I can't believe I haven't written about Paris OR Ireland. It's so hard to keep writing, when all I want to do is go out and do things! Rest assured that I'm still having an incredible time. Maybe I'll try to sit down this week and write about those trips.

My friend Emily from home has been visiting this weekend, and it's been so fun showing her around London. We've been all over the city, seeing some things I've been to already, and some things I haven't. Today we went to the Pop Life exhibit at the Tate Modern, which was really cool. Modern art doesn't usually do it for me, but this exhibit was cool.

For now, I'm going to take advantage of all the time I have left! Only a few weeks now till I'm back in the states!

Theatre x3

Since Saturday I've seen three VERY different plays.

I got up early Saturday morning (Halloween) to wait in line to see Wicked! Like on Broadway, they sell the front row for the cheapest price on the day of the performance. Unlike Broadway, it's just first-come, first-served. And I got there early enough, so Erin and I went! I really love that show. The costumes are amazing, the music is fantastic--it's exactly what I want in a musical. We actually saw the understudy for Elphaba, but she was incredible. What a voice! Erin and I went to the stage door after the show and got a picture with her. It was a great time.

Last night my Drama in the London Theatre class went to see Inherit the Wind, starring Kevin Spacey. No, really. He was great! I like the play itself a lot. Pinkerton performed it when I was a freshman, and I remember really liking it then too. Except I'm pretty sure Pinkerton didn't use a live monkey, like they did at the Old Vic. (I was so excited at first... "Wow! A real monkey!" But then I got a little sad. Monkeys do not belong in London, let alone on stage. But I digress.) Anyway, lots of courtroom shouting, justice-seeking, and evolution-defending. A very good piece of theatre, in my opinion.

Aaaand, today Elizabeth and I went all the way to Greenwich to see Dracula. I will say, we certainly enjoyed ourselves. It's probably a pretty good play. This production was just so weird. There were some circus-y elements that were pretty cool, but we were more than a little distracted at how much Dracula looked like Keanu Reeves, and how much another of the actors looked like he didn't know anything about acting. No harm done though, the tickets were cheap, and we definitely had a good time talking about it afterwards.

I'm off to Paris this weekend! Look for updates on that early next week.

It has been a while. I know.

Fall break happened! It was probably as incredible as I expected it to be. Here's a recap:

ROME:
Day 1. Flew from Stanstead Airport REALLY early in the morning. So early that the Friday-night partiers were still out at the bus station in Hammersmith when I left (around 3:45am). A drunk man introduced me to his kebab.
Arrived in Rome around lunch time, settled in to our accommodations, Camping Tiber (kind of a campground, we had private double rooms in these cabin-type things), and took the train into the city. We did not validate our tickets, and had a small run-in with the Italian authorities. Whoops.
Wandered around for the rest of the day, ending up at the Trevi Fountain no less than 3 times by accident (it's beautiful at all times of day), and ate my first Italian gelato. Words cannot express how delicious it is. Also saw the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, and lots of statues and fountains that are probably just as old and important.
Back to Camping Tiber, and discovered they did not have towels. Hmm.

Day 2. Bought tickets for a hop on-hop off bus tour (also called ho-ho buses, amusingly). We were going to get a particular company, but a charming Italian man who worked for a rival company changed our minds at the bus stop. That guy probably deserves a raise. Rode around Rome, listening to the audio guide tell us all about it, then rode around again and got off at all the stops that sounded interesting. Ate gelato again. Pizza for lunch, pasta for dinner, which is pretty much what we did every day. Got some really great pictures from this random rooftop we ended up on, of the Colosseum at sunset. Check out my facebook album, since I never did figure out how to put pictures on here successfully. Wandered around Piazza Navona for a while, and went back.
Realized that I still did not have a towel. Used a t-shirt instead.

Day 3. The Vatican. Used the last bit of our bus ticket to get to the Vatican museums. Waited in line for a while, then saw some of the most famous art ever created. You know, no big deal. I was pretty surprised at how crowded it was, even though the tour guide I was accidentally following said it was a pretty low-key day. Then went to St. Peter's Basilica, which I was honestly even more impressed by, and I didn't even have to pay to get in there. Just the SIZE of that place is mind-boggling. We also walked through the crypts, seeing tombs of various important religious figures, including the recently-deceased pope.
Sat on the Spanish Steps for a while waiting to meet up with some more IC people, then ate at a fairly nice restaurant for dinner. After three days of nothing but pizza, pasta, and gelato, I went with a salad. It was delicious. More gelato, then back to Camping Tiber for one more night.

