Days 46-50

Sunday I said goodbye to my ward. The kids were really sad to see us go and kept saying, “we didn’t know it was your last week!” The teacher for Trent and my primary class didn’t come to teach their lesson. We had three kids in Valiant that we served with. We weren’t sure what to do for the last half hour so we sang “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” over and over and over. They taught us the British version, and we taught them the American one. They knew it in French also and taught us. It was really hard to do it with the British tune and in French! Trent knew Hungarian so we did it in Hungarian. We ended up singing it in Spanish and German also. Then we just talked to them, and one of the kids, Bradley, did some break dancing for us. It was such a fun last day.

That night we had a talent show as a group. The Masons, our professors, told us that if all of us did a talent that their families would do a talent also. Everyone ended up doing a talent. We had media presentations, singing, dancing, skits, “poetry readings”, karaoke, stand up comedy, etc. My friend Kayley and I played a piano duet. Jaden, Amanda, and Lauren did a poetry reading with our friends Kelsey and McCall. They read lyrics to popular songs slowly and dramatically; it was hilarious! Our professor, Nick and his wife, sang a duet from a song they changed the words to that talked about our group. Everybody clapped as loud as they could for everyone else and hollered as much as they could. It was one of the best things we had done that trip as a group, and it made me realize how much I loved being with everyone and would miss them. I made so many wonderful friends on this trip.

The rest of the next two days were spent studying. Our last afternoon after finals were over Jaden and I walked around a last few places in London. We went to Portabello Market. I bought another scarf even after I said I was done buying them for the trip… We went to Sainsbury and got Digestives and Bueno Bars. Everybody else had the same idea and by the end of the day all of the digestives at Tesco and Sainsbury down the street were gone. Jaden and I walked around Hyde Park, the nearest park to the center, for a couple hours and just enjoyed being in London. We watched the elementary school students play football, people biking through the parks, and looked at the statues and memorials one last time.

Later that night we went and got Dutch pancakes for dinner with a group of 12 of us girls. We then headed out to see Henry V at the globe. The stage is just like the stage in Shakespeare’s day. It goes out into the audience, and we stood around the stage for the whole performance. By the end of the four hours my feet were hurting pretty badly. One neat thing was that it was an open air theater with the stage and the audience standing just like they would have when this play was first performed. They had a group of musicians that played instruments I had never seen before during and before the play. The actors ran in and out of the audience and interacted with us by having us shout with them or boo. It was a really neat experience. I hadn’t studied Henry V in depth so I wasn’t really sure what was going on a lot of the time, but I really enjoyed it.

When the play was over we walked around the London Eye and Big Ben. We crossed the Millennium Bridge and went to St. Paul’s as well. It was sort of strange to say goodbye to London because I felt like I had been there for so long. We went home that night and packed and stayed up together until 2:30. We woke up at 6 a.m. the next morning to go to the airport.

I happened to buy my ticket for the wrong day, so I spent the day with Amanda and her parents.  They were so kind to let me stay with them and we had a good time trying to keep them awake. We toured Wimbledon with them first. I haven’t watched tennis at all and know practically nothing about it, but I went along and took a ton of pictures that I thought maybe Sam would at least know something about. I enjoyed being with her family and seeing the courts though, and I learned a thing or two about tennis.

Amanda and I took her parents to Nando’s that night, one of our favorite restaurants in Provo. To keep them awake a little longer we walked around Regent’s Park which is my favorite park in London. There is box after box of roses in the center of the park. All of them had bloomed. They are all different colors and each box is named after a person or place or even a West End (Broadway) show. Some have funny names like “Razzle Dazzle” or are named after alcoholic beverages. In the middle is a small lake with row boats. Afterwards, we went to a pub called The Champion and got sticky toffee pudding. It is a dessert I know I won’t have unless I go back to Europe and I enjoyed every bite! We walked past the center and said goodbye one more time. It felt so funny because it has been my home for the past seven weeks.

I am headed back on the plane right now! I can’t believe all of the things that I have learned about British history, literature, every day life, etc. I have made the best of friends with so many people. I loved all my spring term roommates, and I loved rooming with Jaden one last time. I had great directors and enjoyed living with their families. I learned so much about England and about myself. It has been the most incredible experience. Now I am headed home for more adventures!

