SO. Last Tuesday we started a three-day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, home of William Shakespeare. We saw three plays as a program, with lectures every morning to "unpack" the play we'd seen the night before and to prepare for the next one. We conversed with the actors at the pub next to the theatre after the shows. To understate, it was a good time.
The plays we saw were all three parts of Henry VI, rarely performed as a sequence because together they total somewhere around nine hours. Not only is the Royal Shakespeare Company performing all three, but they are performing the fourth and final play of Shakespeare's first history cycle, Richard III - and not only that, but they are performing the other history cycle, Richard II, Henry IV pt 1, Henry IV pt 2, and Henry V, which were written later but come chronologically before the one we saw. They are performing all eight history plays. In a row. For two years running. It is absolutely crazy. And totally, totally awesome. We were so affected - even the Shakespeare-skeptical - by Henry VI that some of us are trying to see Richard III to finish up the cycle. (If you had seen the actor who played Richard, you'd be trying, too - he was electrifying.)
The first part dragged a little - so many names and dates, kings, dukes, rivalries, alliances, bleh - but visually it was fantastic. They rigged the three-tiered theatre (modeled after the kind Shakespearean theatre companies would have used) with ropes, so that actors could swing in from the balconies to clash in midair, or rain down on a castle for a seige. It was way cool. And they had a smoke machine, and the ghosts of past murdered kings and knights would walk by to stare at wrongdoers, or they would climb silently into "Hell," a trapdoor in the middle of the stage filled with lit smoke. The second part was nuts - at one point a bunch of rioters came in kicking around a body with fish masks on their faces. The main event of Part 2 is a populist uprising, so the peasants were made out to be otherworldly hooligans bent on destroying the natural order of the things. It was pretty weird. Richard was in there, in the background, fighting for his father York's (questionable) right to the English crown. But he didn't come front and center until Part 3:
A frenzied, surreal sequence of murders and usurpations, where York is murdered, and Richard's older brother manages to fight his way to the crown and imprison Henry VI in the Tower of London. Richard communicates with the audience for the first time, telling everyone how much he wishes his brother were dead, how much he wishes it were him on the throne, how trapped he feels by the unlikelihood of that dream. The only way to achieve it, he concludes, is to "hew my way out with a bloody axe." So, long story short, he goes up to the Tower and stabs Henry VI a million times. And, oh, man, his speech after he kills Henry - it was amazing. Before dying, Henry invokes the horrific circumstances of Richard's birth - that he was reportedly born with a full set of teeth, that he kept his mother in labor too long, which shriveled up his arm and left him hunchbacked - and so after he has killed Henry, Richard finally shows us the true extent of his rage and just erupts at Henry, at his mother, at his own body, at anyone who has ever called him ugly. He rejects his connection to his brothers and declares himself a single, unique villain, with no ties to the family conflicts of the Henry VI plays. And the actor was so angry. You just got hit with this shockwave of fury and instability and you're thinking, Where did this guy come from?! I mean, he was in all the plays! I did not see it coming! Part 3 ends with Richard cradling his baby nephew in his arms, clearly planning ways to murder it, and in this production, he says, "Now -" before the lights shut down and cut him off. "Now is the winter of our discontent," he was going to say. The first line of his play.
So of course I have to see the next one!!
Stratford itself was also really cool. It was picturesque in a way you'd expect from Shakespeare's town: wooden-eaved houses with white plaster, trees and ivy crawling up the sides of old, old buildings. The River Avon, with swans floating on it. (I wish I'd gotten a picture! "The Swan of Avon" was Shakespeare's nickname.) A lot of the buildings had been converted to slightly hilarious Shakespeare-related tourist shops, like "Marlowe's Restaurant" and "Iago Jewellery," but overall it was a pretty town, and small, which I have decided I love. The first day we didn't do much besides the Shakespeare lecture; it was freezing cold, even by English standards. The next day, though, we walked as a program to Anne Hathaway's cottage, several fields away from the center of town, and Cali and I went on the last day to the Holy Trinity church, where Shakespeare and his family are buried. That was the strangest moment for me, I think: staring at the place where Shakespeare was buried. I'm not really used to thinking about Shakespeare like a man who began and ended - he's always felt to me like sort of a "genre," or a concept.
My Shakespeare in Performance class was also given access to the Royal Shakespeare Company Archive, right next to Shakespeare's birthplace, and we were allowed to look through prompt copies of Richard III, which the director and the stage manager and everyone had used and made notes in, for all these landmark productions of the play. We saw rare pictures and old reviews. We weren't allowed to touch the pages with our hands - we had to wear those disposable gloves, like forensic experts. It was extremely cool.
In addition to all the great Shakespeare stuff we got to do, I had my first scone with clotted cream at Drucker's, a famous Stratford dessert shop (it was amazing! and also I didn't need to eat for hours afterwards, because clotted cream is heavy), Linley House had our first British Indian food (yum), and we took a tour of Warwick Castle, a well-preserved old embattlement with a Victorian add-on, as is apparently the case with many castles around here. This castle was much more touristy than Cardiff Castle was; they had archery displays every couple hours, and there were wax figures in the cooler rooms to show what life would have been like for the Earl of Warwick (who coincidentally played a central role in Henry VI!). They had a ghost tour that was pretty scary: it was in a dark series of passageways, with smoke obscuring people lurking in stained Victorian rags. No matter where you went, someone screamed or jumped out in front of you. I was unwillingly the group leader, too, so I was first to see all the "ghosts." Awesome.
After every play, we walked half a block to the Dirty Duck, a pub where all the actors magically appeared, ten minutes before us even if we power-walked, after the performances. (Meaning, had I done this program next semester, I would have been hanging out with David Tennant. Sigh.) We would stand around nervously or sit if we could find a place, trying not to look like we were looking at everyone to see if they were actors. I told York he was amazing (his death scene - awesome), and I peeked over at Joan of Arc, Charles the Dauphin of France, and a bunch of others, too afraid to interrupt their conversations. Of course, the ones I really wanted to compliment: Henry VI, who was gentle and quiet and hopelessly unsuited for war, Henry V/the Earl of Suffolk (they doubled a lot of roles), who was cute, and Richard, oh man, I wish he had shown up so I could shake his hand for like twenty minutes - of course none of them came to the pub. But it was still very cool to see everyone who had been on stage right there across the room. A bunch of them told us that we were a really good, responsive audience, and that we were motivating them to perform better. So naturally, after that, we felt like the exclusive American branch of the RSC fan club, where it was clearly our job to be the most attentive, involved audience ever. I think we succeeded. In the second part, we were down right there to one side of the stage - I was in the first row - and for a lot of the audience participation stuff, they played to us. Because we were awesome.
