Wednesday, February 27, 2013

My classes are so cool!

I love all of my classes here :-)

On Sunday, I went on a backstage tour of the National Theatre for my Performance in History class. It was really cool, I had never seen anything like it! Then, I was doing some readings for that same drama class and there was a whole section talking about Paris and the Paris Opera House, where we had JUST been. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Paris Opera House. In class on Tuesday, she spent 10 minutes talking about the Paris opera house and how it was known as the epitome of a theatre building and several new theatres were built in the same style (although none can beat it in my opinion). I was almost to the point of tears when she started showing black and white pictures of the opera house stage, architectural plans, and opening night. The essay I have to write for this class will actually be kind of interesting to write (and I think I can work in the Paris Opera House a little bit!).
My Architecture in London class goes on visits every other week and its always super interesting! I am learning so many new things and getting to see parts of London I would never normally go visit. My Abnormal Psychology class is also really cool, a different expert is brought in every week to discuss different mental disorders. I just finished writing my essay on bipolar disorder. Today for my Neurobiology class, I went to a lab (of 100 people by the way... a little different from SU) and looked at slides of mouse brain under the microscope. Stuff like that is always cool!

On a different subject, the Queen visited Queen Mary today! I think it was on a different campus and I had class at the time, but that is a huge honor to QM! Very cool :-) Heres an article on it if you're interested: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/smd/91586.html?utm_source=Homepage&utm_medium=Shoutbox&utm_campaign=Slide1

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Paris

Paris was absolutely amazing!! I took about 700 pictures and put about 200 of them on Facebook, so if you want to see pictures, go look there! (This is already a crazy long post without pictures!)

The first day in Paris, we went to the Louvre. I had no idea it was SO BIG. It was the most beautiful and elaborate museum I've ever seen. In some places, I was more stunned with the actual architecture and building than the actual art. The pyramid reminded of the Da Vinci code movie! Pretty cool. There were several famous paintings and statues we saw. The Mona Lisa and Aphrodite were the major ones. It was actually ridiculous to see the Mona Lisa, there were so many people. It took like 10 minutes to push your way up to the front and even then its a small painting and its hard to get pictures with all the people pushing around you. But I managed to get a few good ones! One of the coolest things about the Louvre is all the actual artists painting as you're walking through. Most of them were copying paintings up on the walls, but they looked like exact replicas. After we spent a few hours in the Louvre, we walked through the courtyard and park outside the museum. Then we made our way to Saint Chapelle and Notre Dame and along the way, crossed the "Lovers Bridge." It had thousands of locks all along it, with names and hearts written all over them. It was so adorable. Saint Chapelle was absolutely stunning. The walls of the chapel were lined with floor to ceiling stained glass. We walked to Notre Dame and the line was so long we decided to come back another day. We went to Shakespeare and Company across the street, which is a famous bookstore where famous people like Hemingway would spend their days. I bought a fancy version of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and had it stamped with the official Shakespeare and Company stamp! Afterwards, we kind of just wondered through the streets until we got to the Latin Quarter, which is kind of a touristy shopping area. We went to a creperie and got some crepes and hot chocolate, yum!

On Tuesday, we started off the day with the Paris Opera House! This was my reason for going to Paris, I had been wanting to go here for years! A lot of people don't know the Phantom of the Opera is based on a true story that happened in the Paris Opera House. I could go on forever about it if you're interested, but for now I'll just say its based on fact. So we got straight off the Metro and I was so excited I almost started crying. It was stunning from the outside and we hadn't even seen the inside yet. We bought our tickets and went in to see the grand staircase. The set from the Phantom musical and the movie actually look like the Paris Opera House staircase! I could actually visualize Masquerade going on around me. Then, we went into this hallway that was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. If you don't look at any of my pictures, you have to see those. The walls and ceiling were covered with gold and chandeliers all along the hallway, it was so ornate! I had never seen anything like it. We got to see the actual theatre from one of the boxes and it looked so familiar! The boxes and stage were almost exactly like the set in Her Majesty's Theatre in London! Then, we found box 5 and you can imagine my excitement when we saw it was labeled in French "Loge du Fantome de L'Opera," meaning something like dwelling of the Phantom of the Opera. I think I actually started jumping up and down. I wanted to go in the box so bad, but we couldn't and I couldn't go down to the catacombs :/ But it was still my favorite thing we did in Paris! After the Paris Opera House, we went to the Musee d'Orsay, where we saw some Monet, Manet, van Gogh, and other famous impressionists. The museum was beautiful! Then we went to the Eiffel Tower and rode the elevator to the very top, which was actually kind of scary! It was an amazing view from the top and totally worth it. It was so cool to see all the major buildings and sites from the top of the tower. We headed back to our hostel and that night, went to one of the cafes close by. Instead of everyone going to socialize in pubs like we're used to, everyone goes to the little cafes lining the street. Everyone sits outside and drinks some wine (and smokes, but obviously we didn't do that). We felt like true Parisians! (Until the French waitress came over and she knew right away we were not French).

