Time has just flown by here. I think we're a little more than half way through our semester. I can't keep up!

We went to Scotland this past weekend as a group, which was great fun and gave a nice contrast to the noise and smog of London. Tom and I went up early on Friday morning, leaving on the 7:30am train to Newcastle. Our goal was to hike around Hadrian's Wall, an old Roman wall built by Emperor Hadrian to keep the Scots out, but we never made it there. We got off at a train station that was literally in the middle of nowhere- there was the town post office, and that was it. Beautiful countryside, though, with lots of sheep and horses. After an hour's hike uphill along a strange public footpath that took us through people's backyards and pastures, we found a museum called Vindolanda that was built next to the ruins of a huge Roman fort/town built to house the soldiers who were building Hadrian's Wall. The museum was very interesting- they've discovered so many things there. Their prize artifacts, though, are Roman writing tablets that are very well preserved, as they were discovered in a layer of clay that kept out the oxygen. They were translated into letters between slaves, birthday invitations, and storekeeper's lists, including the only known Roman woman's handwriting. When we went up on the hill to look at the ruins, the weather was beautiful until we got the furthest away from the museum, then it HAILED and POURED. We were on a hill, so the wind was incredibly strong, too. Both of us were completely soaked, so the thought of walking another mile to the wall, then another 5 miles to the next town where we needed to catch the train just sounded awful. We got a taxi, which I think was the best idea.

Here's a few pictures from this day:


L: A really adorable little house we walked by on our hike
R: Happy hikers!

Top: A view of the Vindolanda Museum and ground- it was a relief to find it, as it felt like we were hiking to the middle of nowhere
bottom: The ruins of the fort

We caught the train to Glasgow, where we got in just in time to enjoy a delicious Italian dinner at a restaurant near the train station, then make it to our Hostel, where we spent a relaxing evening reading on a comfy couch.

The next day, Tom and I went to the Science Centre for couple of hours before we had to meet the group at the train station. It was pretty typical, and geared mostly towards small children, but we had fun anyway. It was a long walk back to the train station, and it took us right through the middle of the city, which to me felt just like San Francisco. It was very hilly, and cold, and historically an industrial city. We all went to our Guest House to check in, and it was very very nice- I didn't have to sleep on the top bunk of a bunk bed for once!!!

We all took a tour of the Glasgow School of Art, which is the best art school in the country, and is housed in a building designed by Charles Renee Mackintosh, a famous Glasgow architect. He really liked to joke around about his designs- the top floor felt like you were in a dungeon basement! Some of us also went to the Willow Tea Room for afternoon tea, which is also designed by Mackintosh, and the tea and scones were delicious. I am learning to really appreciate a nice cup of tea here.

Tom and I walked around a bit, looking at the shops, and trying to understand people's accents (which was near impossible sometimes), then went to a pub for dinner before going to a play as a group called She Stoops to Conquer at the Royal Theatre. After the first 20 minutes, the play turned out to be pretty funny, and was all about mistaken identity and love. After the play some of us went with out professor to a pub that had 400 different kinds of Scotch, and since we were in Scotland, we decided we had to sample some scotch. I wasn't really a big fan, but it was fun to taste the difference in flavors.

I wish we had stayed there longer, as we missed out on some really cool museums and other things. A day is not enough to see that entire city!

Here's some pictures from that day:

L: Tom having fun at the Science Museum
R: Lights hung above a street in Glasgow
Bottom: The Glasgow School of Art

On Sunday, we took the train to Edinburgh- what a cool, old city! Most of the buildings look like old castles. There is Edinburgh Castle right in the middle of the city on a craggy hill, and we got to go there and walk around. We went to the rooftop garden of a museum to get a good view of the city layout. You could see the ocean! It was by far my favorite thing about the weekend, but we were there for a few hours. I wish I could go back- I don't think I can fit it into our busy schedule. We don't really have any more free weekends.

On the way back to London, we stopped at Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was a cute walled city on the coast. Nothing was open, as it was a Sunday afternoon, but we walked around the huge wall to the coast, then back on top of the wall to the only open pub for dinner. The town was very cute. Then we took the exhausting train ride home to London and got home around midnight. A long but good weekend.

Pictures from that day:

L: The Royal Mile in Edinburgh
R: Edinburgh- notice the bridge in the distance? The city is layered, some is up and some is underneath


L: Edinburgh Castle
R: A bad attempt at a picture of the wall around Berwick-upon-Tweed

So, all in all, it was a great weekend. Meanwhile, there's so much going on here in London, too! I'll save that for later though.

Cheers!

