Lets Give Them Something To Talk About

I'm so sorry for the late update! I just didn't imagine that I would be so busy around here! It seems like I'm constantly on the move doing something, and haven't really sat down just to write.

Ok, first off- Monday. We went in to London to do a little walk of Virginia Woolf's. We stopped by one of her houses where she used to meet with the Bloomsbury Group, and then went walking down one of her favorite streets, stopped by St. Peter's Cathedral, and ended at the Thames. In case anybody has missed me making a fool of myself... here's your Kendraism from Monday

Me: Hey, are you sure we know where we are? That sign over there says "Not Fleet Street"

Nate: Haha, Kendra. Really funny.

Me: No, seriously, look at it. It says "Not Fleet Street"

Nate: Uhm, or it actually says "No. 1 Fleet Street"...

Since I'm doing both the Woolf course and the Shakespeare course, the few of us in both classes had to run across Millennium Bridge to the Globe Theater. We had been set up an acting workshop class with one of the Globe Theater's director/actors. It was a pretty interesting workshop to do, learning a lot of history of the Globe Troupe's acting, and how they try to still use it today. After a quick dinner at a Turkish restaurant (not my cup of tea!) we headed back to the Globe to see a performance of As You Like It.'We happened to have some of the best seats in the house, sitting down in the back on the 2nd tier. Next time we go though, we'll be groundlings. The performance was absolutely amazing! It was so much better than what we had seen with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was unexpected since the Globe used barely any props or scenery! I'm definitely looking forward to our next show there.

Tuesday we just hung out at Oxford, but the schoolwork is starting to pick up, so there was quite a bit of typing involved this day. Us girls also went shopping for a bit. For some reason, every store in London is having sales around 70% off, so of course we have to look if even we don't buy!

Wednesday was the day of another excursion for us. We began the day by running off to Chawton to do a tour of Jane Austen's house. It was a bit of a drive, and there wasn't really too much to do there, but it was still fascinating to learn a lot about her I hadn't known, and then also just seeing where she did most of her writing! We went on a little walk to a lovely little church with lots of sheep (who were trying to communicate with us) and the graves of Jane Austen's mother, sister, and brother. We then went off to our next place- Stourhead. It was close to a 3 hour drive, in the back roads of England, with a crazy bus driver. First time so far that I've felt motion sickness. Because our day was so packed, we only had a little time to explore, which was a shame because there's so much. Probably the most famous thing about Stourhead was that the scene of the first proposal between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in the most recent movie of 'Pride and Prejudice' was filmed there. I still haven't seen the movie, being quite dedicated to the A&E version, but there were many happy girls that day. After Stourhead, we took a quick detour to Stonehenge where we took about 20 mins to run out of the bus and go see the rocks. I wish we could have spent some more time there to do a tour, but at least we got some photos!

Things have been really fun around Oxford itself. We usually get in to groups to do our Virginia Woolf readings and discuss them. For Shakespeare we also get together, assign roles, and then act them out. Last night our professor even came, with 2 bottles of wine, so it was a lot more fun than usual! One night all the girls got together to watch Bridget Jones' Diary (although the men decided to opt out... wonder why) since the movie is very loosely based upon Pride and Prejudice. They also watched the 3 hour BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, which I joined in at parts, but not the whole thing. Wednesday was also a special night on campus, it was James Bond night! We were suppose to get dressed up for dinner (although since we had been out we didn't have time to), and they renamed our dishes for the evening to have Bond motifs. The best part, though, was when one of the young student employees came out during appetizers and serenaded us with 'Diamonds Are Forever' in a very stoic manner. After dinner, we all got dressed up in our Bond Girl outfits, and joined the rest of the college down in the College Pub to continue Bond Night. My favorite outfit was actually from one of the guys in our program, who decided to come as a cat. I don't think the British students found it as funny as we did, though. Martinis were also available to anybody who wanted one, although I decided to opt out, although I heard later that they were apparently mixed with Sprite.

Well tonight our program is getting together to have a little picnic for dinner, which will definitely be fun. It's suppose to rain tonight (who would've thought), so we'll probably be staying on campus in our classroom. Tomorrow my Woolf class is getting up early and heading out to Sussex where we'll be having lunch on the seaside and touring an important house to Woolf. We'll be having a wine tasting afterwards, so it could end up being an interesting 2 hour ride back home... On Monday some of us are independently going in to London after class to tour the Tower of London. I'm really excited for it, being one of my favorite things from my trip to London 7 years ago; and there's a really cool exhibit going on right now there about King Henry VIII and his armor, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Hopefully the next update won't take so long, but love y'all! Have a great weekend!