I'm awful at keeping up with writing blogs!
Scotland was fun, and seems like forever ago. When we got off the train in Edinburgh I turned to Clare:
Me:"So do we know where we're staying?"
Claire: "I don't know."
Me: "Do we know how we're getting there?"
Claire: "I don't know"
Me: "What are we doing in here in Edinburgh?"
Claire: "I don't know."
Me: "Good... I like adventures.."
We stayed in Edinburgh near the castle. We had coffe at the Elephant House, which is where J.K. Rowlilng began writing Harry Potter. We went up to a mound to watch the sunset. It was so pretty! Our hostel was pretty nice. I think a lot of people live there for an extended amount of time, I guess going to school or something. Six of us stayed in a room called "opposites". My bed was called "short and tall." We all went to bed by like 10:30. At 12:30 two of our roommates (not in our group) came in, TURNED ON THE LIGHTS (hostel courtesy rule #1), and started talking a lot. It didn't take long for me to realize one girl was severely drunk. When they both left to go to the bathroom, we turned off the lights, and they turned them back on again (This happend a couple of times before the got the picture.) So... this drunk girl started belching disgustingly. It was awful. Her friend got on her cell phone and called another friend from the States. She was like, "yeah, she's really sick, I'm really worried.... OMG you're going to Jersey this weekend?!" I was thinking..."Its not like there aren't 8 people trying to sleep in this room!" I fell asleep before the gush of vomit came. Thank goodness. Needless to say, they didn't go out drinking the next night (but our room smelled horrific).
On Saturday 4 of us took a bus tour around Scotland- basically spent 12 hours learning about Scotish history. We saw some Harry Potter, Braveheart, and Monty Python filming sites. We learned where phrases like "black mail" "comando" "rip-off" and "drafting" came from. I had no idea they had Scotish roots. We had lunch at Lochness. I'm not sure if we saw them monster, we saw something. A marine biologist studying Lochness thinks there are 18 of these "monsters" in the loch. I kept on falling asleep on the bus. Something about coaches just make me fall asleep! The driver would play this scotish music when he wasn't talking and after about 30 seconds I would be out! So I missed a bit of the history talk, but I got to see a lot of Scotland! I felt like I was in a postcard, everything was just so pretty! But my camera died after 2 hours of being in Scotland. The converter apparently hadn't worked the last time I tried charging it.
On Sunday we joined a free 3 hour walking tour led by a girl not much older than me. She was informative, but when she said the blubonic plague was 300 years after it really was, we started questioning her reliability. We only stuck with the tour for about an hour, then we went window shopping down the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Castle where Queen Elizabeth stays when she visits Edinburgh. (oh! We got to see where Sean Connery stays when he comes to Edinburgh, which is quite often!)
We caught a 4:30 train home and made a friend! We didn't really officially introduce ourselves, so I'm not sure of his name, I think it may have been John. We talked for about 3 hours until he had to get off- it made the train ride go by a lot faster!
Then there was a week of classes... We saw "Speed-the Plow" starring Jeff Goldblum (Jurrasic Park) and Kevin Spacey (Pay it Forward, American Beauty... etc). It wasn't my favorite play, but it was okay.
On Tuesday my non-profit got a private interview with the volunteer director at the British Museum! We got to go behind the scenes to the staff cafe, and see her office. There are thousands of volunteers on the waiting list to volunteer for the British Museum. It was a really cool experience. Thursday we went to Oxford and toured Christ Chapel and the art gallery in Christ Chapel. At lunch we overheard some thick American accents- sounded like Texas cowboy accent, but the ment were really from Oklahoma, close enough, right!? Oxford was bitterly cold and a little rainy. Hannah turned purple. Friday we went to the Vanity Fair exhibit at the National Poitrait Gallery, which was fun to see!
Saturday four of us went to Stonehenge and Bath with another bus tour. We had an hour at Stonehenge, which is a long time to walk around some stones that no one really knows what they're for (but I have it engrained in my mind they have nothing to do with the Druids!) We took some crazy pictures (jumping over stonehenge). I need to start uploading pictures on here! Then we went to Bath. The Roman baths were neat to see. The water smelled awful! It was pretty bad. We went to the "historical costume" museum that was really just a fashion museum! Then we had tea at the Jane Austen Centre (which wasn't in her real house, it was a few houses down. But I guess you do what you can!)
Sunday we went to Wesley's Chapel... yes THE John Wesley, founder of the Methodist denomination. I witnessed my very first baby christening when the baby finally showed up 30 minutes late. I think I was sitting in the family section, which was slightly awkward, and really obvious since we were some of the only white people attending. I shook the bishop's hand on the way out and he asked where I was from. I said, "Texas, in the States." He said, "Oh yeah! Where in Texas?" I said, "Fort worth." He said, "Oh! I've been there! I preached at University Christian Church." I said, "Oh, the one on TCU's campus? I grew up at the Baptist church right next door!" That was cool!
Tonight we saw a play called "Artefacts" that was upstairs in a pub in a tiny theatre. It maybe held 50 people and we were really close to the audience. The basic plot was a British girl finds out her father, who left before she was born, is Iraqi! He gives her a gift of the most precious artifact of Iraq as a way to make up for lost time, but you can tell he's trying to keep it safe for some reason. She's mad and breaks it. A few years later when his Iraqi daughter gets kidnapped by terrorist he asks his British daughter to come to Iraq w/ this artifact so he can sell it to buy his daughter back, then he backs out! He looks a complete coward walking out on his British family, and then deciding not to sell this artifact to get his daughter back. The British girl and the Iraqi mother sell it anyway to save the girl. Somehow a few years later this artifact ends up in the British Museum, and the Irai daughter wants to steal it back to take it back to Iraq. She's furious at her British sister for rescuing her from the terrorist. It takes a lot of thinking for me to get my mind wrapped around this idea.... In Iraq, they focus more on what is best for the country and the entire people than what is best for the family. The dad was willing to sacrifice his daughter to keep from funding terrorism, and the daughter was willing to die and was so upset that this British sister wanted to save her, give money to the terrorist so they could keep on kidnapping and abusing women. It was a great picture of how British (or even American) society is very "me" centered. The girl wanted to go shopping and forget about it all because she had freedom. Her country wasn't falling apart, she didn't want to have to think about it. But the Iraqi family was struggling to stay together just like their country was struggling to stay together.
I don't know if any of that made sense. It is a really new play set in the past 4 years. The actors were great! There was stadium seating on all four side of the room, so they were smack dab in the center of the room performing to everyone around them. I felt like I was part of the family, like I was sitting at the kitchen table with them. It was such a good play!
So, I've been in London a month. In some ways it feels like it and others it doesn't. Its strange. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm in London b/c I don't see touristy places all the time, but then the crazy ladies who scream like bloody murder on the tube remind me I'm in London. On the way to the play tonight we had to walk through a really sketchy part of town, but it was funny because I felt like I was walking through a downtown street of America! I feel so much safer walking around London that I would in America, which I think would surprise most people. I'll try to be better about keeping up with this blog!