Day 44-45

Day 44:

Yesterday we went to the Imperial War Museum in the afternoon. We started off by going to an exhibit where they had recreated the trenches from World War II. They were very dark, low ceilinged, and claustrophobic. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be in there day in and day out with not only these elements, but also the smell, the rats, the explosions, the injured, and the thought of dying always on the mind. The next exhibits we went to were the WWI, WWII, and Inter-war years exhibits. It was interesting to see what the part imperialism played in these wars. I never thought of them as being world wars because all of these countries that were part of the British Empire or colonies of France, etc. I really liked that they had an inter-wars exhibit between the two of them so we could see how the countries were affected after the war and what led to the next one.

We spent an hour in the Holocaust exhibit at the Imperial War Museum. It was a very dark and depressing exhibit. They had videos of Nazi propaganda, Hitler’s speeches, mass killings, and survivors telling their stories. The Nazi propaganda videos disgusted me. I also couldn’t believe how they treated people in the camps by doing experiments on them, comparing their hair colors, measuring the length from their nose to their chin, etc. I was shocked when I saw the photos of multiple mass graves full of naked women and children they had shot. In one room was a hundreds of shoes from the people at Auschwitz. They had many things from concentration camps, slaughterhouses, and Jewish ghettos. It was a very well done exhibit. It was hard to be in there for too long because it was so depressing. Most of us were quiet after we finished the exhibit.

That night I saw the stage version of War Horse. It was excellently done. The puppets were absolutely incredible. They had a made a horse where two people would stand on the inside moving the legs, flipping the tail back and forth and making the horse look like it was breathing. A third person was at the front moving the head, flicking the ears, and opening the mouth. I forgot it was a puppet only after a few minutes. What was really impressive was they made the horse strong enough to hold actors on it’s back. It was so believable. The story was wonderful as well. It was a story of World War I. In it there were mainly two characters who owned the horse: a British boy and a German soldier. I loved it because it showed the people on both sides from the horse’s view. And of course the horse has no opinion and with a horse you can’t see which side it is on, so we could get the angles of both sides of the war. It was very moving.

Day 45:

Today we left the Center at 7:45 to go to Blenheim Palace and Oxford. The weather was absolutely miserable. Nobody’s umbrellas would cooperate, and we were drenched and cold. When the rain falls here it isn’t a rain that just falls straight onto your umbrella. It is a rain that gets in your clothes, that hits you at all angles. Apparently the weather had been horrible in quite a few places in England that night. Trees had been uprooted and were blocking traffic. When we got to Blenheim Palace this was the kind of weather we had and we had to wait outside for 45 minutes until they would let us in for a tour. When I was brave enough to lift up my umbrella, I saw that the grounds actually were really beautiful. When we were there it seemed that a lot of the grounds workers, cashiers, and tour guides weren’t necessarily happy to have us there. It was a beautiful palace. It was not as stunning as Versailles, but there were a few rooms where they had the same gold rococo work that the rooms at Versailles did. It was more interesting because of how much we have studied Churchill. He was born in Blenheim Palace, though not on purpose. His mother unexpectedly went into labor at a party one night in Blenheim Palace. He is also buried near the palace. Many of his paintings were hanging up in various rooms in the house. The most amazing part of the house was the library. It was the second longest room in England. It had books lining most of the walls and had the most beautifully hand carved ceiling. At the end of the room was one of the most amazing organs I have ever seen. It was incredibly large and it was so beautiful. The room was mostly white and was very grand.

Next we went to Oxford. We had a guided tour through the different college campuses. At the beginning he talked about how the university worked for nearly a half hour. It was so different than ours that I almost felt more confused at the end. The university is made up of a bunch of different colleges.

Some fun facts:

-The oldest college started in 1249.

-J.R.R. Tolkein got his undergraduate degree there.

-Final exams at the end of your degree are the only thing that determine how well you did there.

-You where special robes during your final exams and wear a carnation. A white carnation means you are the beginning, pink is the middle, and red means you’ve finished.

