An Average Day

Tuesday was a busy day. Early class after a fairly late Monday night so I was pretty tired most of the day. It started off with Shakespeare which was great. I've really come to appreciate him and all his works in just the two weeks I've been here. Then a quick run home (see previous post for story about that) and then British Life & Culture. Fantastic lecture on the history of London as a city. I have more of Dadda in me than I thought because I really liked history before but it absolutely fascinates me now. After class I had about 3 hours before the evening's activities so I organized an attack plan to go on a walk. I've been trying to go to Abbey Road pretty much since I got here and, after a couple planned trips failed, I said I'm going now does anybody want to come with? Two girls came with and it was so much cooler than I can share in a blog. (Keith will understand, I hope.)

Abbey Road Studio.

The Beatles Anthology was on VH1 right before I came over so I had quite a bit of emotion going here. You can kind of see that the wall behind me with the gate has been signed by fans from all over the world in languages that I couldn't recognize. I, of course being the tourist that I am, signed the wall too. :)

I got lucky enough to walk across with no traffic. For, you know, the 6 seconds that it lasted. But long enough to get a picture.

Of course the first thing I did after walking back toward the tube was to turn Abbey Road up on my iPod. And you're right Dad, that is a great album.

This is the street sign that was posted but is now in the process of being auctioned off. A news crew was hoarding it, claiming that they did have work to do and weren't simply standing on a street corner for no reason. But all I wanted was a picture and they let me hold it for about 3 seconds. Smile! and they had it back in their hands.

After the great afternoon stroll was a performance at Shakespeare's Globe Theater of "As You Like It." I really do love live theater and the set up of the stage puts the audience, quite literally, in the action. You stand for the show, yes, the whole show, (unless you are nobility or can pay 25 pounds, as opposed to 3 pounds for us peasants, to sit on a bench that is unpadded) and the actors talk to you and sort of use you as a prop. It's pretty cool.

Bad picture, but you can see the stage, yes, right beside me, and the sky. There's no roof and when it rains, the show goes on. Fortunately it was not raining this night and it served to keep the theater cool with a couple hundred people in a very small space.

St. Paul's Cathedral at night from across the Thames outside the Globe.

In English Lit, towards the end of the semester, we had planned to read Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" but there is an English film version of it in theaters right now. So we skipped ahead 7 weeks to read it and go see the movie yesterday. It was sweet, to have class at the movies. :) And our teacher said if we all agreed to go and pay to see it he would buy everyone a pint afterwards and we'd discuss it. So, there I was, in a pub in London, with a drink that my professor bought me and we're talking about a movie that we saw instead of having class. It was great. :)

Amanda, Kyrstin, Natasha, Juliet, Juan, Tom Callinan and me outside the theatre.

And cause I'm a huge nerd and I found it and thought it was cool...

:)