Nostalgia

I'm so excited (and nervous!) for a lot of the things I've got goin on at the moment. I can't believe I'm going to a wedding on April 27th... my own... :) I'm nervous about the internship I'm scrambling to get for this summer (my fingers are crossed to be accepted by Salt Lake City's KSL TV Newsroom internship, and if that one doesn't work, heaven knows what I'll do). Brent and I will moving into our new house in May and we've got a whole summer of good stuff... and no classes or homework (heaven) to look forward to.

But, I can't help but miss England. About a year ago, I had bought my plane ticket to Heathrow and I was looking forward to some of the best memories... literally ever. England was such a joy for me. Going to every mass I could at those breathtaking cathedrals, watching Parliament from the observing gallery, loving every minute I spent with Auntie Thellie (biking all kinds of places Granny went when she was about my age) and adoring the cathedral in Norwich.

I am so glad I did that study abroad, even if it did cost a lot and delayed graduation... it was just so wonderful.

London skyline, with the ferris wheel and House of Parliament and Big Ben in the background.

Somerset House in London, housed a beautiful photograph exhibit, and located right along the Thames.

The pier at Brighton beach, where we ate jellied eel and got henna tattoos and loved the beautiful  pebbled beach.

The ruins of Tintern Abbey in Wales. With the mist and sunlight, it was so dreamy. 

Happy Weekend

Macy is here at Thel's, safe and sound! hallelujah. We plan to go to Cromer Beach tomorrow (crossing our fingers for good weather!) and I only can hope for as good a time as we had at Brighton Beach a few weeks ago. Here's a few good uns to jog our memory...

Tara, Amy, and Emily headin into the water... looking oh so refreshing but no. too cold for anybody's good actually. eh, you win some, you lose some.

no this is not a photo I googled off the internet. my friend Jessica took it. hard to believe, yea?

Obvi, we were scared to try the jellied eel. and for good reason. why do they even sell this stuff?? They should give it to convicts in prison who've been really bad...

Brighton Beach, We love you. Really.

Today, I showed Macy around Norwich and I do hope she liked it. The castle was way cool- had an indoor well which I don't think I've ever seen before. Only a week and a day before Deanna and I are in Venice! Dang. how is this even happening? really.

Playin Catch Up

It was the last official day of the program today (meaning exams were today and people start flying out tomorrow and continue leaving till Wednesday). Breaks my heart a little bit. These girls (and boys) have been my little European family which I love! Eaten at pubs together, lost on the Tube together, acted like obnoxious tourists together, getting pumped about the royal wedding together, eating jellied eel together, and the like. I'm sure gonna miss em. London has done me good. Norwich has got some big shoes to fill (which I'm sure it will-- dang I'm pumped to see my Auntie Thellie). The plan is to take a train (15 pounds is what I found, how does that sound to you Granny? A good price?) on Wednesday to get to Auntie's house at around 3 or 4 ish.

In the last week of London, there has been a flurry of activity-- making sure we see all the things we wanted to see! I've heard quite a few of "Oh, I gotta run to Sainsbury's one more time to get candy for my family" or "I gotta see _____ broadway play before I go." 

We have sure made our rounds this past week. 

Monday: class, a lecture by George Chittock who was about 5 years old or so during the London Blitz in 1940-41 during the war. He was telling us about what it was like, the bomb shelters that families had in their backyards, how he remembers staying in his family's shelter one night after a rainfall the previous day and the shelter had 6 in of rain chillin on the bottom of the shelter (I'm sure only adding to the ambiance of bomb noises for 12 hours during the night when their "friends," as George called the Germans, were bombing London). 

Tuesday: Noon tea at Kensington Gardens right by Kensington Palace. My first experience with herbal tea... I gotta be honest... perhaps its an acquired taste. I had blackcurrant, jasmine, and vanilla herbal tea. It was this lovely rose color, and I thought it was gonna be good when I sipped it, but then when I swallowed came the bitter herby taste. The color was tricky, it was just a beautiful blush! I kept trying it thinking it would get better. Unfortunately... no luck. But the cucumber sandwiches and raisin crumpets were to die for. That night, we got to go to the play Mousetrap, a murder mystery. It has been running since 1952! It was a great play--  kept me interested the whole 2 hours and the set didn't change once! At one point, it was gettin pretty suspenseful and someone in the audience screamed! ha, only later did I find out it was one of the girls in our program.

Wednesday: Trip to the London Temple. Da bomb.