We took a coach back to Bath immediately after the end of Part 3, and the whole of Linley slept in until like two in the afternoon the next day. It was an awesome, awesome trip. I didn't expect to love Henry VI as much as I did. I figured, history plays. Ehh. But they were so good. I think maybe instead of traveling while I'm here I should just see a lot of Shakespeare plays, what do you guys think? :)
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Sunday, 17 February 2008
Wednesday, Thursday, and This Crazy Weekend
Wednesday: four of us went to yoga in the evening with our Associate Dean of Students, who walked us over the bridge and showed us into a little church community center, where the yogi was very encouraging and helpful. We all felt so energized and relaxed coming back, and then when we got into the house, Jess, one of my housemates, had made dinner for the entire house singlehandedly. Well, this just felt like the icing on the awesome, awesome cake. It was officially the best day ever.
But then it was Thursday, Valentine's Day, when all of us, lacking in any kind of Valentine, or at least separated from one by several thousand miles of ocean, decided to have a really great Valentine's Day as a house. Meghan and I went out and bought brownie mix and the stuff to make chocolate-covered strawberries, and we rented Shakespeare in Love, and Liz and Yeji bought ice cream, champagne, and sparkling cider for those of us who don't drink. After dinner we laid the whole coffee table out with desserts and watched the movie (so! romantic!) with lots and lots of chocolate. It was a truly lovely evening. :) Shakespeare in Love was an excellent primer for the weekend, as well, because it went down like this:
I arrived in London at 5:30 pm and met Anna, fully cognizant of my arrival this time, at a restaurant. Two girls from my house, Meghan and Cali, were already in London for a class trip, taking a Jack the Ripper tour of the city for their Ghosts & Goths class, so we met them and two of Cali's friends there as well. After some yummy sandwiches, Cali split off with her friends and Meghan and I crashed with Anna. At four in the morning, Meghan and I woke up, took a cab to pick up Cali, and then the three of us went to stand in line at the Donmar Warehouse for tickets to Othello.
So listen, it's really cold in England in the first place, and especially in winter, and especially at four in the morning. At least there wasn't any wind, or rain, or anything. But man, it was cold. There were already about ten people in line in front of us (seriously, when did they get up?!), but we were pretty near the front, we could tell, because over the hours more and more people trickled down the street and stood behind us, bundled up in parkas and such. It was quite an experience. At first, we ate some of the food we brought, and laughed and talked about how great it would be if we got tickets, and Meghan did a couple dramatic readings from my pocket copy of Othello, but after a while we were too cold to do much but sit, and curl inwards for warmth, and/or occasionally run around in crazy circles and jump up and down for warmth. Cali ended up making a fortress with our three umbrellas, which I of course took pictures of.
The sun came up eventually, which felt like a wonderful blessing from heaven even though it didn't actually make us much warmer. When McDonald's opened, Cali ventured out to get us hot chocolate, and when the Caffe Nero at the end of the block opened, we took turns buying hot soup (which is so wonderful! how did I ever take soup for granted?). The doors to the Warehouse finally, finally opened at 10 am, and we were some of the last to squeeze inside before they ran out of space. The poor people behind us had to continue to wait outdoors, but man, I am glad we were close to the front. At 10:30 they started selling tickets, and no joke, we got the last six day-seats available for the matinee. (Each of us was standing in for a friend - I was buying Anna's ticket, Cali was buying her friends, and Meghan was helping me out and buying Anna's mom's ticket. You could only buy 2 per person.) It was a total miracle, and we felt really bad about taking all the remaining seats so we got out of there really quick.
Flush with success, totally exhausted, still basically freezing, we went to a cafe and had some sandwiches before navigating the Tube back to Cali's friend's place. I took an hour nap that literally felt like closing my eyes and then opening them again, with no space in between, and then it was time to head back for the show. We met Anna and her mom at Caffe Nero and we all went in to get our tickets - Anna and her mom very kindly paid me back for mine, insisting that I had done all that sitting and not-sleeping.
The show itself - wow. I had never seen Othello done before, and it was a crazy dream of mine to see this production like 6 months ago, when I thought there was no way I'd be in England, or in London, or in time to see it. And then all of those things happened! I can't believe it worked out. I'm still amazed. The theatre was absolutely tiny, so you could see perfectly from every seat. Our 15 pound tickets seriously felt much more expensive - Ewan McGregor was seven feet away! He looked at me once. (Awesome!!) We were on one of the sides, so we couldn't see the actors' faces sometimes when they turned away, but Anna and her mom were on the other side, so at intermission we traded stories about the expressions they made during key moments.
I love this play so, so much, and it was so amazing to see it for real, and Othello was so good - I mean, Chiwetel Ejiofor is just really spectacular. He had this calm, powerful, self-consciously eloquent voice, and this tinge of an African accent, and you just believed his pain and torment when he thought his wife had been unfaithful to him. He could get loud and violently outraged, the way Othello has to, but he also had these moments of near stillness that were exactly as powerful, exactly as heartbreaking. It was amazing. Ewan McGregor was also pretty good. I think the best part was really just seeing a Iago, down there on the stage (we were up in the balcony), living, breathing, plotting. I mean -- seriously, Iago. I love him. The Cassio was also really good, really sweet and noble-hearted and just pretty much a good guy. It's really easy to interpret Cassio as kind of a lout - a good soldier, but a drunkard, and unpleasantly a ladies' man, making eyes at Desdemona and Iago's wife and everyone else. This Cassio was none of those things. He was modest and had an easy laugh, and was truly devoted to his commander. Good choices!
The production was also really wonderful. Venice, in the beginning, included a gutter full of water at the back wall and dark, wet stone floors. Cyprus was full of hazy sunlight (I have no idea how they did that, but it really looked like daylight and it was awesome) and there was this window, on one side of the stage near the back, that had a lovely carved wooden lattice over it, and they did this thing where they shone light through it and reflected the pattern onto the stage. It was the coolest. And when they brought out the marriage bed, huge gauzy curtains unfurled from the ceiling on either side to an accompanying musical flourish. It was dramatic and elegant and tense, and the music was in general really atmospheric and not annoying, and basically I loved everything!!!
