Read this book!

This year I'm doing a small group for RUF that is reading through the book When People Are Big and God is Small. Could they have picked a more practically applicable and convicting book for my life right now?! Seriously, it's an interesting book that I would recommend to anyone whether they think they struggle with peer pressure or not.

Like many I was kinda thinking that this book addressed topics that are for insecure middle schoolers. This guy has brought to light many areas of my life where I don't even realize that I struggle with peer pressure.

His main point of the book is that too much of the time we have a needless fear of man which develops into a need for people. That's the big problem is that we need people for ourselves more than we love them. The aim of his book is to show us how to need people less and love them more. And the best treatment for the fear of man is having a fear of the Lord.

Way easier said than done, but if nothing else I'm beginning to grasp how much I let my life be controlled by my fear of man rather than the fear of the Lord.

SB'10!

As crazy as my life is right now, Spring Break this year is a welcome breath of fresh air (literally). Things I've been enjoying:

1. Playing with my puppies (that's Tebow mid-air)

2. Cheering on Sandra Bullock at the Oscars! I feel like I have been with this story from day one (almost). Michael Oher went to my rival high school, so I didn't like him then. Then he played for Ole Miss so he became my hero. I was so shocked when the book The Blind Side became popular and then the creation of a hit movie was unreal! And now look at Sandra Bullock! I like to hope that this will give Memphis some positive press.

3. The Friends of the Library Book Sale. I went with my neighbor Will and we had to fight the ebay sellers for the best pickins. I ended up with approxiamately 15 books for around 13 dollars. That's what I like to call A DEAL. And also as an English major that's kind of my heaven.

4. Spending some quality time with my sorely missed piano. And ATTEMPTING to learn this:

5. Reading books I want to read rather than have to read...Harry Potter anyone?

If only I could wear sandals right now, this week would be perfect...

Why I Love My Roommates...

The greatest thing about this year is the fact that I get to live in an apartment this year.

The next greatest thing is that I share it with these cats...

Yeah, dat's right. So we have an empty wall in our apartment. What on earth shall we fill it with?! Why serious glamour shots of course! Thanks to Alex's boyfriend, Stephen these lovely pieces of art will soon be adorning our walls. You're. Welcome. World.

Miss Lucy

My hot self

Miss Meg

Miss Alex

BAM.

My new favorite website!

So I realize that I never actually wrapped up my trip from England. Sorry I guess this one picture about sums up the amazingness of my independent travel.

I'll let you use your imagination to figure out what it is. Basically my last semester was life changing. It has been a little strange re-adjusting to life at Furman though. You know like actually going to class and doing work...I am so grateful though for the time I had in the British Isles. I really grew as a person and I feel that I can finally call myself an ADULT. Frightening, but true. Thanks to everyone who prayed for me while I was there, it was much appreciated, and God gave me a truly unique experience to remember for the rest of my life.

On a much more trivial note the thing that I really want to share with you is www.daytrotter.com (props to Patience for turning me on to this!).

It's this amazing website with loads of free music. This website has a recording studio where emerging bands and singers can come and record their music to be put up for download on this website. It's nice because it's legal free downloads of music for customers and free advertising for the bands. They have some well known bands like Death Cab for Cutie or Grizzly Bear, and some great obscure ones (at least obscure for me!). Check out "One Day" by Matisyahu, "LA" by Gabriel Kahane, and "Dying Is Fine" by Ra Ra Riot.

Last Post from London!

Only in London can you celebrate a holiday honoring a TERRORIST! Seriously thought the 5^th of November was Guy Fawke’s Day, which celebrates when Guy Fawke’s and his buds unsuccessfully tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Now the celebrate similarly to 4^th of July, with fireworks! So we wanted to spend the holiday the way the natives do. We attempted to get out to these big fireworks, but this is when public transportation fails. The tube was so crowded we couldn’t even get on it. So we got on a bus that got stuck in traffic while the fireworks started above us. So we used our own two feet. The fireworks were good (from where we were standing), but not as good as 4^th of July American fireworks!

Another place I visited was Royal Albert Hall.

It’s basically a famous concert hall with a giant statue of King Albert opposite of it. It was originally created for the Great Exhibition that displayed the greatness of the British Empire back in the day.

Me and Kelsey took a tour of the Globe too. We had been there weeks ago when we were back in Stratford but not really gotten to see everything in it. We got to walk on all the levels of the theatre and we learned that you never refer to Macbeth by name in the Globe. You have to call it “The Scottish Play.”

And fyi when they built this replica of the Globe they tried to build it just as it would have been built in Shakespeare's time. That means there are no nails in this theatre rather they used wooden "nails" I guess you would call them. And the walls in Shakespeare's time were made from plaster and cows hair. Apparently cows aren't as hairy these days so they ended up using cashmere in the walls of the Globe!

We took a day trip out to East London and Greenwich. East London is where they are building the stuff for the 2012 Olympics! Isn't it insane how early they have to start doing all of that?

They've got a lot of things up already. You can see Olympic Stadium, the Olympic Village, the Aquatics Center as well as lot's of other things that are being developed with this project.

That's me doing my sport (swimming) in front of Olympic Stadium (which actually is not where the pool is located). Let's hope my technique in the water is better than out of it...

We then went out to Greenwich. This was a beautiful area of town but it is most famous for being one of the places that the prime meridian goes directly through. So I got to be in two places at once, hooray!

I went and saw the Lion King here. It was cool. They've incorporated a lot of African tribal elements into the show. There's more chants and African languages involved. The puppets they use are pretty innovative as well, although some of them were just weird.

My biggest complaint about The Lion King was that all the actors (except maybe Zazu) had phoned in their performance for the night. I know it's hard to do a show night after night, but come on you're getting paid to do this! It was a very half hearted effort.

Speaking of shows, I also went and saw Sister Act The Musical. I was skeptical but it was so good! It's just a feel good musical and it reminded me of Legally Blonde the Musical in a lot of ways. I laughed so hard through the whole thing. My only complaint about this show was that there were FOUR understudies on for principal characters. I know people get sick and stuff, but this was unacceptable. Whoopi Goldberg's character was understudied too. I wasn't happy but of course the understudies still were terrific.

My friend and future apartment-mate Meg came to visit! She was here for like 48 hours, but it was so fun to see her. We went to the Tower of London together. This is one of the few places I've been where the attraction was actually worth the admission fee.

First we took a beefeater tour. He was hilarious! They tell you the various histories and ghost stories related to the tower. You get to see where the scaffolding used to be where they beheaded all those people. Like Henry the VII's wives.

Also I visited Abbey Road and took pictures which was fun.

Tonight I'm going to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but that's probably the last big thing I'm doing here in London. It has Phylicia Rashad and James Earl Jones in it!

Well looks like this will probably be my last post from good ole London. I've had a blast here but I'm definitely ready to go home. Next I will be traveling through the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Austria for about 10 days and then I will be back home. I will try to post about those things if possible, but please be praying for safe and smooth travel. See you all soon!

YouTube Videos

I recorded the people who performed at the Regent Street thing. You can watch them here (if you want) or on my youtube channel, youtube.com/cloudy7589. You should at least watch the Colin Firth one because that's when he actually turns on the lights.

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!