Thursday: Cricket Match at Lord's Stadium. Middlesex Panthers v. Essex Eagles. P.S. Cricket games last FOREVER. But cool though, a bit like baseball but with two batters goin simultaneously and only two bases (called wickets) that the batters run between while the ball is bein caught by the other team in the outfield. A little fun fact, the panthers' colors were pink! I feel like that would not normally happen in the states. Can you see basketball happenin in pink jersey's? 

Friday: The Tower of London happened (about time, right Granny? :) It was way sweet. Got to see the crown jewels, which were ah-mazing. Though perhaps Britain is monopolizing a bit on the diamonds, they've got the First Star of Africa and the Second! Both the biggest diamond and the second biggest. One in the scepter (530.2 carats, thats right you read it right, five hundred and freakin thirty! Like the size of a plum) and one in the Imperial State Crown (more like a cherry!) We went on a a conveyor belt to see all the jewels.. and I conveyed by three times, yea they were beauties. I didn't realize there were so many crowns! One for coronation only, one to wear right after coronation and at the opening of Parliament, one especially made for when there were joint sovereigns  and they needed more than one crown, one made for the King (I can't remember which one off the top of my head now...poo) when he went to be crowned in India as the crown jewels are not permitted to leave the country, and a few others as well. It would never do to only have one crown, of course. 

Also saw the lucky ravens. An unusual tradition here I thought, for centuries it has been considered very unlucky if ever all the ravens and birds were to leave the Tower. Therefore, quite a few kings back, they decreed that ravens should be kept at the Tower at all time. There are 6 there now, with their wings clipped and a special Raven Master to look after them to make sure they don't leave, and 2 backup ravens caged up juusst in case.

That's an old wall there in the Tower of London enclosure... to the right is the 'Bloody Tower' and behind the wall on the left you can see the cage for the extra ravens.

Saw the chopping block they used for Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife. yikes.

Saturday: Tour of the Houses of Parliament. This. was. awesome. The way the tour guide was describing Henry VIII was fascinating and a way more positive perspective than anything I've heard before. He was saying how self sacrificing Henry VIII was, that to divorce Catherine of Aragon (his firstie that he married because she was his brother's widow) and to marry Anne Boleyn was the move that prevented a Civil War from happening in England. That he HAD to have a legitimate heir or else all hell would break loose. I just never heard ole Henry described in that light before.

The House of Commons was way cool too. The MP's (thats what our guide called the Members of Parliament!) have eight minutes to vote on a proposed bill. Sometimes, the MP's will be out and about when it is time to vote. So in all the pubs around the House of Parliament they have a Division Bell (the voting is called the Division, as it divides the "aye" voters from the "nay" voters) that rings when the votes need to be cast. The police bobbys apparently halt all traffic around the House too for 8 minutes to allow the MP's (also our guide called em 'suitors' as they all wear suits!) to run in from their 'liquid lunches' or pint of beer, and cast their vote. How fascinating! Our guide also said that the 'aye' voters or the Aye's go to the right and the No's to the left when they come into the house, he called this the Picasso Connection. haha pretty clever, eh?

Saw the Trooping of the Colors for the Queen's birthday on a tv in a pub. Loved it. Also went to the Cabinet War Museum, which was just right-o cool. It houses the basement rooms that Winston Churchill used as meeting rooms (and sometimes living quarters) for his cabinet during the war. It was too dangerous to be holding meetings in Houses of Parliament, so they moved to this more remote and more un-obvious location. Churchill was so interesting. Always with a cigar in his mouth, daring and likable, but a bit scary. There was a quote by one of his many typist secretary's Elizabeth Nell, it was written in her memoirs that

"When typing, it was hard to understand what he was always saying- he had a slight speech impediment with his "s" and he always had a cigar in his mouth. But, sometimes what he said was so interesting that you want to stop and just listen. [when he was hard to understand] you could ask him what he said if you're brave and prepared for a put-down. Or you could put what you thought he said and hope he didn't roar at you later."

I do apologize about the length :) I'll add pics in a bit. love to all.

Take a load of this

Edinburgh, Scotland. The pathway we hiked up to Arthurs Seat when we were up in Scotland.
All misty and dewy. 

I gotta Handel on it

A few more tidbits from the tour of Westminster Abbey a few days ago. There were sure a bumload of tourists in there, but we all had our little headphones on, listenin to the audio tour, all in our own spell bound worlds kinda entranced by the architecture of it all. I just loved it when the audio tour would play choir music in the background and you could look around with this powerful music praise in the background.