Day 4. Arose leisurely, and checked out of Camping Tiber. Had to carry my bag around all day, which did not do good things to my shoulders. Courney and Hillary went to St. Peters because they missed it yesterday, but I took the rest of the girls to this church that Aunt Linda told me about. Saw bones of hundreds of dead monks, arranged artistically and creepily in several dark rooms. Very cool, but very strange. Made our way to the train station where we caught a bus back to the airport.

VENICE:
Although our flight was less than an hour long, it seemed like we were traveling all day. The bus from the Venice airport took a long time, then the bus ride to our accommodations seemed almost as long. We stayed at another "Camping" place, outside the city. By the time we got the bus back into Venice, most shops were closed. Thrilled to discover that eating was cheaper here, and ate some much-needed carbs before heading back.
Still no towel. I guess I should have brought one.

Day 5. Our only full day in Venice, but I think we made the most of it. Browsed in shops all morning, and I did my best not to buy everything. I was mostly successful, but it was hard. I did buy a watch, so that when people ask me for the time I can say "I went to Venice! And it's noon."
Took the Vaporetto to Piazza San Marco. Was in awe. I love Venice. Took the Vaporetto back to the cheap part of town and had dinner (and gelato, obviously). It sounds like we didn't do anything this day. We did, but mostly it consisted of us walking around and looking at Venice, which is awesome, but not terribly exciting to write about. See facebook for pictures.

Day 6. Checked out of Camping whatever-it-was-called-in-Venice, and carried my bag around rainy Venice for a while (despite protesting back and shoulders). Tried not to step in too many puddles or get washed away in a flood, and grudgingly left on a train to...

FLORENCE:
The train ride was beautiful. We had 2 trains, actually, one from Venice to Bologna and one from Bologna to Florence. The second one was amazing, through the mountains. Unfortunately did not get any pictures.
Dropped our stuff off and explored, thankful that we didn't have to take any public transportation to get to the landmarks. Browsed an open market of mostly leather goods. I'm not sure what about my appearance implied that I can afford a leather jacket, but I cannot. Those salespeople don't leave you alone. Ran into the Santa Fe girls! What are the chances?
Stayed in a regular hostel here, right in the center of the city. My bed was a little broken, and pretty much everyone in our room of 5 people snored, but hey, you get what you pay for, right? It was clean, and the staff was friendly, and they gave me a towel!

Day 7. This day was jam-packed. Accademia gallery in the morning (Michelangelo's David! also a musical instrument gallery!), then Uffizi gallery (Boticelli's Birth of Venus! And a lot of other famous things!), then we climbed up to the top of the Duomo. It cost 8 euros, but it was very cool and we felt pretty accomplished climbing all those 400-some stairs. Had a really delicious dinner for pretty cheap, which I photo-documented on facebook.

Day 8. Spent most of this last day traveling back to London. Had some difficulty with the bus getting back into London, but that was not fun and I'd rather only write about the fun things.


So that was the abridged version, anyway. Please do check out my pictures, and I'll try to write more often this block. (No promises, though, since I'm going to be traveling a lot!) The best thing about getting back from a week in Italy is that I'm still in London. How amazing is that?!

I don't really have anything important to say, other than that it doesn't seem fair that you can get sick while studying abroad. It's sort of like getting sick while on vacation--I have important, fun things to be doing! I don't have time to recover! (That said, I am feeling much better than I was a couple of days ago.)

Also, I have just taken what will probably be my only exam for the semester. It was really hard.

Warwick, Stratford upon Avon, and Oxford

Trip #2!

Thankfully, our coach left a bit later this time. We spent most of our morning and afternoon at Warwick Castle. In addition to other obviously important historical events, it was also where they filmed a few scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so we were pretty excited by it. Apparently the whole castle is owned by Madame Tussaud's now--it's a little touristy, but still neat. We climbed the towers, saw the trebuchet in action, watched the falconers and their birds, and were very impressed by the archer doing demonstrations.

We then went to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's home town. We saw the actual Royal Shakespeare Company perform an actual play by Shakespeare (As You Like It). It was AWESOME. I wish we'd studied the play a little more before going, but I still loved it. They were funny, talented, and musical, believe it or not! A few of the actors had fantastic voices. I wish I could see the RSC more often--I think I'd really love Shakespeare if I could. After the show we all went to the "Dirty Duck," a pub that the actors frequent. It was nice; Eizabeth and I talked with Dr. Ostrander, former dean of the music school for a while! He was on the trip with us, visiting with his wife.

