The Village People, Mr. Darcy and Harry Potter

As far as tourism goes, things have really slowed down for me here in London. We’re all tired of museums at this point and so we spend a lot of time just walking around in various parts of town. That’s really cool because every area of London is so different from the next. Last Monday I did go to the National Portrait Gallery and finish that out. There’s basically just a zillion pictures of royalty and other statesmen there. They wee doing a photograph exhibit on the 60s but I wasn’t going to pay to go in there. That afternoon I went to the Museum of London, which is actually pretty boring. They’re undergoing a major expansion so there wasn’t much to see. We had class 3 days this week and so that takes up a huge chunk of my day.We dressed up and went out on Halloween!

Actually people don’t celebrate Halloween as much here. They are more into the scary aspects of Halloween than trick or treating—most people were dressed up as like zombies with blood on their face and nasty things like that. I was member of the Village People.

It was a fun night, but I missed not having like buckets of candy to eat :) and they actually don’t even have candy corn! Is this a civilized place?! Someone save me a bag…

Yesterday was my ultimate tourist day. I first went to the Natural History Museum. It was pretty cool.

Then I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum. It’s a decorative arts museum. A lot of it was boring just because there was so much stuff in there. They had a selection of Raphael cartoons, and some other famous things. They also had a theatre museum that I really enjoyed with costumes worn by the likes of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

That night I went to the celebration at Regent Street to turn on the Christmas lights around London. The picture above shows just how many people were there. There were 3 locations around London and they were all going to be turned on at the same time. It was also a celebration of the new movie “A Christmas Carol”! So I decided to go to the celebration where Colin Firth was turning on the lights (Jim Carrey and Bob Hoskings (?) were a the other two). I got there early and was in the front. Daniel Merriweather, the London Community Gospel Choir and The Noisettes all perfomed as well as Jodie Pringer who's playing Nancy in Oliver! on West End.

Then the man of the hour Colin Firth came on! That guy is almost 50 years old and he is still just really ridiculously good-looking. Everyone was freaking out about him. Grown women were screaming!

It was really cool and so crowded and it got me all pumped up about Christmas!

That night we went to see a play called “Our Class”. It traces a class of students in Poland as the Soviets and then the Nazis invade and occupy Poland. It was really sad and really graphic. It showed how neighbors can turn against one another and what humans can do to each other. The play was in a very small theatre and performed in the round. That made the action so much more intense as you feel like you are really intruding on the action and the history of these people.

One thing about this play was that there was no weak link among the actors. The play only had 10 characters and there was no real main character and each performer was fantastic. Actually Stan Shunpike, driver of the Knight Bus from Prisoner of Azkaban was in it! That was cool to see him. These plays have been filled with Harry Potter actors! Love it!

I really feel pressured to come up with awesome titles for my blog posts and I never can. Deal with it.

So finally I have gotten bit by the tourist bug I think because I’ve done about 80 zillion things in the past few days. One night (I don’t remember which night) we went as a group to a play at the National Theatre called “The Power of Yes”. AWFUL. I did not like it one bit. It was about the financial crisis. The play was less of a play and more of a documentary. The play was about the author talking to different people in finance and them telling him all these confusing things. So I was unable to follow what was happening after about 15 minutes. And I tried really hard to follow it. I was bored the whole time and the only thing I really gathered from the play is the bankers are the reason that the world is falling apart. A bit extreme, right? Well that’s how author David Hare really portrayed them. But I am not letting this blog get political, so let’s suffice it to say that the play was boring and one sided. And extremely uncreative.

One redeeming factor of the play was that it had another Harry Potter actor in it! Jeff Rawle played two characters in the play who’s names I could never tell you, but he plays Cedric Diggory’s dad in Goblet of Fire. So cool! This trip is like Harry Potter to the extreme.

Then we went to the Imperial War Museum. This museum starts with World War 1 and then chronologically goes through each war or conflict that England (or the British Empire) has been a part of through the years. Most of it was about England’s colonies trying to get out from under their power (although there was no mention of when America fought for independence…).

The museum was very well done. Dad you would be proud of me because I stopped and read most of the plaques although I missed having you there to explain everything to me (Now I will know whether or not you actually read this Dad). They had an entire floor devoted to the Holocaust as well. I’ve never been in a Holocaust exhibit of this magnitude so it was a very hard experience. Also they had interactive things like a trench experience and a blitz experience. The line for the blitz one was too long but walking through the fake trenches was actually kinda scary. That night we went and saw Wicked, but you want a full and separate blog post for that right? Thought so. Then, a couple of days ago I went to Platform 9 ¾!