Speaking of music, George Frideric Handel is buried in the walls of Westminster. On his statue was written "I Know that my Redeemer liveth." and that was the piece of music that was etched on the papers in the statue as well.

CNN photo of the memorial to Handel which sits atop his tomb

We couldn't go into the cloisters at the abbey, but the grounds were sure pristine and beautifully kept. The hallways around it were my fav. With the scalloped edges on the windows and the crisscrossed iron work in the windows that created diamonds for you to see the green grass square through. I was just hoping a choir would burst out in song... and you know, the boys filed in a bit later to the choir seats to rehearse (I assume anyways!) for Evensong that was gonna happen in about 30min. Huh. What luck.

The halls around the cloister.
Photo by Adrian Fletcher
And if you want a little background choir music to get you in the mood, click here to go to a YouTube video of the Kings Chapel Choir  at Cambridge rehearsing.

Da Vinci is Da Bomb

There is something a bit special about connecting with art. Art can be timeless- like how students are still studying Michelangelo and Da Vinci who drew and sculpted in the 1400-1500s. When I saw this in the National Gallery today, I died inside and floated up to heaven.

Da Vinci's The Virgin and Child with St anne and St John the Baptist

Waltzin to Westminster

I'll keep it short and sweet as I don't have much time! Took a tour of Westminster today and boy, was it reverential. Even with all us obnoxious tourists! The Westminster is just so tall and skinny as opposed to wide open space like St. Paul's Cathedral.

photo from here

Reallllly Modern Art

Sculpture at the Saatchi Gallery...
Berlinde De Bruycker as artist.
Real horse skin and hair used! but no eyes or hoofs real
or otherwise, just the fur.

All Saatchi photos from their website which you can go to here and see 

all the art works if you're brave!

A sculpture in the Saatchi Gallery! Called "Blind leading the Blind"
by Peter Buggenhout. Whats crazy to me is that on the wall
with the title plaque, in addition to the title and artist, it would list
the materials of the sculpture materials. This one had horse hair, polyurethane,
blood, and tar as some of its materials. Thats right, blood. hard core or what!

 The Saatchi Gallery is not for the faint of heart! I tagged along with a few girls to the hip and modern gallery, and it sure was "thinking outside the box" art. My thoughts of the "Blind leading the Blind" sculpture? It looks like something brought up from the bottom of the Thames... haha. but seriously it did. Perhaps its a little suggestion on society... our leaders don't REALLY know whats goin on, so its like the blind leading the blind, and look what the result is: pollution, war, etc. Kind of dark though...

Sure is beautiful on the outside... and then it gets freaky
on the inside :)
beauty of a photo from CGP Grey, via Wikipedia

This was my fav exhibition! It took up a whole room mind you. You go out on this little landing to view it from above and I coulda sworn I was looking down into another room. Then, I realized it was a wall to wall puddle of oil (I shoulda known, as it smelled like a rubber tile in there) with such a smooth opaque mirror surface, that it reflected the lights and windows on the ceiling. It was crazy cool. Something so smooth and pristine and perfect was actually reflecting something already in existence.
Artist: Richard Wilson, who also does other site specific oil works...

This one was nuts. Literally, a car wrapped around a pole. My question
is... where did they get the car? was it pristine before they crunched
it?? 

On Thursday night, some other study abroaders went to see Wicked the musical (some for the 2nd time! Yes it was that good!) But since I had already seen it and I still wanted to see Jersey Boys, I went ahead and did that! It was one of the. best. decisions! It's about how Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons started up singin under a streetlamp (so they say...:) But the voices and harmonies were just spot on, especially lil Frankie's falsetto! haha I was way impressed. There was some Jersey language mind you...

photo from the Jersey Boys- London website. If you click on the
link you can see the cast that performed! They were just fabulous.

I was walking home from the show and almost home (it was about 10:30pm or so I think) when this man (mid to late 30's, nice looking) on a bicycle stopped me and the convo went a little something like this:

"I hate to trouble you, but I wanted to tell you, you gave me a smile earlier on the subway and I just wanted to
           thank you."
"Oh! haha... not a problem! I'm glad I could help you a little bit." (me thinking, awww, sweet stranger man      
           needed a little encouragement and was havin a rough day)
"Yea, Really, I hope I didn't trouble you too much, but I just felt something when you smiled-- and sometimes
           that just helps. So I just had to follow you home from the subway and say thank you."
"Oh... well thank you. I hope you have a good night!" (mayday MAYDAY! he did WHAT??)
" I was wondering, I would love to be a positive man in your life."
"Ohh nooo... you don't need to do that!" (A Positive man?? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??) "Alright, well you have a good one, ok?." (I make a break for it... pretty quickly!)

