Day 35 {Preview}

Today was a great day for music. I went to Abbey Road, a Fleet Foxes concert, and Death Cab for Cutie's new album came out. Love. We also went to Kent today on a walking tour. I have no time to blog it all so I will do it later. Tomorrow we are all of to Stratford-upon-Avon for a couple of days. See you soon cyberspace.

DAY 34. and stuff.

Class. Lunch. Wrote a paper. National Gallery with Amy. Saw the sexy Shakespeare portrait. Saw some van Eyck. Got kicked out again because it closes at 6. Found Patrick randomly. Ate some Italian food. Went to see Flare Path as a class but the tickets were never ordered. Me and Patrick saw 39 Steps instead and got to sit in a box. Home. Blogging.

by John Taylor

Arnolfini Wedding by van Eyck

And here is a picture Carolyn took from sunday when we went to Evensong at Westminster: (we are small at the bottom)

DAYS 32 & 33: Family, Wax, and Westminster Abbey

SATURDAY, MAY 28TH. DAY 32.
So my sister Amber, her husband Ben, and their two sons Nate and Spencer came to visit me Saturday! They only live a couple hours north and I will be visiting them for a little while this summer before I go to Thailand. So excited. So we went to Camden Market, Madam Tussad's Wax Museum, Sherlock Holmes' house on Baker Street, and Kensington Gardens. Camden was a little sketchy especially with the football (soccer) game drunks (Manchester vs Barcelona {pronounced barTHelona}, Barcelona won). I got Indian food for lunch though. The wax museum was super crowed and eh but interesting in a weird way I guess. And before we went to the park we got chocolate ice cream, a necessary addition to any day. The boys played at the Diana playground- it was a huge ship on sand. Pretty cool. Then it rained so I sent them off after we ate a little Burger King. Classy and delicious.
ps- my point and shoot camera's screen is broken :( i dropped it in madam tussad's but i think it still takes pictures, however i had amber take all the pics for me so when i get those from her i will post them up on the blog.

Here are the only pictures I have from the day:

Daniel Radcliff

Orlando Bloom

SUNDAY, MAY 29TH. DAY 33.
We had stake conference today- a broadcast from SLC to the UK and Ireland from L.Tom Perry and President Monson. Later in the day some of us went to Evensong at Westminster Abbey. It was really interesting and the Abbey is absolutely beautiful. It was mostly singing from the choir but there were a few sermons in between. Most of the time my eyes were glued to the ceiling or the stained glass windows- I could not get enough of them. There are also a lot of famous people buried there like authors, philosophers, and royalty. And the coolest part? Yeah that's right, walking where Kate and Will had just gotten married. We then had a missionary fireside from the guys in the program (all three of them haha) and then I planned my trip to Italy with our little group! I finally worked out a return flight. Whew. So stressful and complicated. But we are doing two days in Rome, two days in Florence, and a day and half in Venice. And then I fly out of Venice to London. It is going to be amazing.
ps- We took pictures at Westminster but I don't have access to those yet either so I will post those later with the other pictures.

From the internet, but here just in case you wanted to see what it looks like

Also an amazing blog post to go along with my past day at Dover, it is great so watch it and you won't regret it! here's the link: http://casqueal.blogspot.com/

An Artistic Moment

So these are some of my favorite pieces I saw at the National Gallery:

Water-Lilies Setting Sun. Monet 1907

The Grand Canal, Venice. Monet 1908.

Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp. Georges Seurat 1885.

The Boulevard Montmartre at Night. Pissarro

A Wheatfield With Cypresses. Vincent van Gogh, 1889.

Three Dancers in Violet Tutus. Edgar Degas, 1896.

The Fighting Temeraire Tugged To Her Last berth To Be Broken Up. Joseph Turner, 1839.

The Virgin Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist (The Leonardo Cartoon). Leonardo da Vinci, 1500.

There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover

FRIDAY, MAY 27TH. DAY 31.
Yesterday myself and three other lovely ladies took a train two hours south to Dover to see the castle and the cliffs. While there I knew there was a song about Dover and I had even sung it earlier in the month when someone had mentioned they were going there, but all day I could not think of it. It loomed over me all day so when I came home and finally listened to it I had a realization. I had listened to that song in my dad's car a million times before. He loves all things history, war, and of course castles, so he had bought a WWII CD of music and played it all the time. At one point I could word for word quote Churchill's speech along with him in the car. So here is the song, White Cliffs of Dover by Vera Lynn, who sounds exactly like Snow White.

