Island Rubies: The Week Songs Got Stuck in my Head

So, I'm totally not in the mood to do this right now, so apologize upfront if this isn't as entertaining as usual. We're going to return to the good old bullet point form.

Monday-- I have to admit that I don't really remember what happened. I figure that I spent the first part of the day in class, and the latter part writing papers (we had three papers and a test due this week). Monday night was exciting though because President Chiddick (the one we went on the country walk with in the beginning) came to talk to us about the Blitz in London. It was really interesting to hear him speak. I had a lot to do so I was presssed for time, but I wouldn't have minded him talking longer at all. He was pretty young when the second world war started in Europe, but he can still remember a lot of it because something like that is kind of impossible to forget. He lived over where Canary Wharf is now, which was one of the poorer areas of town that got bombed really heavily. He told us about how when the war first broke out they sent him and one of his brothers to live in Wales with a random couple. Apparently in most cases the people that the children went to live with weren't volunteers, but it was something that was required of them and children would just be dropped off at their house if they had space. I think he said that they were there for a couple of years, and that their father only came to visit twice and they never got to see their mother. On the second time their father came he took them home with them. At the beginning of the war the bombing that the politicians and stuff said would come never happened, so people started to think that it never would so some of the parents took their kids home because they thought it was safe. It was really interesting to hear how much of a community thing the war was; obviously I've always known that but I never really realized to what extent it was. He said that everybody was required to something, even if they weren't fit for the army. His father worked with the fire brigade. They took the water from the Thames to fight the flames from bombings and such, and his father told him that at one point of the war the water in the Thames got so low because it had been draimed so much that you could walk across it from canary wharf to grenwich. That would have been a lot of water used for fighting fires... After President Chiddick was back in the city he said that the bombings would start as soon as the sun went down, and then wouldn't let up until the sun rose the next morning. They had a little bomb shelter like everyone else in the backyard where they would spend everynight. It was a small space, and the ground was just a little dug out area with dirt. Apparently it would fill up with water when it rained and you would just stand in it. He also said that they turned out all of the lights in the city, and that you could see the planes that were coming to drop bombs in the spotlights that they had. He and his brothers thought it was kind of exciting since they were so young, but he figures it must have been terrifying for his mother. He also talked about the food rationing they had. The food rationing actually didn't stop until a number of years after the war. He said that when the American soldiers were all over London before D-Day they were all known for the gum that they chewed, because it was something that they didn't have at London at the time. They had very small sugar rations, along with other things, that for weddings the brides would just make cakes out of cardboard and then decorate it to look like a real cake. Also as precautions no bells were allowed to be rung in churches for the entire time of the war, and they took down all of the road signs so if troops parachuted down from the enemy they wouldn't know where they were and it would delay them for a little bit. I'm pretty sure that they haven't put all of them back up. You've probably heard a lot of this stuff before, but it was really interesting to hear it from someone who had experienced it first hand. We learn about it in text book so it seems like it was forever ago, but it really wasn't. On a less serious note on Monday I also got horribly distracted and went shopping instead of doing all of the homework I had planned on...

Tuesday-- I don't recall doing anything on tuesday other than homework and class (this might be a lie, everything blurs together by the end of the week) until after dinner when the whole program went to the Opera. I actually enjoyed it a lot. We had fun getting dressed up and stuff. It was a National English Opera (so they sang in English, thank heavens) production of Verdi's Aida. It was really well done. I wrote two whole pages on it for my humanities class (so far I'd never broken a page for those things) so that says something at least. I'm still a long way from watching operas for fun, but I liked going to this. Yep.

Wednesday-- Field trip day! It's like we're in elementary school again but way better because our field trips are so much cooler and we have at least one a week. Life is good. So wednesday we went to Hampton Court, which is another Palace just outside of London. The architecture of this one was really interesting (you can tell that I'm in humanities) because half of it is Baroque and the other half is tudor because they ran out of money and such halfway through the rennovations. I like the Tudor side better because its cool and old and we've already been to a bunch of Baroque places. We got to run around there pretty much all day and check out things like the King and Queen's apartments and the massive kitchens that would serve 600 people. It's also supposed to be haunted by Catherine Howard, Jane Seymour and others which is a plus. Sadly we did not see them. We did however get to make fools of ourselves taking pitures in the gardens and making a music video of "I Love You Baby" which can be viewed on facebook. We also got to eat lunch in the restaraunt there because the program has so much extra money now that the exhange rate is so much better now. Commoners would have never been able to do that before, so that makes us cool I'm sure. After we got back we took advantage of one of the few open weeknights we have left to go see a musical! Oh yes. We saw Les Mis, which was amazing. I'd never seen it before so I had a lot of fun. Plays in the West End are beyond amazing, and the tickets are so cheap with student prices. Even when ou factor in the exchange rate their a lot cheaper than even like the traveling shows. So it's our goal to take advantage of that.

Thursday-- More class and such. You're getting the idea. After class though my mystery class went to the Imperial War Museum to see the Bond exhibit they had there. That's right, more Bond. It was pretty cool. They had a bunch of stuff on Ian Fleming and cool old Bond gadgets and such. They even had blood-splattered shirt Daniel Craig wore in Casino Royale. Good stuff. After the war museum we ran and got tickets for Lion King. Amazing. All of the dancing and costumes and everything was awesome. Plus, who doesn't like the Lion King?

Friday-- We actually broke the pattern by not having class, but I did have to start out the day by waking up early and taking a test. But we made up for it by going to Borough Market. It's a huge food market and it is really tasty. I had a banana toffee muffin and frechly made pasta and freshly pressed apple juice... And this was all actually homework. I wish all of my homework involved going to outdoor food markets in London. Also for homework we went to Fortman and Mason, which is an incredibly upscale grocery store. It's been open since 1707 in Picadilly and you used to only be able to go in there if you were of a certain class. We went in there in jeans and we were seriously under-dressed. To go grocery shopping. They had the coolest food there, but I couldn't really afford it. After looking at lots of expensive things me and Annie decided to go on one of our walks for class, so we did the theater walk since we were already in Picadilly. We'd already been everywhere the walk had been since we've been to so many plays, but it was a lot of fun and we took a lot of pictures and such. That night I had to pay for my fun by buckling down and writing a paper though. But now I'm pretty much done with all of my homework until after Paris! So it was worth it. Plus nothing is ever open at night in London.

Saturday-- It was a lovely day filled with joy and happiness. We went on the Little Venice walk, which was pretty nice and relaxing, and then we walked to Camden market where I may have accidentally spent a good amount of money and enjoyed every moment of it. The market just kept going forever and it was beautiful. So we spent lots of time there, and then came back to the center where I met up Kelsy and we went to Spamalot. Spamalot was just a ton of fun, especially since they made fun of other musicals like Phantom and Les Mis. Suffice to say we had a lot of fun.Today-- Went to church like normal and we got to watch a video in primary! I think I was just as excited or more as the little kids. We watched The Pincess and the Pea Chronicles: The Faulty Falcon where we got to learn that judging people is bad. So make a note of that all you boys and girls.

By the end of this week I had a weird mixture of Aida, Les Mis, Lion King and Spamalot stuck in my head. They're all good seperately, but a little strange together...

And now I get to go to Paris for a week! It's like a week off from school, but a thousand times better because we'll be in Paris. I love college trips. We had our meeting for it tonight and it consisted of them giving us money, maps, a metro pass, a museum pass, and then telling us that basically we can do whatever we want until we leave on Friday. I love my life.