We spent the night in a cute B&B in Stratford, and were fed a delicious English breakfast this morning. One of the IC London professors gave a talk about Shakespeare at the church where he is buried, then we were free to wander the town for a bit. Luckily for us, Stratford was having a food festival this weekend, and we got to try all sorts of delicious things.

Our last stop of the trip was Oxford. We were left to our own devices here, and Elizabeth and I didn't find anything spectacular. It was cute, though, and there were lots of people around. We spent most of our time browsing in book stores.

Gosh, it's a good thing we don't have to do anything tomorrow. It's exhausting, all this travelling! ;)

Internship

As you may already know, I have a teaching internship while studying here in London. Until yesterday, I had absolutely no idea what that would entail. It looks like it'll be great though.

Started at Ashmole primary school Monday morning, and helped out with some instrument demonstrations. I think I'll be teaching flute and clarinet lessons there. They don't seem to understand that I'm capable of teaching more than one or two instruments--I'm certainly not great at all of them, but IC does a good job of preparing us to teach beginners just about anything. Anyway, there are about 4 other music teachers at that school alone, to be able to teach lessons on all the instruments.

Monday afternoon I went to Bonneville primary school. I think this one was my favorite. The kids are SO cute! At Bonneville they were particularly well-behaved, and seemed so excited to get started. Here I'll be doing one lesson with year 3 (7-8 year-olds) singing, drumming, and playing recorder; and another lesson with year 4 (8-9 year-olds) playing band instruments. I'm the only woodwind player of the three of us, so it looks like I'll get to teach quite a lot.

Today, my first school (St. Luke's) had no idea I was coming. Elizabeth was with me, and we had a similar experience to what she had yesterday: they've had IC students before, but no one bothered to tell them we were coming. Oh well. We're doing year 3 and 4 here as well, but the year 4s are doing strings instead of winds. So I'll be teaching violin and cello! I talked to a few of the kids here, and one of them asked me if I knew Michael Jackson. No, I told him, not personally. "Oh. Do you know his doctor?" Haha! Apparently, to an 8-year-old British child, all Americans know each other.

Then this afternoon I was at St. Stephens, and we'll be doing basically the same things as at St. Luke's. What's nice about this place is that Laura, the team leader, knew about me, and she's already given me lessons to plan. Oh, and one of the year 3 boys told me that I sounded "quite posh." :)

So, while it's all been very disorganized, I think we'll have a really good time teaching here. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

The free thing we ended up doing was checking out the National Gallery. I still can't believe these museums are free. I saw the Monet painting I've seen prints of in dentist offices my whole life! Along with several others, of course. Like the British Museum, it's just too big to see it all at once, so maybe we'll go back again another time. After that, DLT went to see Mother Courage at the National Theatre. Fun fact: the actors for Aunt Petunia and Dudley Dursley were in it! Fiona Shaw (Petunia) was fantastic as Mother Courage. Interestingly, that day was the only truly rainy one we've had so far. Generally the weather is quite nice, but maybe a little cooler than we're used to at this time of year.

Since I last wrote, Elizabeth and I have booked weekends in Barcelona and Paris! We're understandably thrilled about it, though those trips won't be till much later in the semester.

Trip #1 and the zoo

So today is day 4 of my 5 day weekend. It started on Friday, when we left for our first trip, Bath and the West country.

After a VERY early start, we stopped in Avebury, home of a henge much larger than Stonehenge. Avebury's is a bit less impressive, though, because the rocks are smaller and fewer of the rocks have been excavated. It was still neat, though, and there were lots of sheep.
Our second stop was in Glastonbury. I really enjoyed that--there's a ruined abbey which is beautiful. We had a tour guide who pretended to be from the past who told us all about the history of the Abbey. We also climbed to the top of the Tor. The Tor is a big, natural hill, where you can see for miles and miles at the top. Someday the pictures will make it to Facebook and you can see what I mean. It was really cool.
Stop #3 on Friday was to Wells, home of a really impressive cathedral. It was much different from Winchester, but equally beautiful and interesting. They have "scissor" arches in the nave, something that I don't think any other cathedral around here has. Again, someday there will be pictures somewhere.
THEN we finally made it to Bath, our pit stop for the evening. We didn't explore too much; just had dinner and then most of the IC people hung out at a pub for a while.