-During application interviews the professors ask you trick questions such as, “Do you think you’re clever?” or “How would you weigh your head?”

-There are 38 colleges with 550 students in each.

-Each college has their own bar.

-Harry Potter fact- in one of the colleges is the tree where Malfoy was turned into a ferret during one of the movies.

-Haley who discovered Haley’s comet lived in one of the university buildings.

When athletes apply only their academic abilities are considered, no matter their playing ability.

The next five days hold finals, papers, class, studying, and trying to spend every spare minute in the city! This time has gone by so fast!

Day 41-43

Day 41:

On Monday we didn’t do a whole lot. We had class in the morning and then had the afternoon to ourselves. In most of the parks in London they have bikes that you can rent for 24 hours for only a pound, so we went biking around Hyde Park. It is a huge park. We biked past Kensington Palace, a small lake with paddleboats, the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, and gorgeous trees and flowers. We biked just a piece of it for 45 or so minutes.

Afterwards we went back to the Center and watched the Jubilee concert on TV. It was performed on the top Buckingham Palace and thousands of Britons were lined up in the Mall where they set up large TV screens broadcasting the performance. Elton John, Bono, and many other artists performed and they shot off fireworks. They showed the Royal Family singing along and clapping. The Queen hardly smiled at all. I am sure she must be exhausted! This Jubilee celebration has been going on since Saturday.

Day 42:

Wednesday we had History in the morning and then headed to the Churchill War Rooms for the afternoon. It was one of my favorite museums. We walked through and saw offices and bedrooms of Churchill and many of his advisors. They had a movie of people who had worked as children typing things and running from room to room. They worked 10 to 16 hour shifts everyday and many times slept there. After the war rooms there was a Churchill museum. I have been reading a book about Churchill for my history class and as I have read it I have not been very fond of him! The book shows him as a white supremacist and racist. He didn’t think that other races could handle having freedom. Although, as I went through the museum I saw that that was how many people thought during this time where Britain was a great empire. With all of us his radical ideas and belief in the empire he was able to really help England in World War II. Near the end of his life he was made an honorary American citizen. He also won the noble prize for literature by writing a six volume history about WWII (mostly his part in the war). It was really interesting to learn about his relationship between America and FDR as well. I really enjoyed the museum.

After the war museum we were going to do the walk that Mrs. Dalloway takes around London in the novel. We ended up getting barricaded in a small section of the sidewalk with a bunch of people who were watching the Jubilee parade. We missed the Queen, but later we went back to the center and ate tea and scones with clotted cream and watched the parade. I loved walking around London after the parade and seeing all the flags that were hanging in front of doors and between houses. I loved walking past people wearing coats and using umbrellas that have the union jack all over them. It made me excited to go home and celebrate the 4^th of July!

Day 43:

Yesterday was our last day of our English class. I can’t believe how fast this term has gone! Afterwards we went to the National Science Museum. It was such a neat museum. I wish I would have had time to see all of it! We only had a little bit of time so I went to a temporary exhibit I had heard about in Time Out and seen posters for on the Tube. It was an exhibit where they had the London Philharmonic Orchestra play The Planets by Host and Worlds, Stars, Systems, Infinity by Joby Talbot. They had multiple rooms that focused on different instruments in the orchestra. They had one for harp, organ, cello, flute and oboe, violin and viola, horns, brass, percussion, celeste, and the conductor. It showed a video of just them playing with their instruments sound a little louder than the rest of the orchestra, and you could look at their score. Then on the wall they had an explanation of the acoustics of the instrument and random facts about each instrument. In the last room they had multiple screens where they showed an instrument from each section. It was so cool to be able to focus on one instrument at a time. I absolutely loved it! Jaden and I stayed in that exhibit for over an hour and a half.

Some of the notes I took:

-Celeste looks exactly like a piano except on the inside instead of steal strings it has steal plates so that it sounds like bells.

-The lowest note a bassoon can play is 29 Hz. The lowest we can here is 20 Hz.

-The oldest flute found was made 9000 years ago in China made from the hollowed out bone of a crane.