And then we took a bus back to Bath, and slept half of Sunday away. It was an amazing experience. I still can't really believe we made it there, got tickets, saw the show - it was just really fantastic luck, I guess. I am happy, happy, happy.
But then it was Thursday, Valentine's Day, when all of us, lacking in any kind of Valentine, or at least separated from one by several thousand miles of ocean, decided to have a really great Valentine's Day as a house. Meghan and I went out and bought brownie mix and the stuff to make chocolate-covered strawberries, and we rented Shakespeare in Love, and Liz and Yeji bought ice cream, champagne, and sparkling cider for those of us who don't drink. After dinner we laid the whole coffee table out with desserts and watched the movie (so! romantic!) with lots and lots of chocolate. It was a truly lovely evening. :) Shakespeare in Love was an excellent primer for the weekend, as well, because it went down like this:
I arrived in London at 5:30 pm and met Anna, fully cognizant of my arrival this time, at a restaurant. Two girls from my house, Meghan and Cali, were already in London for a class trip, taking a Jack the Ripper tour of the city for their Ghosts & Goths class, so we met them and two of Cali's friends there as well. After some yummy sandwiches, Cali split off with her friends and Meghan and I crashed with Anna. At four in the morning, Meghan and I woke up, took a cab to pick up Cali, and then the three of us went to stand in line at the Donmar Warehouse for tickets to Othello.
So listen, it's really cold in England in the first place, and especially in winter, and especially at four in the morning. At least there wasn't any wind, or rain, or anything. But man, it was cold. There were already about ten people in line in front of us (seriously, when did they get up?!), but we were pretty near the front, we could tell, because over the hours more and more people trickled down the street and stood behind us, bundled up in parkas and such. It was quite an experience. At first, we ate some of the food we brought, and laughed and talked about how great it would be if we got tickets, and Meghan did a couple dramatic readings from my pocket copy of Othello, but after a while we were too cold to do much but sit, and curl inwards for warmth, and/or occasionally run around in crazy circles and jump up and down for warmth. Cali ended up making a fortress with our three umbrellas, which I of course took pictures of.
The sun came up eventually, which felt like a wonderful blessing from heaven even though it didn't actually make us much warmer. When McDonald's opened, Cali ventured out to get us hot chocolate, and when the Caffe Nero at the end of the block opened, we took turns buying hot soup (which is so wonderful! how did I ever take soup for granted?). The doors to the Warehouse finally, finally opened at 10 am, and we were some of the last to squeeze inside before they ran out of space. The poor people behind us had to continue to wait outdoors, but man, I am glad we were close to the front. At 10:30 they started selling tickets, and no joke, we got the last six day-seats available for the matinee. (Each of us was standing in for a friend - I was buying Anna's ticket, Cali was buying her friends, and Meghan was helping me out and buying Anna's mom's ticket. You could only buy 2 per person.) It was a total miracle, and we felt really bad about taking all the remaining seats so we got out of there really quick.
Flush with success, totally exhausted, still basically freezing, we went to a cafe and had some sandwiches before navigating the Tube back to Cali's friend's place. I took an hour nap that literally felt like closing my eyes and then opening them again, with no space in between, and then it was time to head back for the show. We met Anna and her mom at Caffe Nero and we all went in to get our tickets - Anna and her mom very kindly paid me back for mine, insisting that I had done all that sitting and not-sleeping.
The show itself - wow. I had never seen Othello done before, and it was a crazy dream of mine to see this production like 6 months ago, when I thought there was no way I'd be in England, or in London, or in time to see it. And then all of those things happened! I can't believe it worked out. I'm still amazed. The theatre was absolutely tiny, so you could see perfectly from every seat. Our 15 pound tickets seriously felt much more expensive - Ewan McGregor was seven feet away! He looked at me once. (Awesome!!) We were on one of the sides, so we couldn't see the actors' faces sometimes when they turned away, but Anna and her mom were on the other side, so at intermission we traded stories about the expressions they made during key moments.
I love this play so, so much, and it was so amazing to see it for real, and Othello was so good - I mean, Chiwetel Ejiofor is just really spectacular. He had this calm, powerful, self-consciously eloquent voice, and this tinge of an African accent, and you just believed his pain and torment when he thought his wife had been unfaithful to him. He could get loud and violently outraged, the way Othello has to, but he also had these moments of near stillness that were exactly as powerful, exactly as heartbreaking. It was amazing. Ewan McGregor was also pretty good. I think the best part was really just seeing a Iago, down there on the stage (we were up in the balcony), living, breathing, plotting. I mean -- seriously, Iago. I love him. The Cassio was also really good, really sweet and noble-hearted and just pretty much a good guy. It's really easy to interpret Cassio as kind of a lout - a good soldier, but a drunkard, and unpleasantly a ladies' man, making eyes at Desdemona and Iago's wife and everyone else. This Cassio was none of those things. He was modest and had an easy laugh, and was truly devoted to his commander. Good choices!
The production was also really wonderful. Venice, in the beginning, included a gutter full of water at the back wall and dark, wet stone floors. Cyprus was full of hazy sunlight (I have no idea how they did that, but it really looked like daylight and it was awesome) and there was this window, on one side of the stage near the back, that had a lovely carved wooden lattice over it, and they did this thing where they shone light through it and reflected the pattern onto the stage. It was the coolest. And when they brought out the marriage bed, huge gauzy curtains unfurled from the ceiling on either side to an accompanying musical flourish. It was dramatic and elegant and tense, and the music was in general really atmospheric and not annoying, and basically I loved everything!!!
And then we took a bus back to Bath, and slept half of Sunday away. It was an amazing experience. I still can't really believe we made it there, got tickets, saw the show - it was just really fantastic luck, I guess. I am happy, happy, happy.
Weekend of February 8-10: London
So last weekend I went to London for the first time. It started off a little rocky - Anna was not at the bus station when I got there, and I couldn't get her number to work, and then I asked a British woman how she thought the number was supposed to be dialed, and then I got it to work and long story short, Anna thought I was coming next weekend. So she ran (I think literally) down to the station and we both said sorry sorry sorry and had pub food, and made our plans for the next day, which were: wake up early and go see Othello at the Donmar Warehouse, which is starring Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and which is sold out for the entirety of its run, unless you get to the box office early in the morning and buy one of the ten available day-of seats, or one of the fifteen standing-room-only tickets.
