This week was pretty heavy with school activities! On Monday, we went to the Houses of Parliament! Not only was the facility fascinating, I loved hearing all the stories of the rituals, especially the one about the pounding on the door to signify that it was a closed meeting and the reigning monarch was not allowed to join.

Photography wasn’t permitted inside the active building, but I found an online tour here if you’re interested. http://www.parliament.uk/about/virtualtours.cfm

The inside was absolutely decadent! I don’t think a single detail had been overlooked! AMAZING!

This was the waiting hall where our tour began!

On Tuesday, I had my advanced speaking class, then we had a lecture on social class in Britain, another lecture on Monarchy and the Royal Family, and then we went to see Billy Elliot. This was my first experience with a musical, on stage like this, and I really enjoyed it. (I had seen a church production of Fiddler on the Roof, many years ago.)

On Wednesday we had a lecture on the European Union and headed off for a VERY quick tour of the British museum, which some locals have described as a building full of a bunch of stuff they stole, that they weren’t giving back! (Apparently there have been some issues with a lot of the items in the museum and their former owners wanting them back, only to be denied!) I'd like to go back there again if I have more time to look around.

This was a door with Egyptian metal work that I really liked. (All these things give me great ideas for projects when I get home!)

This carving was very beautiful to me, and I think it would be fun to carve something like this out of sheets of insulating foam! (I saw that on a craft show once!)

I was also introduced to the “Rosetta Stone” for the first time! Maybe I was sleeping if we ever discussed this in school, but to see the stone that broke the ancient Egyptian code right in front of me was truly amazing! (After our guide informed us that what we were looking at was called the Rosetta, I whispered in my classmate’s ear that I wondered if that’s where the name “Rosetta Stone” came from, only to be told that very thing in the next room where the original Rosetta Stone was displayed!) LOL
The "Rosetta Stone." This was the key used to unlock Ancient Hieroglyphic Egyptian, after it was discovered that what was written at the top in Ancient Egyptian, had been translated into modern Egyptian, and then into Greek making it legible for modern-day scientists.

There were a bunch of great carvings from the Parthenon, and interesting stories to be told of the different religious tribes that moved in and out, chopping off different parts of the statues they deemed to be “obscene.”

That night, a friend and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera! That was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! The stage and costume designs were incredible, and I loved the combination of acting, opera and ballet. I was barely familiar with the story before, so it was so nice to finally see it in such a theater-friendly city as London!

I came home after the show and worked on my speech for several hours! Slept for about 3.5 hours, and got up VERY early, to burn some "daybreak oil!" I just finished moments before my classmates knocked on my door for us to leave! No time to head to the computer lab or local internet café to print it out, so I grabbed the laptop and carried it with me as we went on a walking tour of London to the locations where we had each decided to give our site-specific speeches!

I chose to pretend to be Christopher Jones, telling the story of my life, as well as a little bit about the famous American story of the pilgrim’s settlement of Plymouth, after a 66-day journey on my ship, the Mayflower! (The Rotherhithe quayside where the Mayflower originally set sail was seen on the Thames river-cruise to Greenwich that I took last week. I was especially excited about the English-American ties of that event, and thought that would be a fun topic to discuss for my speech class!)

After having very little sleep, I took a nap, and am preparing to see Wicked tonight with many other classmates. I’m hoping to see Bath and Stonehenge this weekend, and still may get to the Jurassic Coast to hunt fossils on the shore, depending on whether or not I get some of my other homework done! I can’t believe we leave for Ireland on Wednesday morning! My trip is nearly half way over! I’ve taken for granted that we’re residing in London, and haven’t made an effort to see many things HERE, so I think my last few days here will be spent seeing all of the local sights! Our class will be going to the Imperial War Museum and the Tate Modern Gallery, so I’ll have to see any remaining sights on my own! I still need to see the London Tower, the changing of the guards, some of the local gardens, and I want to go see Container City where artists’ studios and residences are built from retired shipping containers.

Time to get busy! :)