-Some church organs have long enough pipes to play notes that are so low we cannot hear them.

-People in Japan are looking for ways to make Violin strings out of spider silk.

-Choral singing releases Oxytocin into the brain, improves mood, and bolsters immune system

-The front of a Bass is made from Pine because the wood will move more easily.

That night after dinner we went to Shrek the Musical. We got there a minute, literally a minute, before it started. Luckily we still got tickets. The actors and actresses were fantastic singers. It was definitely not my favorite musical. I didn't love it, but it was fun. They made fun of a lot of other popular musicals in London that I have seen, which was pretty funny. I wouldn't really recommend this musical, but it was fun to see something different.

Day 40

Church was an adventure today! For the first time ever we go to church with no problems! We only had to take two tubes and a train instead of three tubes, a train or two, and a bus. Only three of us ended up going because everyone else wanted to go to the Jubilee celebration. For those of you who don’t know this year is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee which means she has been on the throne for 60 years. The only other time that this has happened is when Queen Victoria was on the throne, so it’s kind of a big deal. Anyways, we got to church and another girl and I went up to primary. None of the other leaders showed up so it was just us two. At first we thought we were going to be pretty ok because we only had three kids, but not for long! Eight more kids came for primary and five or six more for nursery. Between the two of us we had to sit and watch all the kids, do sharing time, singing time, the classes and make sure the nursery kids weren’t crying or running out of the room. I ended up taking the nursery kids in the other room because they were way too distracting to the other kids in the primary. The other girl got left with the rest of the primary kids. I was in the other room with about five two year olds, but in the class room  next door she was breaking up fist fights and attempted chokings. Luckily, my friend Lauren came up about halfway through and helped us out. By the time we got to Sacrament meeting we were exhausted. Testimony meeting was wonderful. A few people even got up and said how much their kids loved coming to Primary which made us all feel a little bit better. We were all so glad we went though, because we knew that they really needed us.

I can’t believe how fast the time has gone! I only have about a week and a half left hear in London. I have gotten so used to being here. I know how to get around anywhere, which museums are best, how to sleep with earplugs, the best places to eat, how to share a bathroom with fourteen girls, and the closes gelato places to the center. This has been such a great experience; I have loved it.

Day 39

Today we spent the day wandering and going to random places we thought sounded fun. We went to Borough Market in the morning. I got a jacket potato which is a potato with melted cheese, pickles, and onions. We went around and tried all the samples at the different booths. I tried different breads, cheeses, apple pie ice cream, sea salt and caramel ice cream, pistachio turkish delight, and a few other things.

Afterwards we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. There were sculptures, paintings, stained glass, dresses, ironwork, etc. My favorite part were the dresses. There were gowns from every decade since the beginning of the 1800's. They were beautiful. The ugliest ones were the 1990's to 2012! I also loved looking at all of the things made in iron. There were gates and lanterns and bird cages. It was amazing.

Next we went to Harrods which is basically the most expensive clothing store in London. I saw a scarf for 729 pounds, a swimsuit coverup for 1600, and a coat for a few thousand. It was really fun to look at all the designer clothes, although I don't know how anyone buys any of them! I wanted to get something there just for fun, so I got some chocolate. It was ridiculously expensive! It was really fun to go through and guess how much things cost and then check. I loved looking at the jewelry as well. It was kind of nice to go to a store where even if I wanted to I couldn't buy anything there!

Days 35-38

Day 35:

Had classes for 6 hours, so not much happened! But 5 weeks in London today! I can't believe it!

I saw Wicked the night before. I really enjoyed singing Wicked again since I hadn't seen the musical in a really long time or listened to the music in a while. I forgot how much I loved the music! It wasn't as good as the first two times I saw it in the states. The cast was not very good as a whole. Glinda tried so hard to be funny that she just wasn't...nobody was laughing most the time. Fiyero was kind of a pansy and Madame Morrible couldn't sing a note. Elpheba was good though and the Wizard was the best one I had seen. So it was enjoyable, just not spectacular.

