Bakery that had the most beautiful cupcakes!

We’ve slowed down the pace a little bit from last week’s non-stop fun. Part of it is because everyone was starting to get just a little worn out! And we also have to spend an occasional night doing homework. But we still do incredible amounts of activities every day, it takes me about ten seconds to fall asleep at night!

Taking advantage of a 20 minute break

Even though doing homework is usually the last thing I feel like doing, I still absolutely love my classes! My professors are amazing, and so easy to talk to. Tonight, Professor Crowe had "cookies and conversation" and a group of us sat and talked to them for over an hour! Plus there are so many smart people in this group, I'm learning so much them. And on Friday I went and did homework on a bench in Hyde Park – that definitely makes homework easier :). 

Royal Wedding, Gongoozling, and Wandsworth Common

Here are a few things I've learned during my first week in London: 

• London and homework do not work well together.
• There's no way to go down the stairs in the London Center quietly. Embrace the creaking. 
• Make sure you know which train it is before you get on.
• American girls seem VERY loud on the Underground compared to the silent British travelers.
• Even though it looks like a quarter, the two-pound British coin is really almost $4. It's still so much easier to spend those coins, though...
• When you're tired enough, you can still fall asleep with the lights on in a room you share with 13 other girls
• If someone asks you if you want to go do something - say YES

These first few days have been a beautiful blur. We've been able to see and do so many wonderful things! And there is so much left to be done. I have no doubt that these next six weeks are going to be over before I know it! London has been good to me so far - not even a drop of rain.

On Wednesday, after many hours of traveling, I finally arrived at 27 Palace Court, otherwise known as the BYU London Center. I've already fallen in love with this beautiful townhouse! It's our dorms, kitchen, dining room, laundry room, and classroom all rolled into one. It's located just north of Hyde Park and close to Notting Hill. 

Due to jetlag, the first day was kind of a blur. Basically we walked around Hyde Park and unpacked to keep us awake as long as possible. I'm happy that I made it all the way to 8:30 before I finally got to go to bed! The next morning we dove right into classes. I'm taking a British Literature class and a Fine Arts class. For the Fine Arts, we're only actually in class once a week - the rest of the time she gives us to visit museums on our own! That's the amazing part of this program - we're given so much freedom to explore London our way. 

So in case you haven't heard, the royal wedding was kind of big deal. People camped out in front of Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace days in advance, just so they could get a glimpse of Kate Middleton or Prince William. The newspapers here detailed every possible aspect of the big day (For example, one article was titled "Charles and Kate team up with iPods to pick wedding music". Fascinating, right?) We went down to Buckingham Palace the night before the wedding and the crowds were insane! 

Some of the girls in the group woke up at 5 A.M. so they would be able to see all the action down at the palace. I was still suffering from a little jet lag, however, and the thought of waking up that early, having to stand for eight hours, and the chance of rain were not at all tempting. Instead I made it down to the palace around nine with another group. It was packed by the time we got there, but it was fun to be in that excited atmosphere! Even the marching bands walking by, in their red coats and black fur hats, were enough to make the crowd cheer and rush the nearest fence. We left Buckingham Palace because we wanted to watch the ceremony in one of the nearby parks where they were showing it on huge screens. 

Buckingham Palace

As we walked down the street, someone told us that the bride would be driving past this very spot on her way to Westminster Abbey. We sat by the fence for about an hour waiting - and it was worth it! She drove by right in front of us - no more than 20 feet away. She was so beautiful, and waved and smiled at all the people lined on the street. It was so fun to be there and see some of the wedding in person! 

Kate Middleton! You can kind of see her white veil in the back windshield...

After she passed we made our way to Hyde Park to watch the rest of the ceremony on the screen. This was another great experience! It was packed - we heard later there were as many as 300,000 people watching there. People brought picnics and were popping champagne (There weren't very many people who were actually watching - I think a lot of them just loved the opportunity to drink at eleven in the morning :) ) When they said "I will," everyone cheered and waved their flags - the English people LOVE Will and Kate. You can still see the flags with the newlywed's faces on them all over the city. 

Hyde Park Screens

That night, a group of us decided to go to see Wicked. It's so nice to be here for as long as we are because we have so much flexibility, and can get last minute tickets to see all the shows! We were able to pay the discounted student price, but it wasn't sold out so we had amazing seats. And yes, I realize some would consider the amount of times I've seen Wicked excessive, but I loved it just as much this time as I did the first time! 

