We're Living On A Prayer!

Ok- so I've had a LOT of fun since my last post and I really can't wait to tell y'all about it!

Blenheim Palace was beautiful, but what else was expected? Our program got a guided tour through the palace, which had a lot of talking to it! So we saw the room Churchill was born, which included the old tradition of having his little boy curls on display, kinda creepy. But mostly the tour was about the very first Duke of the house, and then the family from down on. The library was all of our favorite thing about the house, reminding all us girls about the scene from Beauty and the Beast, except that the beast didn't have a full organ in his library!

The gardens of the Palace were also gorgeous, once again not a surprise, although it was unanimous and it was nothing like Versailles! Since we were seeing Julius Caesar later on in the evening, most of us girls had dressed up for the full day so we wouldn't have to change on the bus. This led to many pictures of us being taken, since we felt gorgeous and we had such scenery with us. The Palace also had a 'secret garden' so of course we had to find it and take a photo of the sign and such. Churchill also proposed to his wife at the Palace, at the Temple for Diana. So of course, being cheesy old me, I wrangled up one of the guys in our program and convinced him to do our interpretation of the proposal and everything, funny accents and all. Don't worry dad, they're be no wedding soon, I'm not exactly 'his type'...

We had about a 45 minute drive to Stratford for our play. It was a lot of fun because our Bus driver made a point to not take the highway, but instead the backroads for the view. We got to Stratford a couple of hours before our performance, so we explored a little bit. A lot of people wanted to see Shakespeare's grave, so we visited that, and accidently stumbled upon the location where he died too. We didn't tour the house, at least not yet. We still have 2 more plays being done by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The play was quite fun to watch, and really interesting to see how the director changed it. We had a lot of discussion the next day in class about the use of so much technology in the play, and what that means about our society and whether or not Shakespeare would have used it himself. For class, we do have to write at least 2 performance reviews of plays, and I think I'm going to do one of mine on Caesar, more specifically on Marc Antony's famous speech. It was performed a lot more angrily that I have ever imagined it, instead of sarcastic. So yay for first assignments!

Yesterday after class we had a Happy Hour with our Woolf professor. She bought some cheese and bread and wine and such and invited us all over for a bit. It was a blast to just sit back and hang out with some of the people from the program, and even just the professors. I've never had quite an experience like it, but I think we're going to do it again before the summer is out.

Last night was a night we've been looking forward to for days now- Karaoke night. The Pub on Brasenose's campus brought their little machine with him, and almost everybody ended up being there. I am proud to say that the Texas program probably had the most singers. If not, we were right behind the Frenchies. Let me just say, the French are not very great at Karoke. I myself performed a variety of songs such as: Should I Stay Of Should I Go by the Clash, Womanizer by Britney Spears, and Living On A Prayer by Bon Jovi. But my favorite was when we got some of the guys up and performed a girls and guys duet of Summer Lovin' from Grease! After a pint (or maybe two) we even convinced our program director to go up and perform a song! It was kinda messy, I couldn't exactly tell you what he sang, but a lot of people recorded it and I will be surprised if it doesn't go up on to YouTube!

Well, Today is Bath day. We'll be leaving soon to go there, and I'm really excited about it. I remember how pretty Bath was, and of course, I look forward to all of our excursions. I can't wait to write more about that later!

Love y'all! and 

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