It turned out that eight in the morning would not have been nearly early enough even if we hadn't gotten lost and wandered around the West End for two hours - by the time we got to the Donmar, it was 10:30, when the box office actually starts selling the tickets, and they sold out in ten minutes. So instead, we went down to the half-priced ticket stand in the middle of the West End, and we got tickets to see Spamalot, which starred Peter Davison, who played the fifth Doctor in Doctor Who. Needless to say, that was an absolutely wonderful, hilarious experience. I didn't know it beforehand, but my life was not complete until I saw Peter Davison getting down with his funky self dressed in chain mail.
After the failed Othello attempt and before Spamalot - seriously, so great, I would see it again instantly - Anna and I stopped in all the places that we had just taken pictures of while looking for the Donmar Warehouse, such as a stamp shop that sold, as far as we could see instead of stamps, a metric ton of Doctor Who memorabilia. This country is awesome. We also went in the National Gallery, which is a really beautiful area with fountains and white stone and statues, and we saw Rembrandts and da Vincis and Caravaggios and cool German stained glass etchings. I also saw a portrait of Sara Sidden, a famous Victorian-era Shakespearean actress whose home theatre was in Bath, right around the corner from my house, in what is now the Masonic Hall. (This is also where we've been having all our program-wide meetings. Very cool.)
On Saturday, having walked for almost the entire of Friday, we took it easy, eating at cool little places around Anna's school and shopping at a cheap, trendy London stores. (I got boots for 5 pounds! This was very exciting.) I made plans to come again next weekend - absolutely determined to see Othello - and on Sunday morning the bus whisked me back to Bath in a quick 3 hours. London was cool and everything, but oh, my city is so pretty. You can see the Abbey from anywhere at the edge of the city, so whenever I pull in, since I live more or less right there, I know exactly where my house is. It's a good feeling.
It turned out that eight in the morning would not have been nearly early enough even if we hadn't gotten lost and wandered around the West End for two hours - by the time we got to the Donmar, it was 10:30, when the box office actually starts selling the tickets, and they sold out in ten minutes. So instead, we went down to the half-priced ticket stand in the middle of the West End, and we got tickets to see Spamalot, which starred Peter Davison, who played the fifth Doctor in Doctor Who. Needless to say, that was an absolutely wonderful, hilarious experience. I didn't know it beforehand, but my life was not complete until I saw Peter Davison getting down with his funky self dressed in chain mail.
After the failed Othello attempt and before Spamalot - seriously, so great, I would see it again instantly - Anna and I stopped in all the places that we had just taken pictures of while looking for the Donmar Warehouse, such as a stamp shop that sold, as far as we could see instead of stamps, a metric ton of Doctor Who memorabilia. This country is awesome. We also went in the National Gallery, which is a really beautiful area with fountains and white stone and statues, and we saw Rembrandts and da Vincis and Caravaggios and cool German stained glass etchings. I also saw a portrait of Sara Sidden, a famous Victorian-era Shakespearean actress whose home theatre was in Bath, right around the corner from my house, in what is now the Masonic Hall. (This is also where we've been having all our program-wide meetings. Very cool.)
On Saturday, having walked for almost the entire of Friday, we took it easy, eating at cool little places around Anna's school and shopping at a cheap, trendy London stores. (I got boots for 5 pounds! This was very exciting.) I made plans to come again next weekend - absolutely determined to see Othello - and on Sunday morning the bus whisked me back to Bath in a quick 3 hours. London was cool and everything, but oh, my city is so pretty. You can see the Abbey from anywhere at the edge of the city, so whenever I pull in, since I live more or less right there, I know exactly where my house is. It's a good feeling.
Wednesday, February 6th: Cardiff
So last Wednesday, I went to Cardiff for the day. I just went by myself, as a day-trip, so - yeah! I just took a train and a tuna sandwich and wandered around Wales for a day. Nobody stamped my passport, which was a little sad, but I guess there's always Ireland. :)
When I first got off the train, I got really excited about how all the signs were in Welsh as well as English, which is why there are a lot of pictures of panels at the bottom of monuments and street signs and things. I asked around and found a bus that would take me to Cardiff Bay, where the Millenium Centre is (buses in Wales are so easy! all you have to do is give them a pound and you can go anywhere in the zone of your choice! which in my case was all of Cardiff, so it worked out). This being my First Major Trip Anywhere By Myself, not counting dragging suitcases through Heathrow to get here in the first place, I was a little nervous, but people were seriously really helpful. And after a couple hours of wandering around the Bay, I felt more comfortable with getting around. It was a really gorgeous day, so I didn't have to worry about being cold, and there were ducks and swans and seagulls out at the Bay and little Welsh kids on school trips running around the different monuments and "places of interest," as my map says. And I'm glad I went to the Bay first, because I felt a little bit of familiarity being on docks with boats and stuff, I guess because of the Marina.
So I wandered around the Bay until I found the Roald Dahl Plas, which is that immense open area with poles circling it and a monolith and the Millenium Centre at one end. (I'm sure the monolith has a name, I just don't know it. It's the thing from Torchwood.) It's seriously huge - like, not the space itself, but the monolith goes on for nine years and I couldn't even get the giant brass facade-thing of the Millenium Centre into one picture. It's a very cool area. You can walk right up and touch the monolith - it's got water pouring down every side, so it's like a very contained fountain, except when the wind blows and then people get sprayed with water droplets.
After an hour or so of taking pictures and walking around and going, Doctor Who filmed here! it occured to me to look for a visitor's center, which is that weird oblong tube building in the pictures. They didn't sell anything in there but Doctor Who merchandise, which I found hilarious. I mean - it's a whole city! But I guess people only come in there looking for Doctor Who shooting locations (kinda like me... sigh). One of the pamphlets they gave me was a map of all the public art exhibitions in the Bay, so I followed that around and took pictures of all the sculptures and things. I also went inside the Welsh Parliament building, which was pretty cool - they made me put my things in a bin and go through security, like an airport, and then they were pretty much like, have fun! You can sit in at a session if you want! But I felt kind of uncomfortable just going into a session chamber, like, "Hey guys, whatcha doing? Making laws?" So I just took some pictures inside the building and then left.