C'mon! What is that? It was very sweet, until he mentioned that he followed me home, on  bicycle... and the Tube is like a 7 or 8 min walk from where he stopped me! I'm sure he's a well-meaning man, but if you say those words to a stranger, much less a woman stranger, that is bad form!

On a better note, Wednesday, a few of us got 5 pound groundling (standing tickets next to the stage) tickets to Much Ado About Nothing, a Shakespeare comedy at the Globe. I gotta be honest, I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan, but this show (and the actors and actresses) were just so good, and funny, and interacted splendidly with the audience. The wit of it was great, and Shakespeare's dialogue was just perfectly clever and done just so well by the actors/tresses.

you can see the goundlings (people leaning on the stage)... and this was
what we did, except we were in the front of the stage, so very cool. This
photo is not from the play we actually saw... but it lets you see what
our view looked like a bit!
photo here

Benedict and Beatrice (the best actors/tresses!). They were just
hilarious.
Photo by Pete Jones

Eve Best, who played Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, was also in
the movie The King's Speech! She played Edward VIII's (King George's
brother, Granny correct me if I'm wrong :) love interest, who distracted
him from being a good King (not that she was the only reason mind you).
photo by Laurie Sparham via Mail Online website

A nice smattering

Had just a lovely day. Went to the British Library first... a more modern building than most of what we've seen so far!

The British Library and its courtyard

But it was beautiful walking out of the station (St. Pancras/ King's Cross) as we passed by the Pancras Hotel which was eye candy for sure.

The hotel is the big un there, it has King's Cross train station somewhere
around there too, so I THINK that's why its so big in the back there,
but that is just speculation since the Tube stop is called St. Pancras
SLASH King's Cross. But the hotel is a beauty, I read somewhere
that it is like 250 pound a night!
photo via The History Blog

Another view of the hotel from street level.
London, you build beautiful stuff, thats for certain.

The library was great as it housed some really special documents. Like a handwritten New Testament in Greek, commissioned and I believe written, by Constantine in 995. A gold leaf Qur'an, produced in Cairo, from 1304. A Gutenberg printed bible. 2 copies of the Magna Carta (I did already see a Magna Carta in Lincoln, but to distribute the document of course they had wrote several copies, and somehow the British Library got their hands on two-- seems kinda greedy if you ask me :). The Library also housed the original handwritten sheet music from Handel's Messiah and the lyrics of Beatles songs as they were being produced, the song words written on the back of scrap paper or their son's birthday card (that was Ringo when he wrote "A Hard Day's Night"). Interesting that Beatles songs and the Gutenberg Bible are housed in the same exhibition!

Wimbledon the city was beautiful (and very warm!). Wimbledon, for tennis, was cool too to see the grounds and the places where all the tennis pros walk (and will walk come June 20th for the Wimbledon Open). One of the girls in the group, Tara, her dad was a profesh tennis player and played there quite a few years ago... so that was quite fun for her, and we just tagged along and loved it.

Obviously an aerial shot I didn't take! Thank you google images. But
the main stadium you see is the Centre Court, which is the most
prestigious to play at!

Needless to say, the strawberries and cream that Wimbledon is know for (for whatever reason!) definitely delivered. The strawberries were perfectly ripe and the cream (not whipped cream mind you, just like a thick milk type cream) was buttery and smooth.

Care for a Jellied Eel?

We went down to Brighton Beach today. This weekend was our "Free Travel" Weekend where we had free reign to travel outside the country if we liked. Many people went to France or Rome, but about 7 or so of us decided to stay in Londy town and hit up the places we haven't been yet. So, we took a 9 pound (round trip) train to Brighton Beach today. It was just surprisingly fabulous. Beautiful beach (rocky and not sandy) and comfy and chic lounge chairs, the Brighton Pier amusement park with the beautiful beach backdrop, and the sunny and low 70's weather that made my heart melt a little bit.

These are the chairs we lounged in! They did cost 2 pounds
for the day... but hey, what can you do.
Photo thanks to Ethel Davies

a few odds n ends

Here's a few good ones for ya.

