April 3: Football, Soccer-Style

Today we went to a football match, Fulham vs. Blackpool. We took the Tube to Putney Bridge, then picked out some men wearing bright orange jerseys and goofy, white and orange spiky hats (the colors of Blackpool) and followed them to the stadium. We were all wearing black and white in support of Fulham, mostly because A) Fulham has a very attractive American bloke on their team and B) Most of us don't have any orange in our wardrobe but we're all set for black. We had pretty darn good seats, behind one of the goals. The first half was particularly fun. Fulham was obviously the better team, and since the goal in front of us belonged to Blackpool, we got to see a lot of action. Fulham scored two goals in the first half. Then at half-time, their mascot came dancing out and we all had to laugh because he looked just like Bucky Badger! Turns out they call their guy Billy Badger. We definitely picked the right team to support! The second half seemed a lot less exciting, though Fulham did score one more time. A few guys got hurt, one from a nasty-looking kick to the leg and another two when they rammed noggins both going to head the ball. After the game, I came back to work on some homework and start preparing to sign up for next semester's classes. 

Billy Badger

FFC

April 2: Stonehenge, Old Sarum, Salisbury

A BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG day! We hopped on the bus at 9 and headed out to Stonehenge. The drive was pretty, through picturesque English countryside inhabited by lots of cows, sheep, and pigs. There are lots of little light yellow primroses blooming in the shady ditches that I just love, and a tallish shrubby dark green foliaged plant with little bright yellow flowers that looks interesting. Stonehenge was just as amazing as it was the first time I visited. It's just so impressive. I love how it's in the middle of nowhere, just rising out of a field. All over the plain, little burial mounds dot the view. Inside each are the remains of one or more ancients. Only some have been excavated. I learned (or was reminded) that there was originally a tall mound of soil in a circle around the stones, so entering the space would have been even more dramatic. I remember that last time I was there, there were lots of sheep grazing right next to the the circle, but this time they were a little farther off. Just as we started taking pictures, a sprinkler system turned on. How silly is that?! Can't they do that at night, when there aren't people trying to get a dramatic picture of Stonehenge? Thankfully, the weather held up even though it was supposed to rain. It was windy, but pretty warm. There were a bunch of "crows" (by which I mean big black birds of some sort. I'm not entirely sure what they call them here) building nests in the cracks between the stones, which was funny to watch. They were all flying around with sticks and competing for the best ones. Spring is in the air!

Silly sprinkler

Crow with a stick

After Stonehenge, we drove over to see a site that I hadn't even known existed. "Old Sarum" was a fortified city with a castle, built on a hill over modern Salisbury. Turns out, Salisbury's original name was "New Sarum," and it was built to replace the old city when they decided to move. The main castle and moat and such were built in 1069 after the Norman conquest for William the Conqueror, and Henry I added a more elaborate palace complex in the early 1100s. It was pretty amazing to think of the place as a whole town, since the whole area was only about twice the size of my yard at home. The complex was built to be impregnable, and the elaborate defense system is still pretty darn impressive. It's built on top of several layers of man-made hills, which rise out of the mostly flat countryside. The walls are worn down to just a few feet in most areas, and were built of flint stuck into mortar. Standing on top of the hill, we had a lovely view of the city of Salisbury in the valley below.

Moat around Old Sarum

The view from one of the sides

Behind me is the outline of the ruins of the old cathedral

View of Salisbury Cathedral

Friends up on the wall: Sarah, Ariel, me and Pa

Salisbury Cathedral

After touring Old Sarum, we made our way down to New Sarum, now called Salisbury. We were released for lunch, and given some suggestions by the guide. A few friends and I made our way to a pub called The Red Lion, which has been in operation since the 1200s. They think it's the oldest hotel/pub in the country, built 800 years ago to house the workers who had to build the cathedral. I ordered an egg and cress sandwich, which was very good. After, we made our way back to the cathedral to meet the guide. She took us around, pointing out the famous dead people buried there and the really amazing bits of art and architecture. I really love that cathedral. It's just pretty. It wasn't originally built to include a tall spire (which was added in 1320, 100 years after the main part was built), so inside you can see where some of the columns directly under the spire are literally bowed inwards from the extra weight. In the courtyard of the cathedral are two Cedars of Lebanon, which were planted there in 1837 to mark Queen Victoria's coronation. I vividly remember wondering what kinds of trees they were when I visited Salisbury the first time.

The entire outside of the church is covered in saints and

do-gooders. Here are St. Nicholas and St. George

Cedars of Lebanon

The Nave

Really pretty stained glass in a chapel

I think this was the North Transept

I asked a friend to take a picture of me with the cathedral

and the spire...well, at least you can see me and the lovely gray stone!

The drive home was a long one, and our driver did a pretty good job at making the majority of us at least slightly car sick. I had chicken and rice for supper, then settled down to read and rest. I'm mostly better, but my nose is all stuffy now and that has gives me weird sinus headaches from time to time. I'm kind of impressed at how fast this cold went though. Yay!

April 1: A dip in the Thames

Well, a few of us decided to do something a little different today, so we headed over to the River Thames for a nice little swim. It was a little cold at first, and a bit brown and cloudy, but after all my toes went numb it was quite refreshing. Then the Queen showed up and hopped in with us. Ha. April Fool!

I'm still sick so that's the best I could come up with in my feverish state. Last night was awful. The fever finally went away around 4am so I got some sleep till 8 when the construction down stairs started up. The fever came back with a vengence this morning so I figured I'd better spend the day at home. I felt a lot better around 1:30, and I think I was fever-free for a few hours, but now it's dinnertime and it's back. Freaking fever. I'm hoping that I'll be able to shake it by tomorrow for our big Stonehenge/Salisbury trip, but I'm going either way, come hell or high water.

March 31: Sick

I am sick. I do not like it. I didn't sleep well at all last night, in spite of the tylenol pm. I had weird and disturbing fever dreams all night. Everything hurts, especially my throat. Tea helps, but I can't be drinking tea every waking moment, so mostly I just hurt. I can't decide if I'm too hot or too cold or what. It is not fun. I went to History class this afternoon, but I'm not entirely sure how I made it there. I was walking to class and thinking about how I should pick up some brown sugar from the grocery store for my tea after class was over, and I somehow found myself inside the grocery store. I guess I thought I was walking to class. It was really strange. Anyway, I went to class to learn about the Blitz in London, but instead of going on an educational walk with the professor, I came home and drank more tea...with brown sugar, of course, since I now have a nice new bag of it. I am just icky. Gonna drug myself to sleep tonight and hope I wake up better.

The good news is, the fish I ordered for the tank at home finally came in and Mom says they look great and seem ok so far. We now have some really nice long-finned albino and calico Ancistrus. Yay!

March 30: Tea and a Ballet



Me with my friends Pa and Sarah at tea



Because we had such a busy afternoon with tea scheduled, our Travel Journal professor gave us the day off. All us girls on the second floor spent the afternoon comparing outfits and dressing up. We left for tea at 4, which was at the Gore Hotel, a really fancy place just a few blocks away from our flat. Tea was very nice. They brought us lots of little sandwiches with roast beef, ham, egg, salmon, and such, two very fresh scones with clotted cream and black currant jam, and dessert trays. The dessert options were amazing. I ate two of the freshly made eclairs. They were beyond delicious. The ballet didn't start till 7:30, and apparently they expected us to just stay at the tea place and leave directly from there, but that of course was way too much time sitting in a hot tea room, so we came back to our place before leaving for the ballet.

The ballet, Cinderella, was incredible. I had soooo much fun! The dancers were amazing, and the costumes were wonderful and I just thoroughly enjoyed myself. The backgrounds and costumes were done in muted, darkish tones, so the Prince and Cinderella in white and silver just sparkled. Cinderella's coachmen, lizards, mice, and a frog, all had very elaborate animal costumes, and I just can't imagine how they managed to dance with such gigantic masks and outfits. Our seats were in the top balcony, the third one up, but we could still see everything quite well. The best part of the night was when Cinderella came on stage in her ballgown costume, and a little girl behind me let out this giant gasp of wonder and astonishment. It was adorable.

On the tube ride home, I notice that my throat kind of hurt, which was odd, and then when we got home, all of a sudden I started feeling horribly sick. It happened within about 10 minutes, so I had no clue what was going on, so I figured I'd better get to bed as soon as possible. I was not feeling well at all.

March 29: The Saatchi Gallery

Today started off quite well. I got my Contemporary Britain paper back with a big old "A" on the front, which was wonderful. After lunch, I went with a friend to find the Saatchi Gallery, where our Museums class was meeting. We got horribly lost around Sloane Square but finally managed to find it. The gallery was...interesting. It's a modern art gallery, specializing in artworks that really challenge viewers and push the envelope in some way. Some of the works were interesting to me, and others were rather silly or even just stupid. I do not appreciate art created for the sole purpose of shock value. How is that supposed to be art?! Anyway, some things were neat, like the room filled with oil. Sounds weird, and it certainly was weird, but it was kind of fun to see. I also was interested by a very surreal exhibit that an artist had created using dead bugs. Yes, I did say dead bugs. She apparently collected the bugs from backyards and windshields, then strung them up inside a glass case (using horse hairs for some reason) as though they were flying through the air. Then, she fashioned little creepy humanoid-like figures out of tiny pieces of grass bulbs, stuck fly wings on them, and created a sort of battlefield between the dead bugs and the grass creatures. It was creepy as all heck and super strange, but it was actually less weird than some of the other pieces there, if you can believe it. I came home to cook some chicken and rice and green beans for supper, then settled down with my laptop to seriously look at some imported Japanese koi that I'm interested in. I'm torn between a doitsu (scale-less) kindai (mostly white) showa (black with red and white markings), and a doitsu kohaku (red and white). I'm not yet sure if I'll end up getting either of these, but I'm very tempted, especially because I probably won't be seeing many, if any, other Japanese tategoi (young koi) imports this year. Hmmm. It's such a tough decision! I've spent the rest of the night going through the hundreds of pictures I took at Kew Gardens and writing up my blog entry from Sunday. Now time to finish my tea and go to bed.

Creepy bug exhibit

Close-up of the bug war

Room filled with oil

I liked this painting because it seemed to be about pizza and didn't contain

anything rude or suggestive or gross or confrontational. And I'm quite fond of pizza!

March 28: Blithe Spirit

Today was a pretty normal day, mostly. I had a nice, relaxing morning, then went to theatre class, then came home and made dinner out of one of the instant rice meals Nana and Papa sent me awhile back and some chicken that I mixed in. It turned out to be a very nice supper. At 7:30, I went to Piccadilly Circus to see a Noel Coward show called "Blithe Spirit." It was a nice, light-hearted, comedic show. The basic plot was that a man doing research for a novel about the occult accidentally conjures up the ghost of his dead first wife with the accidental help of his second wife and a silly psychic. Since only he can see the first wife at first, this causes all sorts of trouble with his second wife, until the first wife discovers she can move objects around, thus making the conflict a whole lot worse. Long story short, the first wife accidentally kills the second wife hoping to kill the husband (so they could live in the spirit world together), so the poor guy has two ghost wives who are trapped and can't find their way back to the land of the dead. It was a hilariously funny show, and just what I needed after seeing several not-so-funny plays in the past few weeks. The actors were all quite well-known, especially the first wife, who was played by Ruthie Henshall, a musical theater actress I am quite familiar with, and the psychic, Alison Steadman, a popular British actress who I know best for being Mrs. Bennett in the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice. Altogether, it was a wonderful evening.