This very nice elderly couple took my picture in front of a "Welcome to Cardiff Bay!" sign in Welsh. They asked me if I knew what it meant, and I said welcome to Cardiff, and they said, "That's right! Very good!" And I had to say, "No, I mean, it's on the other side in English!" They laughed. When they heard my American accent they started telling me about how they had been to San Fransisco and how they liked America. Everybody was really nice like that - I met another elderly couple on the other side of the Bay who were taking a day trip from Caerphilly, where they lived. They picked me out as a tourist and asked how my day was going, took pictures for me with the Bay behind me, recommended places in Spain for me to vacation, and tried to set me up with their doctor son. And another time lady walked by with a pretty dog, and when I commented on him she said, "Well thank you! Are you enjoying your trip to Cardiff?" And I said "Yes!" and I was just so happy that everybody was all friendly and interested in my day. Yay!
I ate lunch by the monolith thing, my tuna sandwich and a Welsh water bottle, so almost free, and then I walked across the street to the Red Dragon Centre, where I had read on my tourist map that there was a Doctor Who exhibit. I wasn't going to go in, because I knew I'd be coming back to Cardiff with Anna Snyder or Morgan and Dad, and we'd probably do it then, but when I saw the awesome setup I really just couldn't resist. It's pretty much worth doing twice, in any case. That's what I'm telling myself. :) They gave me a Doctor Who quiz to fill out as I went along, and not only did I get all of the questions right, I filled out a bunch of them without any help from the exhibit. :D There was all this stuff!! I took a million pictures. Also the gift shop had Doctor Who novels that are out of print in the U.S., and everything was just really exciting. And everybody knew about Doctor Who! Which, I mean, I was at an exhibit, but it was really weird to have normal people just come out of the exhibit and say stuff like, "You'll really want to go in there. That Doctor, always getting into trouble!" They know all about him over here. Very weird.
After milling around the exhibit with a huge smile on my face for an hour, I took a bus to the Cardiff Castle and signed up for a tour of the Victorian part of the castle. So, let me preface this with: Cardiff Castle is awesome. Its foundations are an old Roman fortification, which was adapted into a Norman fortress during the Norman invasion, and then in the Victorian era, it was inherited by a rich Welsh family who added their own idealized "medieval" castle area for vacations. The Victorian part is really the only part you can go inside, besides the Norman castle keep which is just a four or five story prison thing in the middle of the grounds. I may be wrong, but I think that King Richard and Prince John's illegitimate half-brother was kept there until he died. Anyway.
The Victorian castle was made up of a series of themed rooms, like the Arab Room, which had incense and Byzantine designs on the ceiling and floor, and a medieval feasting hall with ancient kings painted everywhere and carved into wood. Incidentally, that's where world leaders are entertained when they come to Cardiff, still. A month or so before I visited, Prince Charles apparently had lunch there. Every room was incredibly richly made up. Our tour guide kept saying things like, there are six kinds of marble in this room, this mahogany is painted with real gold, there are emeralds set into the eyes of the saints, it would cost 25 million pounds to recreate this room in full. It was completely crazy. We weren't allowed to take pictures indoors, or I so would have.
After the tour I just wandered around the castle grounds, which were beautiful and expansively green even though the castle is smack in the middle of city. I went up into the keep, all these teetering narrow stairs, and looked out over the city from the top of it. It felt so, so cool. It really is a medieval castle the way we think of it. I wanted to wear a pretty dress and read Chaucer, or something.
I'd just about crunched my time with the tour, so I hightailed it back to the train station, which was walking distance, and got on my bus with five minutes to spare. And then it brought me back to Bath, and I was home in time for dinner! (It is our routine in Linley, almost every day, for a small group of girls to make dinner for the whole house, while another group does dishes after. It's very homey and nice, and we get good food and bonding time out of it. Yay!) It was an awesome, awesome trip. It was really relaxing to just wander around and look at art and buildings and just take things in. I want to go back!
When I first got off the train, I got really excited about how all the signs were in Welsh as well as English, which is why there are a lot of pictures of panels at the bottom of monuments and street signs and things. I asked around and found a bus that would take me to Cardiff Bay, where the Millenium Centre is (buses in Wales are so easy! all you have to do is give them a pound and you can go anywhere in the zone of your choice! which in my case was all of Cardiff, so it worked out). This being my First Major Trip Anywhere By Myself, not counting dragging suitcases through Heathrow to get here in the first place, I was a little nervous, but people were seriously really helpful. And after a couple hours of wandering around the Bay, I felt more comfortable with getting around. It was a really gorgeous day, so I didn't have to worry about being cold, and there were ducks and swans and seagulls out at the Bay and little Welsh kids on school trips running around the different monuments and "places of interest," as my map says. And I'm glad I went to the Bay first, because I felt a little bit of familiarity being on docks with boats and stuff, I guess because of the Marina.
So I wandered around the Bay until I found the Roald Dahl Plas, which is that immense open area with poles circling it and a monolith and the Millenium Centre at one end. (I'm sure the monolith has a name, I just don't know it. It's the thing from Torchwood.) It's seriously huge - like, not the space itself, but the monolith goes on for nine years and I couldn't even get the giant brass facade-thing of the Millenium Centre into one picture. It's a very cool area. You can walk right up and touch the monolith - it's got water pouring down every side, so it's like a very contained fountain, except when the wind blows and then people get sprayed with water droplets.
After an hour or so of taking pictures and walking around and going, Doctor Who filmed here! it occured to me to look for a visitor's center, which is that weird oblong tube building in the pictures. They didn't sell anything in there but Doctor Who merchandise, which I found hilarious. I mean - it's a whole city! But I guess people only come in there looking for Doctor Who shooting locations (kinda like me... sigh). One of the pamphlets they gave me was a map of all the public art exhibitions in the Bay, so I followed that around and took pictures of all the sculptures and things. I also went inside the Welsh Parliament building, which was pretty cool - they made me put my things in a bin and go through security, like an airport, and then they were pretty much like, have fun! You can sit in at a session if you want! But I felt kind of uncomfortable just going into a session chamber, like, "Hey guys, whatcha doing? Making laws?" So I just took some pictures inside the building and then left.
This very nice elderly couple took my picture in front of a "Welcome to Cardiff Bay!" sign in Welsh. They asked me if I knew what it meant, and I said welcome to Cardiff, and they said, "That's right! Very good!" And I had to say, "No, I mean, it's on the other side in English!" They laughed. When they heard my American accent they started telling me about how they had been to San Fransisco and how they liked America. Everybody was really nice like that - I met another elderly couple on the other side of the Bay who were taking a day trip from Caerphilly, where they lived. They picked me out as a tourist and asked how my day was going, took pictures for me with the Bay behind me, recommended places in Spain for me to vacation, and tried to set me up with their doctor son. And another time lady walked by with a pretty dog, and when I commented on him she said, "Well thank you! Are you enjoying your trip to Cardiff?" And I said "Yes!" and I was just so happy that everybody was all friendly and interested in my day. Yay!
I ate lunch by the monolith thing, my tuna sandwich and a Welsh water bottle, so almost free, and then I walked across the street to the Red Dragon Centre, where I had read on my tourist map that there was a Doctor Who exhibit. I wasn't going to go in, because I knew I'd be coming back to Cardiff with Anna Snyder or Morgan and Dad, and we'd probably do it then, but when I saw the awesome setup I really just couldn't resist. It's pretty much worth doing twice, in any case. That's what I'm telling myself. :) They gave me a Doctor Who quiz to fill out as I went along, and not only did I get all of the questions right, I filled out a bunch of them without any help from the exhibit. :D There was all this stuff!! I took a million pictures. Also the gift shop had Doctor Who novels that are out of print in the U.S., and everything was just really exciting. And everybody knew about Doctor Who! Which, I mean, I was at an exhibit, but it was really weird to have normal people just come out of the exhibit and say stuff like, "You'll really want to go in there. That Doctor, always getting into trouble!" They know all about him over here. Very weird.
After milling around the exhibit with a huge smile on my face for an hour, I took a bus to the Cardiff Castle and signed up for a tour of the Victorian part of the castle. So, let me preface this with: Cardiff Castle is awesome. Its foundations are an old Roman fortification, which was adapted into a Norman fortress during the Norman invasion, and then in the Victorian era, it was inherited by a rich Welsh family who added their own idealized "medieval" castle area for vacations. The Victorian part is really the only part you can go inside, besides the Norman castle keep which is just a four or five story prison thing in the middle of the grounds. I may be wrong, but I think that King Richard and Prince John's illegitimate half-brother was kept there until he died. Anyway.
The Victorian castle was made up of a series of themed rooms, like the Arab Room, which had incense and Byzantine designs on the ceiling and floor, and a medieval feasting hall with ancient kings painted everywhere and carved into wood. Incidentally, that's where world leaders are entertained when they come to Cardiff, still. A month or so before I visited, Prince Charles apparently had lunch there. Every room was incredibly richly made up. Our tour guide kept saying things like, there are six kinds of marble in this room, this mahogany is painted with real gold, there are emeralds set into the eyes of the saints, it would cost 25 million pounds to recreate this room in full. It was completely crazy. We weren't allowed to take pictures indoors, or I so would have.
After the tour I just wandered around the castle grounds, which were beautiful and expansively green even though the castle is smack in the middle of city. I went up into the keep, all these teetering narrow stairs, and looked out over the city from the top of it. It felt so, so cool. It really is a medieval castle the way we think of it. I wanted to wear a pretty dress and read Chaucer, or something.
I'd just about crunched my time with the tour, so I hightailed it back to the train station, which was walking distance, and got on my bus with five minutes to spare. And then it brought me back to Bath, and I was home in time for dinner! (It is our routine in Linley, almost every day, for a small group of girls to make dinner for the whole house, while another group does dishes after. It's very homey and nice, and we get good food and bonding time out of it. Yay!) It was an awesome, awesome trip. It was really relaxing to just wander around and look at art and buildings and just take things in. I want to go back!
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Backdated: First Weekend - Mostly Sunday
This Friday we had our first Smart Event, as you all may have seen from that picture of me in my dress. :D We met our tutors and milled around looking at art. It felt pretty grown-up and also scary because all our teachers are pretty intense - I walked up to my Irish Literature teacher to introduce myself and he handed me homework. So, even though the classes are very, very exciting and I can't wait to start them on Tuesday, they're going to be WORK. One of my teachers even told us how kids in his classes are always coming up to him saying, "I don't know what you want from us in this class! What do you want??" GREEAAT. Looking forward to that. (Actually, that class looks really fun, so I actually am, but still. AHH!)
After that, Linley went out for Thai food in our formal wear, at a Salathai right across from our house. I can see it out of my window. :D Then we holed up inside watched incomprehensible British game shows, as is becoming our tradition.
On Saturday morning, Mark (or Maahhhhk as the girls call him) and his University friends took us on a tour of the Bath markets, which were awesome. There's a good-sized farmer's market/flea market down by the grocery store we shop at, which I will definitely be visiting in the future, because they had everything, from specialty baked goods to obscure British cheeses to books, leotards (I don't know), half-price organic vegetables and a station with a lady making crepes. I had one of those for breakfast, yum. After almost getting left behind there, too absorbed in the great food to notice that everyone was leaving, we went halfway up the city to a couple of smaller markets, one which is indoors and very old, and another that's sort of in an alley, and sold lots of old records and EPs and gardening tools. Mark and his friends said goodbye and we were free to wander around, so since we were at the top of town for once, we walked over to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, which you can see in my pictures. It's a very Austen part of town, and is in fact where the Jane Austen Centre is. I think a movie might have been filmed there. I don't really know anything about the Jane Austen universe. :D
Then we walked home, I took a nap, and Cali, Yeji and I had an abortive attempt to see Atonement (ugh, it was the worst: we couldn't find it, got lost, made it *just* in time for the opening credits, couldn't find seats, were given permission to sit in the aisle, were un-given permission to sit in the aisle, were given a refund instead, and sent home.). When we got home we just watched more game shows, though, so it was okay. And then, SUNDAY:
Linley was first to the buses (again; we were first to the Smart Event, too. We're so punctual), and it was an hour to Stonehenge, during some of which I took a nap and some of which I filmed the countryside going by. At Stonehenge it was UNBELIEVABLY cold; not exactly temperature-wise, but the wind was vicious and within five minutes I couldn't feel my fingers, and I had a killer headache because of my ears, hence why a bunch of us have scarves over our heads in most of the pictures. The walk was a path around the perimeter of Stonehenge, and it got pretty close at times, which was cool. The actual road road, like for cars, was very close to
Stonehenge, which was kind of weird. You'd think it would be some sort of national park grounds, or something. But no. Spread out for miles around Stonehenge were burial mounds, which I forgot to get pictures of, because Stonehenge is apparently just the center of a very large religious area where significant figures were buried. I thought I also read something about a pilgrimage from another stone structure to this one - but I dunno.