The next day, we slept in a little bit and went to Versailles, which was only about a 40 minute ride on the Metro. There was a guy playing an accordion on the train and it felt so French! Versailles was the biggest palace I've ever seen when you include the gardens and everything contained in the grounds. The palace is actually a tiny part of it. We toured the palace and got to see the famous Hall of Mirrors! It was just one room after another lined with gold and paintings on every ceiling. I can't imagine living in a place like that! After going through the palace, we went out to the gardens and discovered there was a tram that can take you around the gardens because they're so big! We got tickets to ride the tram to go see Marie Antoinette's peasant village. She built this whole village a few miles from the palace where she could go and pretend she was a peasant. Pretty ridiculous! But the little cottages surrounding a lake were adorable. They were still much much bigger than a normal peasants house and I'm sure she still had her servants, but I could imagine wanting to escape from that crazy palace life! There were some farm animals too, which of course I loved. There were some sheep, goats, donkeys, cows, and a dog running around. It was such a transformation going from the elaborate, gold palace to a cute little peasant village only a short ride away. Afterwards, we headed back to Paris and went to the Sacre Coeure. It was a beautiful basilica on the top of a hill. We had to climb millions of steps to reach the church, but once we were inside, I fell in love with it. There was a service going on and the choir was singing and the atmosphere was amazing.

The next morning (on our last day), we went straight to Notre Dame to try to get in line early! We got there right after they had opened and we didn't have to wait in line. It was pretty inside, but actually not as pretty as some of the other churches we had seen. You could walk around a little bit, but there wasn't near as many things to do as in Westminster or some of the other churches we'd been in. The lady at the front told me the Crown of Thorns were there in the little museum, so we went to that and then couldn't find them! Later we discovered the crown is only displayed on the first Fridays of every month and every Friday of lent. That was kind of disappointing :/ We left and went to the crypt underneath Notre Dame, where you can see some ancient ruins from an old Roman town. It reminded me a little bit of the Roman Baths I had seen before in Bath. We walked back through the Latin Quarter and had a cute little French lunch, with several different desserts. I had creme brûlée and it was so good! Then we walked to the Pantheon, another unbelievably beautiful place. In the crypt under the Pantheon, we saw the tombs of Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and many French Revolution heroes. That night, we went back to the area around our hostel and did some shopping around there. The Moulin Rouge is close to our hostel and the Sacre Coeure is only 5 minutes away, so our hostel was in a really good location! For dinner, we were all craving Chinese food and didn't know they sold it by weight, so we ended up with A TON of Chinese food. But it was so good! We each got one more crepe for dessert afterwards and then went into a food coma back in the hostel.

Friday morning we got up early and got on the bus heading back to London. Like on the way there, we got on a ferry in Calais for about an hour and a half when we were able to get off the bus and walk around for a bit. As we were getting closer and closer to Dover, you could see the white cliffs and Dover Castle up on the hill, so cool! Once we got back, we were all so happy to be back in London :-) I love being able to come back home here!

Over the entire 4 days, I don't think I've ever eaten so much terrible (but wonderful!) food in my life! Only looking at desserts, I had 6 Nutella crepes, 2 hot chocolates, 2 chocolate mousse, creme brûlée, and some macaroons. And then when I got back, I had 2 lovely packages waiting for me filled with yummy food from home! I will really need to work out this week...

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Bonjour!

After a long day of travel, we have arrived in Paris! We left campus at 7 and got to the tube right in time for the first train. Which also means the most crowded train I've ever been in.

We got to see Dover, Calais, and Bologne all along the way! We took a ferry from Dover to Calais and it was so fancy! Lots of shopping and restaurants, it made the time go by so much faster! Our hostel is 5 minutes away from Moulin Rouge and in a really nice part of town! Everyone we've talked to so far has actually been pretty friendly! Can't wait to start our French adventures tomorrow :-)

Oh and I have no idea what anyone is saying. Like ever. Some friendly lady started talking to me in the metro and I just had to smile and stare at her. Woops.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Wonderful day!