Day 36:

Wednesday we had class until noon and then free travel weekend began! About a third of us opted to stay in London for the weekend with the Queen's Jubilee coming up and all the shows that are here. After class I spent the day just walking around London and exploring a bit with Lauren. We went to the National Portrait Gallery. It was really fun to see portraits of so many famous people and to see how they were portrayed. Jane Austen's portrait was tiny, about four inches across. It was done by her sister Cassandra and is the only portrait we have painted in her lifetime. Turner's portrait was interesting because he didn't like having portraits of him painted so one of his friends painted one by memory after he died. I enjoyed seeing Handel's portrait; it was very large and grand. Byron's portrait was interesting because he was wearing a turban and holding a pipe. It was neat to see Dickens and the Bronte sisters. Dickens surprised me because it was painted of him when he was younger. I didn't know until later that he began writing and became successful when he was in his twenties. Some of the other portraits that I liked were Princess Diana, Jagger, and Shakespeare.

After the Portrait Gallery we walked around Covent Gardens. We walked into a store with just macaroons. We tried lemon, raspberry, caramel and sea salt, and vanilla. They were so divine! It was fun to walk around little bookshops and stores.

That night we went to see the musical, Top Hat. It is based on the old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. We bought tickets for the very back row on the balcony because they were so cheap. Not enough people ended up coming so they moved us up about 6 rows and to the center. Later I looked up how much the seats we got moved to were and they were thirty pounds more! We were so lucky. It was a really fun musical. I loved the tap dancing and the older songs. The costumes were amazing. Most of the people in the audience were older couples. I sat by an older couple from Scotland who just kept talking to me about all the cool places they went to in the U.S. When it started they leaned over to me and laughed and said, "Oh we just love these old tunes!" They were fun to sit by.

Day 37:

Yesterday we went to the Soane Museum. It was a house that belonged to Sir John Soane, an architect who taught at a university in London. He was a collector. He had paintings, grecian urns, books, sculptures, etc. I was amazed at all the things in his home! Every inch of the wall was covered. We had to put our purses in plastic bags so that they wouldn't get caught on anything. There were some places where you could hardly walk! In his home he had an Egyptian Sarcophagus that happens to be the most valuable one outside of Egypt. I learned later that he wanted his home to be a free museum where people could come and study. I really enjoyed it.

We ran to see Jeremy Bentham after that. He was a professor at the University College of London. When he died he wanted his body to be preserved and present at every staff meeting. He isn't at every staff meeting, but he's still in the University! His skeleton is dressed up and he has a wax head now because the students kept stealing the mummified one. However, his real hair is on the wax head. It was cool, but a little bit creepy...

Amanda booked us a tour for Highgate Cemetery that afternoon. It is a large cemetery taken care of in a way called "managed neglect." It is overgrown, but people are making sure it doesn't get out of hand like trees ruining gravestones, etc. It was so beautiful. There were plants everywhere, It was almost like walking into a forest. There were some amazing gravestones and monuments. It was unlike cemetery in France where I went to see certain people buried there. I really just enjoyed walking around there because it was so beautiful.

I couldn't wait another day to go to another show... So that night Jaden, Tiffany, and I bought tickets to Singin' in the Rain. It was one of my very favorites! We sat in the front row so when it rained we got wet! When they were dance we got splashed with water. It was so much fun! There were a few times when we were so close that we could have reached out and grabbed the actors if we would have wanted to. At first I wasn't thrilled that we were sitting so close because I thought that it would be hard to see, but it was so much fun to see their facial expressions and hear the side conversations of the extras. The actors were phenomenal. I liked Lina Lamont even better than the actress in the movie. It was one of the most enjoyable nights I had in London! At the end of the musical when the cast came out it started raining and they all tapped for us one more time. Lina looked straight at Jaden, Tiffany, and I and kicked water straight at us before she walked off stage. It was so fun! I was smiling the whole time.

Day 38:

Today I went on a run through Hyde Park. It was beautiful. In the afternoon we went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We only spent a couple of hours there. We stood on the Prime Meridian, saw the Cutty Sark, and ate lunch in a double decker bus. We were all pretty tired, so we came home and watched Peter Pan. It was just a nice day to hang out at the center. 