The Dover Castle was pretty cool and I think I enjoyed it the most out of all the castles I've been to so far in Great Britain (not France though). It was barely crowded at all and the lack of supervision meant you could explore more freely without tour guides hovering. We went in the hospital world war II tunnels and the medieval tunnels as well, and then looked in the towers, one of which was beautiful and reminded me of the sword fighting scene from the Princess Bride. So naturally we acted it out and filmed scenes to accompany it revolving around a story Camille made up while she and Lauren pretended to be princesses all day, megan as a prince, and myself as the friar. After being there for hours we went down to the beach and took pictures of the white cliffs and I touched and tasted the English Channel.

But when the dawn comes up

There'll be bluebirds over

The white cliffs of Dover

Tomorrow

Just you wait and see

There'll be love and laughter

And peace ever after

Tomorrow

When the world is free

Song of the Day: May It Be by Enya

Harry Potter in One Word

this is wonderful. and mostly because rupert.

LONDON: Days 26-30

SUNDAY, MAY 22ND. DAY 26.
Church. Hyde Park. Fireside about everyone's trips.

MONDAY, MAY 23RD. DAY 27.
Class. Then we went to Hampstead to get the best crêpes ever- spinach, ham, and cheese. We were basically re-doing the same day from a couple weeks ago but with more people. So then we went to the High Gate Cemetery in the day so it would be open. The tombstones were covered in vines and surrounded by huge green trees, it was so serene and beautiful. There was a fox meandering through the graves watching us slyly. We saw Karl Marx's grave as well. Afterwards we went back to the same crêpe stand and got sweet crêpes this time- mine contained maple syrup, nuts, and cream. We came home, grocery shopped and then I probably did homework.

TUESDAY, MAY 24TH. DAY 28.
Woke up at like 12 in the afternoon. Glorious. Saw Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe. And it was so good. We then got Thai food and the best chocolate ice cream I have probably ever had. And that is saying something. One because my favorite food is chocolate ice cream and two because I have had a lot  of ice cream in my life from many different places. Basically I did nothing that day it was great. But yet I still ended up going to bed incredibly late because I was writing a paper.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25TH. DAY 29.
Class. Then on to one of my most perfect days here in London. Art Museums. I forgot how much I love art while I have been here studying theatre. I have been neglecting that area of my artistic inclinations because I have been so focused on performance art. We went to the National Gallery and I seriously could have spent all day in there studying and gazing at paintings. They are beautiful and amazing. When I saw pieces by Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet I will admit that I cried a little bit. I have even seen those pieces before, in that same museum, but they still take my breath away every time. By this point I had long lost Amberly and Lauren and was quite content to wander through the galleries alone, but eventually by a miracle we ran into each other later and they let me finish up looking at it (quicker this time) but I still need to go back and see a few more things. Afterwards we stopped for chocolate cake at a patisserie and ate by a fountain (but me and Amberly had to go buy pints of milk to drink, of course). We then headed over to the Tate Modern and saw some Picasso, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Polluck. But it closes at 6 so we were only there for like 15 minutes before we got kicked out so I will definitely be going back to that one as well. Next we walked down the Thames towards Southbank where our show was playing that night. We looked around again, got some food and then went in for the show- One Man, Two Guvnors. It was slap-stick humor, some tasteless, some silly, all predictable. Most of our class were in stitches laughing the whole time, but I however laughed very very little. I still don't know why I found none of it funny, but I really did not enjoy the show. I guess predictable low humor just doesn't do it for me. I again did homework when I got home and went to bed very late.

THURSDAY, MAY 26TH. DAY 30.
We met at Kew Gardens as a class to tour it for the day. It was huge! It featured gardens with plants from all over the world including a pagoda. And then of course the second day in London that it pours rain it is when we were outside in gardens all day. I got soaked, through and through. It was a fun experience though and right as we got to the tree top walkway it stopped and got sunny for a few minutes so that we could look over the foliage and take pictures. I was so glad when we got home and I ate pizza in my warm and dry pajamas. After finishing up some homework we stopped by and got some more of that delicious ice cream before seeing another show called Silence, a devised theatre piece. It was very interesting and I ended up liking it a lot. It really makes you think about your aural stimuli and has made me more aware of the sound around me. The show did some amazing things with sound, lighting, and set/scene changes- it was captivating. I then again in attempt to catch up on blogging went to bed at 4am. Yay for me.

this is off center but i am too lazy to go back and fix it 

Song of the Day: Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson