whirlwind westminster

the past three days have been a whirlwind of activity, culture, food, and excitement. its been rough trying to translate it into words. this is truly a place that everyone should travel to at least once. the history alone is enough to make the pilgrimage.

i wish i had been able to blog daily about the adventures im getting ready to share. however the internet's been spotty and we've been getting in and feeling rather tired anyways. now, however, instead of minute daily accounts you'll get more impressions. which are sometimes better than simple recounting of the day's activities.

wednesday & thursday

i believe that the last time i updated was tuesday night, because when i fell asleep in front of the computer it was the last time i had solid internet connection. i blame the pictures i was trying to upload- blogger has a really crappy photo uploader. i may just create an online web album and link you all to it.

anyways! i am supposed to be telling you about thursday!

i'll do it through an excerpt of an email to christopher:

yesterday (my wednesday) was the british museum and wicked. youre going to absolutely LOVELOVE the british museum (as will all of you!). i can already tell! its gigantic- over 6 million artifacts. and the cool thing is that its not just little insignificant stuff. im talking about history-altering pieces. the rosetta stone, pieces of the parthenon, ancient mummies, runes, chariots, vases, buddhas. they have pieces from every corner of the globe- even a big old head from easter island. pieces from stonehenge. EVERYTHING. i think the coolest part while youre walking around is realizing that once upon a time, not so long ago, the british ruled effing everything. they owned everyone! and when they took over, they took the best stuff for themselves and hoarded it all under one roof. now thats not to say that it isnt a brilliant idea or collection- because it truly is, but i guess i just question how much of their ambition was truly better understanding humanity as a whole, and how much of it was just licking things to claim them. :D

so then WICKED! not only did my mum buy my tickets and snacks and most meals, but she also bought me the best umbrella i have ever seen! i love it so so much! it looks like im a witch! and its gimongous. the top curves up so that it looks like elphaba's hat, and its printed with WICKED and i'll never ever forget the british showing now! as for the show- the comedic timing was a little off from the american version, and even the costuming was a little different. our view was great though. and so were the vibes from people there to see it. i got the british program too, its got all the info on the british cast. elphaba's face was very round and cheeky like the brits. a different take on it... most of them in the states have very pointy faces... but it was definitely a novelty seeing it here- i mean, theyve thick accents and they actually go to "UNI"! i definitely noticed that they do not have the same vocal powers as the girls back home, but still- it was so good and a great experience. it was hard not to compare it. but when youve seen meghan hilty and eden espinoza- well you just cant help it. still, mom saw it and loved it so i suppose i did good suggesting tickets.

then today (my thursday) was a really nice day as well. we slept right through breakfast but then managed to get up and make it over to buckingham palace to watch the changing of the guards. well, actually, we made it to the palace and then stood around TRYING to watch the changing. ultimately unsuccessful. im just too short and not aggressive enough. i can always try again. or i can just watch a video on youtube. :D dont care either way! funny thing about mom here in england though is how obsessed she is with the royal family. shes been chattering away about the queen and how special she is and how she cant believe diana died and asking about the princes and wanting to see the palace. like- its seriously cute how starstruck she is by the whole concept of the monarchy. when we saw the crown jewels at the tower of london she nearly wet herself (although after seeing the three largest diamonds in the world, which are roughly the size of a tennis ball, raquet ball, and ping pong ball, i wanted to as well). angela and i were ready to head to the british library after the changing of the guards, but mom insisted that instead we head inside to see the queen's staterooms. so once again she shelled out the cash and took us into the palace. OHMYGOD the grandeur. everything was gilt in gold, draped in silk, and adorned with the finest wood, marble, fabrics, and art the royal family has been able to find. i learned a whole lot about the place, the life of the royal family, and the history of the art there. i ended up really glad that she dragged us in there though, since we ended up finding out later that since you can only tour the palace when the queen is not in residence, it only ends up open to the public for about 2 months out of the year. luckily i made it inside. we saw incredible collections of fine japanese porcelain, italian marble sculptures, artisan-crafted ornamentation, and even ridiculous rooms full of gifts given to the queen accompanied by dresses she wore when visiting her commonwealth nations. and although im a little embarrased to admit it- i had no idea what or how extensive the british commonwealth system is until the exhibition in the palace. it was flooring, and then at the same time it ruffled my feathers a little bit to think about exactly what that system stands for. all in all, i've got a really great look at the plunders of the monarchy. thank god for the new world.

not too much else after that. grabbed sandwiches (mine mozarella, basil, and tomatoes(said in the british fashion) on a fresh roll) and headed down to the palace park. nommed my sarnie (equivalent of sammie) on the palace park lawn with my pellegrino limonata and watched clouds, children, and let the wind kiss my cheeks. john, paul, george, and ringo playing beautifully in my ears as children chased thrown walnuts and i enjoyed my afternoon being a daughter and sister and bird.

(end of the email. thanks for sharing, love)

shopping for nothing in particular at harrods downtown. THEY HAD EVERYTHING from designer handbags and $50,000 diamond rings to a fish market, fresh deli, french macaroon shop, and drug store. it was insane. like a target on super expensive crack. i couldnt even wrap my mind around it!

bangers and mash for dinner at st. george's pub. mom had prawns. angela duck. i won. pork and leek sausage with perfect mashed potatoes smothered in a sweet gravy. deee lish ussss. although we are noticing that the brits dont much like it when you invade their regular pubs. they tease. we dont care!

friday

friday we slept right on through breakfast and ended up instead heading out to the british library once we all finally made it conscious.

the special collections room was stunning.

i made a point to write down all of the originals we saw so that i will always remember every lovely book, piece of parchment, and manuscript i laid eyes on.

including but not limited to:

Shakespeare's:

Romeo and Juliet

Venus and Adonis

Twelfth Night

Richard III

Hamlet

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

John Donne's collection of poetry

The Beatle's handwritten song lyrics for

Michelle

Hard Day's Night

Ticket to Ride

Yesterday

Help!

Sylvia Plath's Insomnia

Charles Ludwig Dodgson

"Lewis Carrol's"

Alice's Adventures Under Ground

Darwin's The Origin of Species

Freud's The Power of Dreams

The Lindisfarne Gospels

The Codex Sinaiticus

Leonardo Di Vinci's notebook pages

THE MAGNA CARTA

a GUTENBERG BIBLE

an original indulgence

and Aesop's Fables.

incredible.

i feel so fortunate to have been able to just see them

i would kill to read through one. just one.

(even if it was in latin)

after the library we headed to the blackfriar's pub.

it was so beautiful

over 200 years old with copper and mother-of-pearl inlay on the walls, archways, and windowframes.

centuries-old stained glass

treated leather ceilings

home-style english pies

english ale

tea

and all the attitude.

but we met angie's friends and had a wonderful, wonderful time.

despite the contrary drunkenness and all-around annoyance on the walk home.

youve gotta love having a sister.

:D

so now that you're caught up, i will promise to post again later tonight about my saturday, and i will promise to include pictures as soon as my internet isnt in such a precarious state. since i know that pictures are all you're here for anyways.

cheers!

and love!

daring double decker deeds

so like i said. yesterday (my tuesday) was so incredibly full of the sights, sounds, tastes, and quirks of london that we could hardly stand it.

we did pretty well though!

we started off the day innocently enough.

breakfast at the luna simone is so homey and yummy and perfect.

table service of common english breakfast is such a nice treat early in the morning.

over easy eggs (yuck, but i ate the whites with salt and pepper. yummmm), "bacon" (which to the brits is canadian bacon. our american bacon is called streaky bacon here, and i've yet to see even one strip of it!), also baked beans, toast with butter and jam, tea with milk and sugar, orange juice, and service with a smile from our duenos. whats the english word for that? host? proprieter? anyways its how i think of the two brothers and their son/nephew who own and run this little b&b.

headed down on a nice walk towards victoria station after getting ready and video chatting with my christopher. there we are, walking down to catch our double decker bus tour of the city, when i spot the WICKED theater down the block. suggested going down to see if they offered the lottery, which they didnt, but when the overly starched attendant let us know that we could pick up tickets for L20 (or $32) it took us about five seconds to decide to see it! we bought our tickets with many squeals and giggles, and then headed off to catch our bus.

now i know its a super touristy thing to do, riding a double decker bus around London, snapping pictures at every opportunity- but i was SO okay with looking ridiculous for a bit. the weather was absolutely perfect, sun parting through bluffs of sculpted clouds to kiss our faces, wind tousling our hair as the cheeky guide pointed out anything he fancied along the roads. super funny, heavy-handed on the pop culture version of history, with constant jokes about english parliament, american sports, and that "seeeeeeeeexy tv chef nigella lawson".

so now, without further ado, i'll just post pictures and comment on them so you all can share my privileged view atop a speeding double decker bus, driving on the opposite side of the road, careening me towards pictures from my history texts come to life.

nigella lawson's house.