Its been a crazy, stressful week! I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre & Performance Archive this afternoon. I was really scared and intimidated about it this morning, but it was so cool! I'm doing research for my drama class and needed to get some primary documents. I'm studying Lyceum Theatre (where they show Lion King now) and a performance of The Bells in 1871 starring Sir Henry Irving. He was the first actor to be knighted and the opening night of The Bells was a major performance that made him and the theatre famous. I handled pictures, drawings, newspaper clippings, theatre programs, photo negatives, advertisements, etc that were over 100 years old!! Some of them were so fragile they were falling apart, I couldn't believe I was able to look at them and touch them! I have to write my essay as if I were a member of the audience for this particular performance, so it was perfect seeing all these original documents today. I felt like I was actually experiencing what it might have been like when I'm able to read people's original reviews and articles on the performance. I would never be able to do something like that in Texas!


After I got back, I went and bought some groceries and we had an American dinner night! I made a yummy chicken-broccoli-cheese-Ritz cracker casserole and another girl made chocolate chip pancakes for dessert. It was so good and exactly what I needed!! We made a complete itinerary of our days in Paris and I can't believe its only a day away!!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Life is rough...

Because I was in class only one day this week :-) On Monday, I had 3 classes. But Tuesday we just went to the library as a class and looked at some stuff from the archive. And then today my class is going on a visit. Life is tough here in London. And then we have all of next week off for "reading week," which is basically just an entire week off to catch up. Instead of actually staying here and doing work, we're going to Paris! We leave on Sunday and get back next Friday. We'll have 3 full days in Paris and then the 4th day we're going to Versailles for the day. I will FINALLY get to see the Paris Opera house (aka Phantom).

Monday night, Sophie and I went to see Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. It was so good, I really loved it! I had never seen it before, but I actually recognized a few of the songs (I think from Glee which is kind of embarrassing to admit...). I didn't cry, which means it isn't quite up to the same level as Phantom or Les Mis, but I still really really enjoyed it!

Yesterday, we went to Trafalgar Square, which is the central point of London. Nelson's column is there with lots of fountains and weird lion statues (they're actually sitting like dogs, but have lion bodies). The National Gallery is in the square, so we went there. They had a bunch of really famous paintings, like some van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso. They were really beautiful and the building itself was a masterpiece. Afterwards, we went to go find the Texas Embassy and to my horror, IT WAS CLOSED. And not just temporarily. All the signs were gone, the windows pulled shut. I literally almost just folded up in the fetal position in the middle of the street and died right there. I had that meal planned for days. I managed to make it to a Garfunkels across the street. Then we came back and at night, we went to the New Globe (pub on the corner of campus) for a karaoke night.



I can't believe I'm already halfway through with classes! Classes end on March 29 and then "spring break" is the entire month of April. May is a full month for exams and I will only have 2. So, for four classes, I only have 5 essays and two exams for the entire semester. Which is actually kind of scary if you think about how much each of those will individually matter. But Paris in a few days, I can't wait!

Saturday, February 9, 2013

"On Site Analysis" of the British Museum

But seriously. I had to go back to the British Museum for class. What a shame. For my architecture class, I'm writing an essay on the architecture of the museum. I am very knowledgable about the history of the museum now, which is actually very very interesting! It has 8 million objects in it now and over 6 million people visit every year. If you care about the architecture/theme of the building I'll send you my lovely essay when it actually gets written. After observing the building for a bit, we went inside and spent another 3 hours looking at a completely different area than I had been in before. You could literally spend days in there. We saw the Egyptian sculpture, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and other sections I can't remember. We went into the Pantheon Collection, which was pretty cool! Then, we went to the area with the Egyptian mummies, which was SO COOL. It was kind of creepy... but I loved it. They had the CAT scans for most of the mummies, so you could tell which position they were in and if they died from trauma. Several of the mummies were young people, like in their 20s. There was one elderly lady that had been unwrapped. It was crazy how well her body was preserved. All her skin was still there, you could even see her hair and nails! Her face was all intact, and she was thousands of years old! I also learned that they mummified animals. There were cats and even baby crocodiles...


We ate at the gallery cafe and I got some mac and cheese, which was not mac and cheese, but it was still good. I also got some ice cream :-) Their ice cream is delicious here. In about an hour, a rugby game will be on, so Laura and I are meeting some British guys at a nearby pub who will explain rugby to us. It looks super intense, but we have no idea whats going on. Right now, the big Six Nations rugby tournament is going on, so as they say here, it should be a cracker!