After Stonehenge we practically RAN for the bus, it was so cold, and the next stop was Salisbury, a motley medieval-Regency-modern city with a looming, sun-blotting cathedral at one end. We went to the cathedral immediately and took pictures outside of it - the wind almost took my camera out of my hands - and inside, where, ready for this? One of the four existing copies of the Magna Carta is housed. Yeah. In that cathedral. I WISH I could have taken a picture in there, but they were super down on that, which I understand. It was sort of amazing, though. Also, I didn't know that King John signed the Magna Carta. This throws my perception of Robin Hood out of whack. They also had one of Chaucer's translations of Boethius, which if I could have just photographed and shown to my Courtly Traditions professor, I'm sure would have bumped my grade up at least a letter.
:D
We ate in Salisbury, in a Market Inn that had been there since the 17th or 18th century, and then we ran to St. Thomas's church to get a picture of the Doom painting (well, okay, I ran while everybody else walked, I was excited) before we had to be back at the bus.
The last stop was Lacock, a town that you may recognize from the first or second Harry Potter movie, or any filmed adaptation of Jane Austen ever. It's so perfect and little and OLD - there are no wires, poles, or anything except cars to mar the medieval appearance of the town. There are only four roads. We couldn't get into the Abbey, the grounds of which are the most recognizable location from the Harry Potter movies, because they were closed for the winter (they open in March! Let's go!), but we did walk around the four streets and listen to old bitter-bronze church bells going over and over for a christening.
I took 106 pictures, but only 56 or so made it online. :/ It was an amazing day - it feels like I've been traveling for a week or something. And it didn't even start raining until we got back to our
house! Basically, everything was beautiful, and I'm going to sleep really well tonight.
After that, Linley went out for Thai food in our formal wear, at a Salathai right across from our house. I can see it out of my window. :D Then we holed up inside watched incomprehensible British game shows, as is becoming our tradition.
On Saturday morning, Mark (or Maahhhhk as the girls call him) and his University friends took us on a tour of the Bath markets, which were awesome. There's a good-sized farmer's market/flea market down by the grocery store we shop at, which I will definitely be visiting in the future, because they had everything, from specialty baked goods to obscure British cheeses to books, leotards (I don't know), half-price organic vegetables and a station with a lady making crepes. I had one of those for breakfast, yum. After almost getting left behind there, too absorbed in the great food to notice that everyone was leaving, we went halfway up the city to a couple of smaller markets, one which is indoors and very old, and another that's sort of in an alley, and sold lots of old records and EPs and gardening tools. Mark and his friends said goodbye and we were free to wander around, so since we were at the top of town for once, we walked over to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, which you can see in my pictures. It's a very Austen part of town, and is in fact where the Jane Austen Centre is. I think a movie might have been filmed there. I don't really know anything about the Jane Austen universe. :D
Then we walked home, I took a nap, and Cali, Yeji and I had an abortive attempt to see Atonement (ugh, it was the worst: we couldn't find it, got lost, made it *just* in time for the opening credits, couldn't find seats, were given permission to sit in the aisle, were un-given permission to sit in the aisle, were given a refund instead, and sent home.). When we got home we just watched more game shows, though, so it was okay. And then, SUNDAY:
Linley was first to the buses (again; we were first to the Smart Event, too. We're so punctual), and it was an hour to Stonehenge, during some of which I took a nap and some of which I filmed the countryside going by. At Stonehenge it was UNBELIEVABLY cold; not exactly temperature-wise, but the wind was vicious and within five minutes I couldn't feel my fingers, and I had a killer headache because of my ears, hence why a bunch of us have scarves over our heads in most of the pictures. The walk was a path around the perimeter of Stonehenge, and it got pretty close at times, which was cool. The actual road road, like for cars, was very close to
Stonehenge, which was kind of weird. You'd think it would be some sort of national park grounds, or something. But no. Spread out for miles around Stonehenge were burial mounds, which I forgot to get pictures of, because Stonehenge is apparently just the center of a very large religious area where significant figures were buried. I thought I also read something about a pilgrimage from another stone structure to this one - but I dunno.
After Stonehenge we practically RAN for the bus, it was so cold, and the next stop was Salisbury, a motley medieval-Regency-modern city with a looming, sun-blotting cathedral at one end. We went to the cathedral immediately and took pictures outside of it - the wind almost took my camera out of my hands - and inside, where, ready for this? One of the four existing copies of the Magna Carta is housed. Yeah. In that cathedral. I WISH I could have taken a picture in there, but they were super down on that, which I understand. It was sort of amazing, though. Also, I didn't know that King John signed the Magna Carta. This throws my perception of Robin Hood out of whack. They also had one of Chaucer's translations of Boethius, which if I could have just photographed and shown to my Courtly Traditions professor, I'm sure would have bumped my grade up at least a letter.
:D
We ate in Salisbury, in a Market Inn that had been there since the 17th or 18th century, and then we ran to St. Thomas's church to get a picture of the Doom painting (well, okay, I ran while everybody else walked, I was excited) before we had to be back at the bus.
The last stop was Lacock, a town that you may recognize from the first or second Harry Potter movie, or any filmed adaptation of Jane Austen ever. It's so perfect and little and OLD - there are no wires, poles, or anything except cars to mar the medieval appearance of the town. There are only four roads. We couldn't get into the Abbey, the grounds of which are the most recognizable location from the Harry Potter movies, because they were closed for the winter (they open in March! Let's go!), but we did walk around the four streets and listen to old bitter-bronze church bells going over and over for a christening.
I took 106 pictures, but only 56 or so made it online. :/ It was an amazing day - it feels like I've been traveling for a week or something. And it didn't even start raining until we got back to our
house! Basically, everything was beautiful, and I'm going to sleep really well tonight.
