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!