Amy, Tara, Sydnie (lookin down...), and I on the beach
at Durdle Door in Dorset a few weeks ago

Goin down the steps to Durdle Door beach, the photo disguises how
steep they were, believe me.

Quite a bunch of us at Windsor Castle

View of Oxford from the University of St. Mary Church Tower

St. James Palace in London

The little weather box for the guards in front of St. James
Palace... at least thats what I think it is! When it rains and things,
the soldiers can still keep up their posts. 

Wonderful Windsor and Tantalizing Tate

Can't have too many photos of Windsor Castle... it is a beauty... and
from the 11 freakin hundreds (commissioned by William the Conquerer
originally as a defense stronghold... then turned into a prison... and now
funny enough is the Queen Mother's current weekend residence.

We took a 30 or so minute train to Windsor Castle (only 4.25 pounds- YESS). I gotta say, it was one of my fav destinations so far, perhaps helped along by the too-good-to-be-true weather (60's and sunny and a toucha breeze).

Edinburgh (edin-bud-ah) and surrounding cities Trip, Long overdue

Being without accessible internet wrecks havoc on the ole blog! I gotta admit, it's daunting to blog about 5 entire days of skipping around England and Scotland... I'm a bit nervous to see if I can stuff it all in. (Ifn you wanna take a look at my good friend Shelisa'a blog, you'll see that her blog is real detailed! Maybe she put in something I missed...) But get ready for the longest post you'll probably ever read (lets be real, you may have to take an intermission to get through it all)

So, on to our trip. All 50 of us (41 students, 2 professors and their spouses, and their 5 kids who are a treat) bussed out of London Monday at around 7:30am to head out.

The Grass is Greener on the Other side of the Pond

Granny, your comments were perfect. I will try and go on those walks especially, that will be sweet. And I will get you those notecards! Remind me, too just in case!


Also... disclaimer: blogspot is having a tad difficulty uploading pics so those will come a bit later!


Here are a few extra tidbits from the Globe Tour. The Globe was actually the second theatre on that side of the Thames. At first, a smaller theatre was built called the Rose and the Globe was built across the street for competition and became better because, of course, a certain William Shakespeare wrote plays specifically for the Globe. At the moment, the Rose theatre is under water to maintain preservation! Cool, eh?


The Rose Theatre was where Docter Faustus (play by Christopher Marlowe) was first shown...
                 Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships 
                    And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
                 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
At church today, sat beside this lady.. got to talking... and she said she was going to SLC in a few. Why, I asked? She is playing Mary, the mother of Jesus in the LDS' church new video of the New Testament. I was floored! How did she come by such a thing? The church held world wide auditions she said, and around 4,000 people took part, and she got it. I was flabbergasted. She sure was beautiful though.


Also at church, there was a little munch and mingle afterwards. I was talkin to a little tyke, Bradley, about 8 or so. He said to me, "You like living in America better, huh? Everybody is rich." 


No NO NO! not true! I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

We walk around the Globe

Had our tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre today. Preettyy interesting... there will be more later... but we got to see a tech rehearsal for an upcoming play, Much Ado About Nothing which made me feel like an insider! One of the actor's even said, "Line, please," like you hear on TV or whatever when they forget their lines and someone yelled it out to him.

In addition, the Butler from the TV show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Geoffrey) is in the play! So we got to see him onstage doin his thing.

Also got to walk over the Tower Bridge today.

Photo by Josep Maria Alegre

But didn't quite have time to stop and see the jewels and the decapitating block! Will come back soon, not to worry.

Saw the Royal Courts of Justice building. Gotta be honest, I'm not quite sure what goes on there... wasn't able to go inside either.. but it was beautiful on the outside for sure.

Kinda looks like Disney Land, eh? beautiful photo from here

Another gorgeous view for ya. Kinda makes ya drool...
beautiful photo by Dan Chung from here

The British Museum has not lost its charm

Took the Tube today to the British Museum, home of the Rosetta stone! May be that I am just ignorant, but I did not realize how big it is! It is no pebble or small tablet... it is huge! Like about 3 1/2 or 4 feet tall and maybe a man's hand or so thickness.

Pretty things at Cambridge

We all took an hour train to Cambridge University today and spent the day there. Fabulous? Yes, why yes it was. Did I feel smarter and more sophisticated while on its campus? Uh-huh.