I think we probably walked close to 10 miles on Saturday. We started out with a group walk through the canals. A British person would have called us "gongoozlers", the technical term for people who like watching the activity on the canals. (The joggers on the canal must have hated us - our group of 45 couldn't really get the hang of standing on one side.) It was beautiful - there are so many painted boats and pretty bridges and beautiful trees and plants. The walk took us up Primrose Hill and from the top we could see out over all of London. ("Hill" - we Utahns laugh that this mound would be considered a hill :) )

Regent's Canal

Primrose Hill, overlooking London

The walk ended near Camden Town, one of the many street markets in London, and we were able to eat lunch there. It had to have been one of the most diverse places I've ever eaten at! There were stalls of Indian food, Turkish food, Peruvian food, Brazilian food, African food, Japanese food, and traditional fish and chips, just to name a few. For dessert we tried "cake pops", which had to have been one of the best things I've ever eaten. It's basically a brownie (a perfectly moist and wonderful brownie) covered in chocolate and sprinkles on a popsicle stick. Mm, just writing this makes me want another one! 

Cake pops

After lunch, we took another walk through Regent's Park. It was a huge park that had the typical English green fields, river, and huge trees, and also had the London Zoo and these beautiful mansions throughout the park. There were so many people there enjoying the beautiful weather - I could have spent the whole day sitting in that park. 

We finished off the day in the National Gallery. (I'm not kidding - every day is action packed!) It was kind of surreal to see these masterpieces in person! I saw so many that I had studied in my art history class. I am in love with the impressionist paintings, especially those by Renoir and Monet. For my Fine Arts class we have to visit seven different museums, including this one. For part of my assignments, I have to go back sometime this week so I can sketch and analyze two of the works. Even though it's homework, I feel so lucky that I get credit for spending time in one of the world's greatest museums!

Today was our first Sunday, and I already know that going to church here is going to be one of my favorite parts of the study abroad! They split our group into smaller groups of six or seven and send us to wards all over the city. Our group left at 8:45 for our 10 o'clock meeting, and it was an adventure - let me tell you. First, the Circle Line of the Underground was closed so we had to take a slight detour in order to get to the right stop. Because of this detour, we were afraid we were going to miss our train, so we made a spectacle of ourselves by sprinting through the train station to catch it. We made it. In fact, we sat on the train for 10 minutes before it started moving. The train was finally pulling up to our stop, and we were all huddled around the door waiting for it to open. Unfortunately, we didn't know that the train isn't the same as the Tube, and we have to push a button in order to open the doors. We didn't push the button, so the train sailed right through the station. Two trains later, we made it back and finally made it to church. 

On the train... 

Church in Utah provides us with a seemingly endless supply of priesthood holders, pianists, and Primary teachers, so this small branch in Wandsworth Commons is going to be a new experience for me. There couldn't have been more than 40 people in Sacrament meeting. They're so grateful for the BYU students coming to their ward, even for the simple addition of a pianist! Bishop Aseimu, from Ghana, got us immediately involved in our church service. I was the chorister in Sacrament meeting and all of us bore our testimonies. I was also called as a Primary teacher! (Primary kids with British accents? Deal.) I am so excited for the experience in this ward - the humble testimonies that were shared were so sweet and sincere, I know I have a lot to learn from these people! 

After church, a few of us decided to complete another one of the required London Walks we have to do. We walked past the Parliament Building and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and St. James Palace. 

St. James Palace

I mentioned before that London and homework are not harmonious, as I'm sure you could guess. It is so hard to find the motivation to stay home and be productive when at any time there are a million fun things I could be doing in the city! I guess I'll be the one reading my books on the Tube and furiously writing papers before I go to bed. I'll get sleep when I come home, right? 

I've only been here for five days, but it feels like so much longer than that. However, I know that Hymn #226, "Improve the Shining Moments" (we sang this in our Welcome Fireside today) will soon be more than true:

"Time flies on wings of lightning,

We cannot call it back;

It comes, then passes forward

Along its onward track;

And if we are not mindful,

The chance will fade away;

For life is quick in passing--

'Tis as a single day."

I just have to take advantage of every moment, because it's going to be over before I know it! 

(There are so many other things I could talk about! Morning runs in Hyde Park, Waffle Palace, Piccadilly Circus, my very own Paddington Library card...)