Our lodgings at the Bath YMCA were quite good, and they fed us free breakfast Sunday morning. We toured the Roman Baths (appropriately located in the town of Bath), and Bill took us on a walk to see some of the really interesting architecture of the town. A few of us stopped at the costume museum, then we got back on the bus for our last stop, Stonehenge.
It really is an impressive place. It's sort of unfortunate that they won't let you get near it anymore, but there wereTONS of people that day (miraculously, we had perfect weather the whole trip), and it was nice to be able to get unobstructed pictures. The coach brought us back to the ICLC in time for dinner on Saturday.

Aaand then my second weekend started. :) Elizabeth, Molly and I hung around the flat for most of Sunday, getting some of our actual school work done. Today Elizabeth and I went to the London Zoo! It was really fun, and we spent pretty much the whole afternoon there. Now we're at the London Centre, and we're going to figure out what kinds of free things we can do in London tomorrow, since our internship still hasn't started.

So, why doesn't everyone do this?? Sure, we study a little, but mostly we just get to live in London and go amazing places. We just booked a weekend trip to Barcelona! It's not till December, but we're still pretty excited.

Avenue Q

Elizabeth and I headed to Piccadilly Circus last night for Avenue Q, and we decided that we really like it there. It's a little like Times Square--lots of lights, people, shows... I may be headed back there in a couple of hours to buy a book that I can't seem to find anywhere near me in London.

So we got to the ticket booth last night, and the guy who gave them to us said, "Oh, you've been upgraded to the stalls."
"What?" we said. Silly Brits, can't understand anything they say.
"Your tickets have been upgraded. Your seats are just through there, to the stalls."
So in we went, to row H. That's the 8th row. From the front.

... yeah, we still don't really get how we pulled that one off. We payed £12 yesterday, and somehow that got us 8th row seats. So cool!

I really, really love living in a city like London. It's so weird (also amazing) that we can just do things spontaneously that I would never be able to do in Ithaca or New Hampshire. Elizabeth and I just bout £12 tickets to see Avenue Q tomorrow night! I don't think we would have been able to do that, even in New York. 12 pounds? That's less than $20! (Well, depending on the exchange rate.)

My drama class is going to another play this week, called Punk Rock. That's at the Lyric Theatre, which is right in our neighborhood, in Hammersmith! I was a little nervous about living in such a big city, but so far the benefits have WAY outnumbered the drawbacks. It's kind of expensive, true, but when else would I ever have this opportunity? Everything I need is within walking distance, and everything I could possibly want is just a tube ride away.

This blog is really not working out the way I had planned. I have no idea why those pictures got cut off. Ohhhh well. It was my intention to upload pictures of things I've done so far so I can tell you about them, but that doesn't look like it's going to work out very well. Our apartment doesn't have internet, the ICLC's wireless connection is SO slow with uploading.

But that is literally the worst thing that I've experienced so far. I am having such an amazing time! This week was our first week of classes. London Projects with Dr. Jemian is going to be great. We all just do some sort of project about London history relevant to our majors. I'm thinking I'm going to research some particular monarch who really liked music and figure out what kind of music he/she had performed, what composers wrote for them, who the musicians were, that kind of thing. I'm really looking forward to it. Drama in the London Theatre is my other class. We saw a play on Thursday in Shakespeare's Globe! It's a new play called "A New World," and it's a story about Thomas Payne's life. We were groundlings, which means we had to stand the whole time, but we were right up against the stage. It was REALLY cool. I'm hoping I can go back sometime this semester to see something actually by Shakespeare.

On Friday morning several of us took a tour of Parliament. That building is gorgeous from the inside too! They wouldn't let us take pictures there, but I got to see the houses of Lords and Commons, plus offices and hallways full of beautiful paintings and sculptures. I'm told we can come back whenever we want to watch an actual debate, which sounds like it would be pretty interesting.
That afternoon Bill taught us how to play cricket. It's a pretty strange game, but I had a lot of fun playing it. And my team won, so that's always good. :) After cricket we took a tour of the International Student House, which is an organization that IC gives us membership to. It wasn't terribly exciting, but they did give us information on all kinds of fun events and discounted tickets.