Huzzah! Actually right now they’re doing construction at King’s Cross station so it wasn’t actually between Platforms 9 and 10, but that’s a minor detail. King’s Cross was surprisingly ordinary really. I wonder if they actually film there or not?

Anywho, right after that we went to the British Library. Of course I love libraries. They had a lot of cool artifacts. They had the other copy of Shakespeare’s first folio (I saw the other in Stratford), handwritten Beatles lyrics, and a copy of the Magna Carta to name a few. Actually my favorite part was a section about music and it had several handwritten copies of famous pieces including Handel’s Messiah and The Wedding March from a Misummer Night’s Dream. So what did I do but rip out my iPod and follow along with these old pieces of sheet music.

That night we went to Harrod’s. Really impressive place but also terribly out of budget for me! One weird thing they had was two separate monuments to Princess Diana and her secret boyfriend Dodi whose family owns Harrod’s. The monuments were tacky and just strange. They had like a wine glass from the limo with residue in it. Gross.

Yesterday I went to Camden Road Market. It was really cool! They had typical touristy stuff but also like vintage clothes, antique and everything you could imagine. The market used to be stables, but now the market operates 7 days a week there.

After that I went to Westminster Abbey. It was really neat. I went there the last time I came to England but I had forgotten how impressive it was. Every king and queen is crowned, married and buried there. Literally buried there. There were so many coffins of Kings and Queens dating back to the 1200s. Coolest of all was the Mary Queen of Scots is buried there (but her monument still has her head on her shoulders). Also located in Westminster Abbey is poet’s corner, which is where many famous authors are either buried or have a monument in their honor. That afternoon I stayed for Evensong. I’d never been to an Evensong before and it was really neat. We actually got to sit up in the choir area because there wasn’t really a huge crowd gathered there for Evensong.

More importantly, last night the Rebels played Arkansas! Pig soooooieeeee! Gross. But the Rebels pulled out a win! Highlights: 1. Jerrel Powe went in at fullback! What a man of many talents.

That's not a picture from last night, but it's just shows his greatness the best, I think. 2. Being able to hear the crowd chanting "HOUSTON NUTT!" over the commentator's mics through the internet and into the earbuds of my headphones. Houston Nutt for president!

3. Winning a game. Sad that my highlights have come to that, but its the truth! Go Rebs!

The Bardathon

Well I am now in the wonderful little town of Stratford-Upon-Avon! It's fairly small and just about everything here has to do with Shakespeare in some way or another (except the local H&M that I hit up this afternoon). So I guess I will start from the beginning of our exciting adventure here...

Sunday me and Kelsey went to Trinity Church. This is where Shakespeare is buried. I was really expecting the place to be practically empty as the old historic touristy trap churches were in Dublin. It was actually a hoppin place. There were families and young people and older people. But most of all the worship seemed genuine rather than just a worn out ritual like the other places. So I really enjoyed that. We're going to visit the church later as a tourist attraction so I'll talk about it more later.

Then me and Kelsey took a beautiful walk along the Avon River.

There was like a market going down and people picnicking everywhere. But best of all....there were puppies EVERYWHERE! I really liked this one because it reminded me of Tebow's favorite activity.

Then on Monday we began our classes at the wonderful Shakespeare Centre. It's adjacent to the Birthplace and basically we're like VIPS. On Monday we had a talk on Russian Theatre as we are seeing some Russian plays that had their international premiere here in Stratford only a few weeks ago.

After lunch we had a presentation of what is in the Library they have there. It's really fascinating actually. They have very old editions of Shakespeare's plays as well as things written by his contemporaries, but also they have extensive collections of various memorabilia from many of the productions of Shakespeare put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. They had pictures, videos, scripts and this ridiculous book (I forgot the term) that the director (or stage manager) makes all the notes in about blocking, props, lighting, etc.

Then we went to visit Shakespeare's birthplace. It was a neat little building.

Overall, I honestly wasn't too impressed with it. It began with this cheesy little intro that was weird. But really it's just that nothing in the house is authentic and looks very out of place in the house. None of the furniture or anything is original and they had very few artifacts from Shakespeare's actual life. This is understandable as he lived over 400 years ago. I guess it was just so built up in my head that it was kinda a let down. This is the room where they think he was actually born, if you can see this tiny picture.