(we're planning on stalking her later this week)

(also in her neighborhood- jk rowling, sean connery, madonna, and among others)

me and nigella's!

buckingham crowds

westminster abbey

big ben

the river thames

the london eye

westminster abbey and big ben from london proper

so much so fast

puchased tickets to WICKED

double decker bus tour of london:

nigella lawson's house

jk rowling's house

the queen's house

(buckingham palace :D)

fleet street

(sweeney todd)

the house of parliament

big ben

westminster abbey

tralfalger square

st paul's cathedral

london bridge

(whose actual name is the tower bridge)

the london eye

tower of london

(including the full walking tour)

riverboat tour of the thames

(saw the globe theater)

and a nice long walk back to our b&b

quite a lot of walking

quite a lot of absorbing

quite a lot of learning

quite a lot of pictures

NOT quite enough rest.

so here i go now to catch some more.

pictures on the morrow.

cheers!

out-of-towner

well. i made it! across the states, the pond, the world! its such a surreal feeling. i made it!

the flight was... well. it was long. and strange trying to adapt to all of the amenities and quirks of flying a british airway versus an american domestic flight. good food, free booze, duty-free shopping. even little care packs stuffed with eye masks and comfy red booties so your feet can relax. a hundred movies to choose from, games, music, tv. it definitely helped to ease the anxiety of being trapped in an economy seat on a cramped airbus hurtling around the world over a vast expanse of watery blue depths. so like i said- piece of cake flight. :D

met up with my mom and sister and took a ridiculously expensive taxi ride from the airport to our lovely little b&b on belgrave road. mom made me look up all sorts of information on my laptop about how to avoid jetlag (the major finding of which suggested immediately adapting to the local time zone), and then we all promptly fell asleep. for 8 hours. :( but it was so worth it. i slept wonderfully! woke up starving, since my little jimmy dean airport breakfast biscuit was smaller than a hockey puck, so we roamed around the streets scouting food. ended up at sainsbury's market, where ready-packed sandwiches awaited us. mine? an "english-style fried-chicken tortilla wrap" which turned out to be quite yummy despite my initial misgivings. mom had egg and watercrest salad, and angela had some sandwich dominated by a mature cheese and pickle spread. oh, and bacon crisps. let me explain. bacon flavored corn chips. good in theory (accoring to my bacon obsessed sister, who has already purchased bacon-mushroom baco bits). bad bad bad bad in execution. they taste like a cross between a baco bit and a stale chicharon with an aftertaste of sweet corn puff cereal. cute package. bad buy. chocolate-carmel cookie-wafer things called "digestives" for dessert, and passionfruit fanta. (you'll love it christopher, i know it!)

but i think the coolest part thus far, i mean aside from the fact that WERE IN EFFING LONDON, was sitting on the front stoop of this quaint little neighborhood doctor's office and eating late-night dinner with my mom and sister. i pulled out my lonelyplanet edition of "live like a londoner", a study abroad travel guide for extended-stay study abroad students, and remembered too dreamily when this was all just big puffs of hopeful fantasy. i bought this book in good faith, before i even applied to the program, as an encouragement, with the desperate hope that the fact that because it was in perfect condition, brand new, and still 75% off it meant that I was destined to be here. i hoped that in purchasing the book that i was buying some concrete self-confidence. and looking around on that little london street, it hit me. no- not a double-decker bus (although we have seen them). but i realized. here i am. i made this happen. i wanted it and i worked for it and i succeeded. and am i scared to be here? hell yes im scared. but this is all for me now. this time. this experience.

i know i am successful.

but what's nicest is that even though i get to go and have this selfish, life-altering experience, i still get to share it with the people i love the most in my life. you can be here, reading and viewing and listening and sharing this with me. its nice to not feel so alone. its nice to feel your love here.

i love you,

family

friends

world.

goodnight.

FROM LONDON.

breakfast throwback

take it back two years. august 07. i never wouldve guessed i'd be here.

March 26, 1984:
Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out, is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours,
The Breakfast Club.

now i know it's not quite breakfast time, the clock reads much later than that. and i know that it's not march either, the fact that it's september is a fact that's been continually sloshing around in my mind since i rolled out of bed this morning. but since we first received the assignment all i've been able to hear were the tones of an epic eighties classic, jon bender's fist thrown high in the air in opposition to that age old question- who are you?

convenient definitions are the words brian johnson used when he wrote his essay to mr vernon. and it's so true. we love labels. we love stickers and file folders, magnets and dividers, classes and phylum and genre and era. we love to divide, to make things simpler on ourselves. to lump by characteristic so that wading through the endless swamps of information becomes a bit easier. we can glance at the tables in the high school cafeteria and pick out all we need to know about everyone there, and not there. the brains, the geeks. the jocks, the cheerleaders. the burners, the party kids. the promiscuous girl in class, the prude. the youth group kids who really love God, and then the hypocrites. the artists, the weird kids. the gamers, the musicians. everyone has a label. convenience. i'll buy it. for now.