Today was another early morning, because it was time for Bill's second walk. This one was around the St. Paul's area. We saw some beautiful churches, the Guild Hall of London, plus heard some really interesting stories about the history of it all. I've heard it from other people who have gone to London, but now I know: Bill is probably the most awesome and helpful person there is. He knows everything! About everything! (Everything pertaining to London, anyway.)

THEN Bill took us all to a rugby match. Wow, was it intense. "Our" team, the London Scottish, did very well. I think it's a much more exciting game to watch than American football, if only because they don't wear any pads or helmets or anything. It's so fast-paced; the two 40-minute halves went by so quickly. Right near the end there was this huge fight on the field... someone from the other team was just beating up one of the Scottish, and it seemed like no one was doing anything about it! I mean, really beating him up. The crowd yelling, but the referee just stood there. Eventually they stopped, and threw the guy out, but it was still crazy.

So to recap: in the last three days I saw a play at the Globe, toured Parliament and I.S.H., played cricket, watched Rugby, and went on a walk with Bill and others. Tomorrow we have another walk with Bill; this one is around the Sunday markets in East London. I look forward to writing about it later!

Moving in, Proms, and Notting Hill carnival

I think I've managed to do something every day I've been here so far. Since the last time I wrote I've checked out Hyde Park and Kew Gardens, moved in to my flat, went to a BBC Proms concert (Pictures at an Exhibition! So good!), and saw some of the Notting Hill street carnival. Apparently it's the biggest street carnival in Europe, and I believe it. There were SO many people there.

I'm going to start at the beginning and post some of the pictures I've taken. Enjoy!


Mom took a picture at this tiny door at Romsey Abbey when she came to England too.


Inside Romsey Abbey




Some guys outside Arundel Castle

Here are a few pictures of Arundel. Can you believe someone actually lives here?








Several "New Forest Ponies" (and one "New Forest Cow"):











A couple from the beach:

Isle of Wight/the Needles



Buckler's Hard, a cute little maritime village:

London, days 2-3

This is the second post which didn't make it to the right location.

Although we nailed down our housing early, it certainly hasn't been dull!

Elizabeth and I checked out the British Museum yesterday, which was really cool. It's huge--we'll definitely have to go back to see more of it, but what we did see was awesome (Including the Rosetta Stone and Cleopatra's mummy! Woah!) After the ice cream social at the ICLC, we thought we'd really get our money's worth from our day tube passes and go out again, this time to Westminster and Big Ben. It's still kind of surreal that we're really here, really seeing these things from all the postcards and movies. Again, pictures will follow when we have a more regular routine and I can get my laptop in here to upload them.

Today:
-ate a large breakfast at the hotel (we're hoping to tide ourselves over until the free pizza tonight)
-found our way to Earl's Court for some errands (ATM for me and the Carphone Warehouse for Elizabeth)
-bought a week-long tube pass (£28??! I look forward to our student discounts...)
-took the tube to Hyde Park and wandered around for a couple of hours. There are some beautiful flower gardens, a ton of ducks/geese/pigeons, and we saw the Princess Diana memorial fountain--that was really neat.

Later this afternoon we're going on a neighborhood walk with Bill and then eating free pizza while the police tell us about local laws and things like that. Should be fun!

Welcome!

NOTICE: I started a blog a few days ago, but somehow it's been posting to a different blog than this one. So here are the posts that I wrote so far.

Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog! I have lots of requests to keep people updated on my travels here, so I'll do my best to post pictures and stories when I get the chance.

I arrived in the UK last Thursday and spent several days with Gillian, Dorothy, and Rita at their adorable house in Hampshire. They were wonderfull, and Gillian took me to see the sights in her area. In the few days I was there I saw the New Forest (so new that William the Conqueror established it 900 years ago...), Arundel Castle, the southern coast, Buckler's Hard, and Winchester and Winchester Cathedral. I'll do my best to post pictures of all those things when I figure out the wireless access in the London Centre. I'm SO glad to have gotten my bearings before starting this crazy week of flat-hunting in London.

Speaking of flat-hunting, we've already got one! I'm living with two other girls, Elizabeth and Molly, and we put a deposit down this morning. I couldn't be happier--the place we found is in a great location, and it's really affordable--plus, Bill told us that we have basically the best landlords anywhere. Frank (one of the landlords) said he'll even come pick up all our luggage so we don't have to take it in the underground. We're psyched.

Well, Elizabeth and I are off to do some sight-seeing! We're going to the British Museum today. :)