Sorry for the lack of updates, I just can't seem to keep up! We're doing so much! I'll try to condense it a little:


For my independent project I am working on Mondays and Fridays with a company called Music Platform, which is the combination of two companies called Children's Music Workshop and English Pocket Opera. They provide music/opera workshops to schools in East London (the poorer side of London), so I am fortunate enough to be able to shadow these workshop leaders for several different programs throughout my stay here. The first is a program for an area of East London called Tower Hamlets and it is based on The Tudors and the Tower of London, as they live in the town that historically would have serviced the Tower. They begin the unit by going to the Tower of London as a class, then with help they write a song about the Tudors, then workshop leaders come in to help the kids learn their songs and eventually perform them for the school. It's a little bit like my California history focus in 4th grade.
Anyway, all that being said, the experience has been really great so far. Tyrone, the workshop leader, is fantastic, and I'm getting ideas for all sorts of good musical exercises for kids. He even has me playing my flute! He had the kids guess what country I was from, and they all thought Australia, Germany, Iceland, but not the US. The kids are great- they're in year 3 (the English school system is quite different from that in the States) which is about 8 years old, and most if not all of them are ESL (English as a Second Language) students. Their developing English accents are adorable.


Tom's independent project is doing bell ringing in a local church, and I've sorta joined in. It's wonderful, and much more tricky than I thought. It's hard to explain, but there are 8 bells (a complete octave tuned in F# major), and there is a rope attached to a wheel attached to each bell. The bell begins tilted up in a resting place, then you pull the rope to swing it to the other side, then pull the rope a different way to get it back to it's starting place. (I know this doesn't make much sense, I have pictures in a cute book they gave me that illustrate it much better.) Anyway, you begin by doing the different strokes separately, then put them together, which is what I did for the first time last week. The next step, which I did this past Monday, is to play in rounds, which is played on 6 or 8 of the bells- the top bell rings, then all in sequence down to the bottom bell. The bells have a great sound and they make the whole building shake with reverberations. The people that do it are great- we all go out to the pub afterward and chat about England, about their funny trip to Florida, about other churches' bells. One of the guys rings bells for Westminster Abby, which is the pinnacle of bell ringing achievement. It's really fun, and probably the best experience I've had here so far.


Whew. Besides that, we've had classes, which are going fine. Our Fine Arts class consists of visiting different galleries- we've been to the National Galley and the National Portrait Gallery so far. We have a Contemporary England class which is basically a funny, strange guy just talking about English society for three hours (interesting, but difficult to sit through). We'll be visiting Parliament next week. Our Music class is okay- mostly difficult conceptual things about music and the music industry. We went to a new music concert last night of very very strange, out there music composed a month ago. Our theatre class is great, I really like the professor.


We've seen an incredible amount of shows, and they just keep coming. Every week, basically until we leave, we have a show Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. Last week we saw an interesting performance of Benjamin Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was a unique performance of a familiar story. The theme was neon lights and minimal sets and strange abstract movies in the background. Oberon, the main male role, is sung by a counter-tenor, which is incredibly high for a man. Puck is played by an acrobat who is constantly swinging from ropes and sliding down poles- his is a spoken role. Overall a very cool show.
The night after that we saw Dido Queen of Carthage in Kensington Palace, for which the audience followed the actors through the various rooms of the palace for different scenes. It was interesting, but hard to follow as I didn't really know the story line.
Today was exhausting, performance-wise. We saw a matinee of Cirque du Soleil's Varekai, staged in the fantastic Royal Albert Hall. It was my first "circus" I think, and it was amazing. We payed for standing room tickets, but as it was a matinee that not many people knew about, they reseated us to the second row of the circle (with a great view) to fill the auditorium. The costumes were beautifully strange and intricate, and the acrobats were phenomenal, although nerve-racking.
Then tonight we saw James Son of James, a play by Fabulous Beast, an Irish dance/music/theatre company. It was a beautiful story that turned very dark at the end, but it had very real, deep characters. The character's interactions were mostly in wonderfully choreographed dance routines, and much of their stories were expressed physically instead of out loud. I'm loving all these innovative performances that redefine what it means to "go to the theatre"- I don't think we've seen a traditional one yet.

The living situation is going great, except for sharing a kitchen a little smaller than mine at home with 19 people. Not a good situation. The food here is so much better than I was expecting- they don't use high fructose corn syrup, or hydrogenated oils, or preservatives in general, and what do you know, everything tastes better! Even Coke uses real sugar (which makes it taste so much better). Not only have the figured out things food-wise, but everybody seems to be much more "green" and eco-friendly here. I've been very impressed with the advertising and the public effort to be green.

Oh- I also had the most amazing flute lesson yesterday with Sarah Newbold at the Guildhall School of Music. She had some great ideas and good comments about my playing that will definitely help in the future. Now I just have to practice more!

Sorry for writing so much. Hope things are well at home despite a little election craziness!