Days 30-34

Day 30:

We checked out of our Hostel early in the morning and were met by some blue badge guides to lead us around the Royal Mile and the Edinburgh Castle. Our tour guide happened to be LDS and went to Ricks College. She was so excited to give our group a tour. We got to see the changing of the guard, the Scottish War Memorial, the King and Queen’s apartments and the crown jewels. The crown jewels were sort of a disappointment after the Tower of London. After the Castle we went to the Sir Walter Scott memorial which was huge! It was the largest memorial I have seen. We then walked up to the Scottish Parthenon.  We only spent a few more hours there and then the rest of the day was spent driving to York. I feel like I need to go back to Scotland. I wasn’t totally satisfied with all I saw. I feel like I would have loved to go out and see the countryside more, too!

Day 31:

York was a really fun little town. The cathedral was so impressive. It is the largest in Britain. Apparently, York and Canterbury were always fighting to be the religious center of Britain. Unfortunately for York, Canterbury got the archbishop, so York decided to build an even larger Cathedral. I thought it was even more amazing than Notre Dame inside and out. The cathedral was made of a light stone almost yellow. It was a lot brighter on the inside than most cathedrals. The most unique thing about this cathedral was the amount of detail that they put into it. We went to this part of the cathedral called the Chapter House. It was dome shaped with stained glass windows. Beneath the windows there were carvings of individual faces. Every single one was different and there were at least a hundred in the room. Throughout the cathedral the carving was incredible. Everything was so unique. The stained glass was some of the best I had seen. One of the tour guides talked to us about stained glass restoration for nearly an hour. The work they are doing on just one window costs 40,000 dollars a panel and there are at least 30 panels. It is not a safe job either. People who do the restoration have to get their blood checked every two weeks because of the chemicals they use and most of them have back problems. The cathedral was my favorite so far; it was stunning. Then the rest of the day was spent driving back to London.

Day 32:

Yea for Valerie and Brad getting married! I was so sad to miss it! But congrats and I love you guys!

This was one of the only days of the trip that we didn’t have scheduled out. Amanda, Lauren, Tiffany, and I went to Kew Gardens. It was 300 acres of gardens and greenhouses. We were there for about three and a half hours and only saw a sliver of all they had there. I loved it! It was, for once, the most perfect weather in London! It was sunny and not too hot. And it didn’t rain! We started out going to one of the greenhouses that has African plants. It was so neat to see so many I had never seen before, and so many of them were huge! We then went to a green house that was just a large pond full of lilies. They were gigantic! A few were four or five feet across. We accidently stumbled into this rock garden that had a section dedicated to each continent. It was neat to step from North America into Asia and see the different plants. We went to a rhododendron garden that was full of bushes with flowers in all different colors. After that we climbed up a ton of stairs to walk along this path that led through the treetops. When we climbed down we ended walking through a forest of bamboo. One of my favorite things was all of the willows with hanging branches we could walk underneath.

That night we went to this Dutch Pancake restaurant for Kayley’s birthday. We had no idea what a Dutch pancake even was. Some of us got savory ones that had pepperoni or bacon with apples and syrup. They were gigantic! They were about a foot across and they weren’t what we were expecting. They were like crepes. It was so delicious.

Day 33:

Went to church! This week in primary I played the piano and sat in on the CTR class. Last week there were about 15 kids, this week there was only three for the first hour and then two more came. I am so impressed with how much these kids know. They remembered everything from the lesson the week before, and I have never seen kids more eager to answer questions. This ward is so nice to us also. I almost wish we were here longer so that we could help more and feel more like a part of the ward and less like visitors. By the time we are done here we will only have gone 5 or 6 times.

That night we had a fireside from a former stake president in the Wandsworth Stake. He talked all about what it was like to live during the Blitz in World War II. Most of the things I had already learned about in my history classes in high school, but it was really neat to hear it from someone who had actually experienced. He had to be taken to Wales to live with some people he didn’t even know part way through the Blitz. Being here and seeing things and hearing from people who lived here and visiting people’s homes makes the history so much more amazing to me.

Day 34:

Midterm. Wicked tonight! More tomorrow!