Then Tuesday we had a day of lectures, I won't bore you with details but we basically talked about gender roles in his plays and the effect his hometown had on him and his works. After that we walked to Anne Hathaway's cottage which was Shakespeare's wife's childhood home.

The house itself was quaint and the inside was presented, in my opinion, much better than Shakespeare's birthplace. There were some pieces of furniture that were actually older than the 21st century. They also had beautiful gardens and grounds at the cottage.

Then last night we went to see a production of a play called "The Grain Store". This play was commissioned in a project called "Revolutions" done by the RSC. The gave commissions to several upcoming Russian playwrights to write plays for the RSC to perform while exploring what post-Soviet Union Russia is like.

So another cool thing was that when we got there they were filming for a TV special they're doing on the play (since this is its international premiere). I got really excited when I walked in and saw that notice and then while we were waiting the camera people kept coming up to me and asking me to hold my ticket a certain way and pretend like I was reading it to my friend, etc (movie star?). So I was like awesome, I might be on British TV! And then as we were walking into the theatre the camera appeared out of nowhere over my shoulder and I heard the producer person be like "We'll just follow her in". Yes!

It was a very very interesting play. It covered the history of the famine in Russia during the 1930s during which millions of people in the Soviet Union died of hunger. This was due mostly to the fact that the government was confiscating food form the people. Anyway this play follows the history of the playwright's grandmother (although I didn't know that as I was watching the play). Cool fact: the actress who played Mrs. Figg in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was in the play!

She was fantastic, as was the rest of the cast. I wish I had more space to talk further about the play, but this post is already too long!

So I was leaving the theatre and, guess what?! The camera people came up and asked "Can we interview you really quickly?" I was like "I thought you'd never ask." (I didn't actually say that fyi). So I'm basically famous now. And the TV show airs after I leave here so I'll never see it anyway.

Today we had more classes with a lecture to talk about the play we saw, which was very helpful in understanding everything. But the coolest thing was that we got to have a Q&A session with the main actress in the play (Samantha Young)! She was really nice and Scottish too. Apparently we get to have these conversations with someone from every play we are seeing here!

Then this afternoon we got to take a voice class which was so much fun! It wasn't like singing, but looking at a monologue and dissecting the sounds and structure of it. We never had to talk out loud by ourselves but we did a lot of cool exercises to get in touch with the rhythm of the words. We did a lot of walking around and reading at the same time, which is actually harder than it sounds...

Once again I must ask too much of you, Harry...

So because of my fantastical obsession with all things Harry Potter, I am currently running on four hours of sleep after working from 9-5 today. BUT I did get to see the midnight premiere of the Half-Blood Prince movie! I'm one of those people who compares everything to the book, so this movie did not quite live up to my expectations. Now, I think it was good just as a movie, but still, it's based on a book for crying out loud! They changed too many IMPORTANT things that they didn't have to change. Also don't read this if you don't want to hear any spoilers.

Things I did not like/were changed too much:
1. The Burrow was destroyed?! Um, don't remember THAT in the book. Kinda important considering the Burrow is like headquarters and a safehaven in book 7.
2. Harry is not lurking underneath everyone's feet while Dumbledore is killed. He is petrified by Dumbledore so that Harry is not released from the curse until Dumbledore dies. So by the movie standards he could still be alive.
3. The Death Eaters don't just walk in and out of Hogwarts. The DA and the Order put up a heck of a fight in the book.
4. Ginny and Harry. Or maybe its that I just don't like Bonnie whatever her name is. They played up too much romance.
5. Ok at the end Dumbledore's wand was sitting on his desk. YOU DO NOT LEAVE THE ELDER WAND JUST FLOATING AROUND! It has to be buried with him for the 7th movie. ugh.

Things I liked:
1. I thought Jim Broadbent was a really good Slughorn. A little less annoying than I pictured him in the book, but I still thought he did a good job.
2. The kids who played young Tom Riddle. Creepy, but he was absolutely perfect. And haunting.
3. They did keep the scene in the cave pretty accurate. I love how the whole cave was giant quartz. And the inferi were so gross!
4. I also really liked Narcissa Malfoy. I think they stayed true to the book on her character. She isn't all bad but she cares about Draco. I would have liked to see Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy). I REALLY like him.
5. Rupert Grint.

Overall I say, as a movie, it's good. As to following the book, not so much.