a daughter. im my parents daughter. eighteen years old, only fourty miles from home and loved so dearly i can hardly stand it. my parents were divorced when i was five years old, and they've both remarried, giving me four parents to lean on and a truly blended family to call my own. i see a lot of my step brothers and sisters; their children are my nephews and neices and i couldnt be any more blessed than i am with them. ive one older sister, the closest living relative to me alive and it shows. we're eighteen years apart (yes, she was eighteen when my mom gave birth to me, do the math), but we've the most intense relationship because of it. she's been a loving constant throughout my life, a shadow in the distance, encouraging me to keep flying and learning and growing. she had everything to say when i needed to listen and nothing at all to say when i needed to speak. i also have the most amazing little brother. he's sixteen years old now, convinced that someday he's going to be a big star. and i must say, he's got me convinced too. he plays electric guitar, drives all the girls wild, but love jesus with his whole heart. he wants to teach music, and he's got a heart for little kids. he's so tender, and he inspires me to be patient. when i think of all he's gone through, i have to slow down and remember that there's more to this life than a race. and i cant forget my parents. my dad's a pretty mellow man in most aspects, pushing moderation in everything and only practicing it moderately. he's the one who's opened my eyes to politics, generosity, and freedom. i think that he does his best to live his life in a way that'll make me smile when he's gone, in a way that was always open-handed, with love and in luxury but never opulence. he's shown me the world, and done what he could to protect me from it. on the flip, my mom is very nurturing, very home-centered. she's lived her life for us, sacrificed in every way she could to make the universe attainable for me when all she had was the moon. she's absolutely stunning, dark hair and olive skin and one small warm embrace that can only mean one thing for me no matter where we are: home.

a student. im a student here at apu, now, but i went to ontario christian high school before this, a small little christian school here in california. eighty-five in my graduating class, 100% graduation rate, or else. its the kind of place where you know everyone whether you like it or not. but i loved it. i loved asb and football games and dressing up for formal dances in our toilet paper-strewn gym. i loved walking down the halls and knowing every face, putting on my plaid skirt every morning, knowing the routine. i loved our traditions, senior float, powder puff, junior-senior banquet, creative writing class. i felt like a star in a small town; it was my time to shine. i loved that place, ill carry it with me wherever i go. and the things i learned from some of my favorite teachers inspired me to do what it is i want to pursue. im an english major with a concentration in teaching. i plan on teaching british literature at the high school level, possibly even at a private school like the one i attended, or even at ontario christian. who knows. we'll see what He has in store for me.

a friend. obviously, we've all got friends. but ive got you beat, because ive got the two best friends in the whole wide world. amanda renee prestia, with whom i just recently renewed my contract, and courtney rachelle humphreys, whose birthday is approaching rapidly. court is going to indiana university south bend, while amanda is at concordia university irvine. i miss my girls, so so much. and while i didnt think i could make it through this without them here they've been so much support, even from far away, even when they didnt know it.

a love. saying that can only make me smile, because i miss my boyfriend so terribly. i feel for girls who are trying to make their relationships try and work across hundreds or even thousands of miles, i thnk it's hard to do it over 45. my boyfriend chris and i have been together for sixteen months, and we live two miles away from each other back home. we go to the same church, and our families have become friendly as a result of our relationship. we started dating at the end of my junior year of high school, and we've been inseparable since; fighting all the odds and showing them just how much we mean to each other. as time has gone on, our familes have begun to see the serious commitment that we've made to each other and theyve each encouraged us in their own way, my dad being the most outspoken with his blessings. i think its because he likes that we're so different, he thinks that's what makes a relationship work. smiles. i think its because we love God, and we love each other. but the fact that we're different is true. im loud, outspoken, crazy, dramatic. chris is quiet, introspective, artsy, beautiful. together=crazybeautiful.

a jumble. i know, right? just how can you be a jumble? i dont know. thats just it. im so many things that how can you put a label on it? i love politics and art, music and movies, musicals and food, sewing and writing and taking pictures and dancing and mulling around on the internet and watching my little brother and my boyfriend play guitar hero until whenever they feel like they should stop. i like sudoku, but only on brainage. i like friends, but not the late episodes. i like the snow, but not if i get wet in it. i like to play in the rain, but only if i can have tomato soup afterwards. i like to sing, no matter what it is, but i sing praise and worship songs the best. i like to dance, but i always try to lead (sorry baby). how do you label those things? how do you condense the many faucets of a person into a three or four paragraph blog entry. impossible. this is lacking. this entry isnt me. but i promise that i'll keep building on it, that i'll keep trying to make it me. but ill tell you one thing michael houston, stacie champaine, lauren valencia, it isnt me.


carynichole.

and the time draws ever near

sunday is so close.

and so far.

then it's off across the pond.

and off to neverland.

oh i cant wait.

love.