A few photos for you... The first of the Bridge of Sighs in St. John's College. Cambridge is kinda funky as the University is separated into 31 colleges that each have their own little community with a chapel, hall, and dormitories. Though, the colleges didn't have like similar majors or anything... it just seemed they were there to form lil communities... kinda like in Harry Potter how they have houses like Gryffindor and Slythern (don't laugh at my juvenile comparison). Anyway, the bridge below is in St. Johns College and normally they are closed to the public but we had a student take us in with her little badge, which was just fabulous.

We were told it was called the Bridge of Sighs because people on death
row were lead over it back in the day to die on the other side, and based on the
view from the bridge, they would breath their last sigh. Sad, eh? Photo via Flikr.

The view inside the bridge. Breathtaking? yep.
Photo via here

Kings College had Evensong at their chapel that we were able to attend. Just so fabulous. Here's the inside of the chapel...

We sat just on the right side there behind the roped off section. Inside of
King's College Chapel, photo via here

The choir was the King's College Choir and they sang the whole time A Capella. So deep and rich, the tones were all multi layered and echoed so beautifully.

You know, I don't get why the choir doesn't face the audience. In this chapel as in all the others I have seen so far, the choir benches are on two sides and face each other and sometimes are a bit of a distance from the congregation seats. Curious. The choir had such great tones and echoed so nicely it wasn't a huge deal, though. Just loved reading the service words in the program that was handed out while the choir's voices wafted around. The verse below was repeated several times and gives ya a little shiver of awesome, and the quote after that was in the beginning of the printed program:

                       Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and
                      to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning,
                  is now, and ever shall be, world with out end. Amen.

                 "In the tradition, there are, along with what is strange,
                 strong expressions of our basic feelings about ourselves
                  and God. And it is precisely the cool and ancient order
                 of the services which gives us a space and a frame, as
                  well as cues, for reflections on our regrets and hopes
                                            and gratitudes."

Why I love the Brits

Speaking the same language as the Brits blinded me just a tad to all the differences in England. Yes. There are quite a few. I'll just start off with a few of my observances.

1. It is quite the fashion for girls to wear black tights here... with everything... or just as pants. The tights with shorts thing just has not been quite as popular in the states. To top it off, sometimes you can see the darker control top below the hemline! my my, unusual fashion. see example:

super short cutoffs + tights = london girls
think they're hot stuff

2. Hosiery in general! I have seen many a lady AND teenager in nude panty hose under skirts/dresses! In UT, I rarely see someone at BYU with panty hose. Rarely? Like around one time.. in my three years there...

3. Do drug stores have hydrogen peroxide in Londy town? No, friends, they have Surgical Spirits. Peroxide unfortunately was nowhere to be found for my heel blister... 

4. "Water Closet" or "Toilet" = bathroom

    And water closet is too long most times, so in abbreviation you see "WC" on toilet doors!

5. "Waiting in the queue" = waiting in line. This goes for grocery stores, clothing shoppes, street festivals. Anywhere you think line, they think queue. 

6. Cookies or candy?? No, no, no. "Biscuits" and "sweets". 

7. Overheard this one from a phone convo on the tube. "Up in a spout" = in uproar, disheveled
8. At Theatre events... programs are NEVER free! Either they don't want you to know who's performing, or they're low on paper, or they don't wanna pick up the litter after the show, or most people throw em away anyway... ok. Maybe the Brit way is better...

I am sure I'll have more for you as time goes on :) Also, something new to me, at the library the lady upon finding out my study abroad status asked me, "So, what do you like about London anyway?" I was aghast! Need that even be a question? I guess it is easy to take things for granted after a while. Perhaps I'll go on a tourist tour in Utah, see what all the fuss is about.

     

To bathe in Bath?

Just got back from a great trip to Bath, The Cotswolds, Stonehenge, and some other places! Thought I'd give a couple teaser pictures before I spill the whole story...

Stairs we went down to Durdle Door, in Dorset, England. 

Tintern Abbey ruins in Wales, just across the west border of England.

Roman Bath House in Bath... what gave the city its name... sourced by
a natural spring under the city that puts forth natural mineral
water at about 48 C, or like 120 F, something ridiculous like that

Note: Photos are not my own

Abbey Road

look similar at all? :)

Our group is off tomorrow to Bath, which may or may not have wifi! So I may be missing in action for a few days! Love to all. xo

P.S. I did not get to go to Phantom the other night as planned due to the theatre not having student discounts! Therefore instead I was able to go see Wicked. dang... it was good. will post a few pics in a bit.