Friday, February 8, 2013

Kensington Palace

Thursdays are always my adventure days! So yesterday, we went to Kensington Palace. It was gorgeous! We had to walk through Kensington Gardens to get to the palace and I loved it there. There was a Princess Diana memorial fountain and playground. There were dogs everywhere (made me miss my dogs!) and a little lake with swans everywhere. They recently finished a huge 2 year renovation of Kensington Palace and now the tours through the palace are very fancy! You can see the oldest part of the Palace where the last of the Stewarts lived (William III and Mary II), King George I and II's apartments, and finally, Queen Victoria's apartments. Each of these had very cool decorations and displays everywhere. There were also "whispering walls" in each room that were telling the stories of the room and the history. The "Victoria Revealed" section was my favorite. They had excerpts from her diaries painted on the walls, on the display cases, on the floor, all over the place. They had some of her clothes, including her wedding dress, which was gorgeous! They had several of her paintings and sketches, along with her children's toys and clothes. The whole exhibit goes through her entire life and tells her story. I learned so much about her and Prince Albert that I didn't know before! Kensington Palace is also the long-term residence of Will and Kate!! (What if they were there when I was there?!!!!?!!)


There was the most beautiful grand staircase leading to the quarters of Kings George I and George II. This area was so ornately decorated and they had costumes from the court that were just unbelievable. After we were done going through everything, we went to the shop. After an initial freak out, I managed to only buy a few postcards and stamps. We had lunch there and headed back to campus.

I learned that Band-aids are called plasters. Weird.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Lion King

I saw Lion King in the West End today! It was at Lyceum Theatre, which just so happens to be the theatre I will be writing one of my theatre essays on! The theatre was beautiful! For my essay, I'm writing a creative essay from the perspective of an audience member at a performance of Hamlet with Sir Henry Irving in 1874 at Lyceum Theatre. He was the first actor to be knighted and after him, acting became more of a professional occupation. I have a TON of research to do for the essay and I have to go to several archives and libraries in London to find original records from the production. Pretty intimidating!

I learned yesterday that if you order lemonade at a restaurant, they will bring you Sprite. Which is fine, I like Sprite, but totally not what I was expecting. I also learned that they call the color yellow amber, not yellow. So like at a stoplight, its red, amber, green. I'm still not sure I fully believe that one...

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Going off of 3 hours sleep...

Last night was one of my flatmate's birthdays. Which is fine, you can have a party. But then they came back at 3:30 in the morning and people were screaming in the hallways all night. They decided to "sleep" in the hallway of my flat (and by sleep, I mean continue to scream). Finally, at 5:30, the 4 of us Americans who couldn't sleep at all gave up and went to get breakfast. Nothing was open that early on a Sunday except a McDonalds. Then, we went to a bridge over the Thames and watched the sunrise! So it wasn't all bad, it was actually really beautiful :-) When we came back, there were people sleeping against my door and I had to kick them to get into my room. I didn't feel too bad. So I went to bed at 9:30 am and slept until about 1. To say the least, its been a rough day.
Sunset in London. Thats St. Paul's in the skyline, really beautiful!
Thursday, Angela and I went to Camden Market, which was UNBELIEVABLE. I think it was love at first sight. Just rows and rows of clothes, jewelry, shoes, purses, food, pretty much anything you can possibly think of. The market literally goes on for miles, its one of the biggest ones in London. After only 20 minutes, I looked down and I was already holding 4 bags. I got lots of good things, for very good prices, but that place is dangerous. Definitely going back :-)

Friday, I went to the Tower of London! Its one of my favorite places in London, it is just so cool! I got to go into the chapel there this time, which was super exciting! The Tudor nerd inside of me definitely came out, I got to see where Anne Boleyn and the other executed queens were buried. I learned that over 1,000 people were buried in that chapel! We saw the Crown Jewels, the White Tower, Bloody Tower, and the million other things to see there.

Yesterday we went to see Twelfth Night. It was totally NOT what we expected. The West End Twelfth Night show was sold out, so it automatically redirected us to this show at this tiny little pub. We had no idea, we just thought they switched venues. It was still good, but definitely not what we expected. Then that night we went to a jazz bar called the Palm Tree. Love that place! Its a mix of old and young people, with a band of older guys playing jazz and people dancing. Then, when I got back, it was the night of horror described above (STILL ANGRY). But thats ok, tonight we're going to Drapers (the bar on campus) to watch the Super Bowl. The game doesn't start until 11:30 here, so I probably won't stay for the whole thing, but thought it'd be fun to at least see some of it!