Backdated: The First 3 Days
It is unbelievably beautiful here -- I have a picture album already, of the first couple days, though there isn't much of the city (http://flickr.com/photos/13892854@N02/tags/bath/ ) -- and just the newness, being somewhere else, where they speak differently and the ambient noise is different and I can walk anywhere I want - it's amazing. I live in Linley House, this cool historic Georgian building, with 7 other girls, all of whom I get along with great. Everyone in this program seems really energetic and friendly and excited to be here, which is awesome, because now I feel like it will be easy to find people to go on trips with and that kind of thing. Linley House is also something like a 30 second walk from Nelson House, where we have our classes. Nelson House is actually so famous that it's on maps of Bath; Admiral Lord Nelson stayed there frequently, after battles and when he was sick, etc. Awesome!! I'll take pictures of our buildings pretty soon. I keep forgetting. They're very tall and narrow, each about four floors with only two or three little rooms on each floor.
It's pretty chilly here. The houses are cold, as advertised, so I'm in my coat a lot of the time, even indoors. I'm pretty sure it's still warmer than it has been in Arlington, though. :)
So, okay, to recap extensively:
First of all, I met a girl from the program on the flight to London, so we searched for the Heathrow Express train together and split off, me for the train, she for the bus, and so I got to be on this hi-tech English shuttle train, where there was a TV screen telling me all about landmarks in London, and how long the train would take, and some BBC news about war in Eastern Europe.
The Express spit me out at Paddington Station, which is like Grand Central, pretty much, complete with pidgeons. I bought a Young Person's Railcard and a ticket for Bath and lugged my stuff - by now my arms were SO TIRED - to the train and got on. (On both trains, people were pretty nice about helping me with my enormous suitcase. On the Express, this nice middle-aged couple got up out of their seats to help me put my suitcase on the rack. yay!) I wanted to fall
asleep so much, but I was deathly afraid of missing my stop and going all the way to the coast or something. So I stayed awake and zoned out until we reached the countryside, which is gorgeous, as you can see from my first picture of Bath.
I was actually half an hour early to the Bath train station, so I had to sit outside in the cold until other kids arrived. :/ But then we all trundled down to the main entrance together and a nice young British man named Mark (everyone is all ooooh! Mark! because he's British. whatever. he's not all that cute.) guided us down the street to our house. Getting my suitcase up the stairs was the WORST. :)
We had welcome activities basically immediately, and we were advised not to go to sleep until 9:30 pm so as to beat jet lag. It only sort of worked - all of us slept really badly last night, waking up for 1 hour, 2 hour stretches. Also, Monday night is apparently College Night at a lot of bars, so there were people screaming outside our window at midnight.
The Linley girls went out to dinner the first night at a sort of yucky cafe (ew, British sandwiches), and last night we all bought groceries together and made spaghetti and meat sauce for the group. It was pretty great. I and a few other girls ventured out for lunch yesterday at I think the "Cellar Pub," which had a huge sign saying "GOOD LUNCHTIME FOOD" on it, so we took them at their word. It was pretty good. We've only wandered around one or two streets, but the city is just so cozy and the architecture is so beautiful! And I love how walkable it is!
Today we took two diagnostic essay tests to determine our skill levels, and we got our course books. I have one million course books. I'm pretty excited about our classes, though; I get to see the movies Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Twelve Monkeys, and Solaris, the plays The History Boys (which I was going to see anyway!) and The Merchant of Venice (yesssssss), and whatever else we see when the program takes a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.
Cultrual mistakes I have made in the past two and a half days:
-asking for ground beef
(Grocer: How do you mean ground?
Me: Uh..... you know, small? And cut up?
Grocer: You mean corned beef?
Me: No...
Housemate: Like for hamburger?
Grocer: Oh, MINCED beef.)
-asking if "this is the line"
(Random guy: What? Oh, no, nobody's queuing here.)
-sitting at a table for ten minutes before realizing you have to order + pay at the bar
-relatedly, getting asked if I "know what pickles are," saying yes, and then receiving some sort of weird brown glop instead of pickles.
(pickers? peakers? picas? what was that stuff??)
edited to add: actually it was chutney; the entire onion on my plate was in fact a pickle.
Also, skim milk is "semi-skimmed milk," ketchup is tomato sauce, the first floor of a building is the ground floor - the second floor is the first - and there is no tax on anything here. Woo!
It's pretty chilly here. The houses are cold, as advertised, so I'm in my coat a lot of the time, even indoors. I'm pretty sure it's still warmer than it has been in Arlington, though. :)
So, okay, to recap extensively:
First of all, I met a girl from the program on the flight to London, so we searched for the Heathrow Express train together and split off, me for the train, she for the bus, and so I got to be on this hi-tech English shuttle train, where there was a TV screen telling me all about landmarks in London, and how long the train would take, and some BBC news about war in Eastern Europe.
The Express spit me out at Paddington Station, which is like Grand Central, pretty much, complete with pidgeons. I bought a Young Person's Railcard and a ticket for Bath and lugged my stuff - by now my arms were SO TIRED - to the train and got on. (On both trains, people were pretty nice about helping me with my enormous suitcase. On the Express, this nice middle-aged couple got up out of their seats to help me put my suitcase on the rack. yay!) I wanted to fall
asleep so much, but I was deathly afraid of missing my stop and going all the way to the coast or something. So I stayed awake and zoned out until we reached the countryside, which is gorgeous, as you can see from my first picture of Bath.
I was actually half an hour early to the Bath train station, so I had to sit outside in the cold until other kids arrived. :/ But then we all trundled down to the main entrance together and a nice young British man named Mark (everyone is all ooooh! Mark! because he's British. whatever. he's not all that cute.) guided us down the street to our house. Getting my suitcase up the stairs was the WORST. :)
We had welcome activities basically immediately, and we were advised not to go to sleep until 9:30 pm so as to beat jet lag. It only sort of worked - all of us slept really badly last night, waking up for 1 hour, 2 hour stretches. Also, Monday night is apparently College Night at a lot of bars, so there were people screaming outside our window at midnight.
The Linley girls went out to dinner the first night at a sort of yucky cafe (ew, British sandwiches), and last night we all bought groceries together and made spaghetti and meat sauce for the group. It was pretty great. I and a few other girls ventured out for lunch yesterday at I think the "Cellar Pub," which had a huge sign saying "GOOD LUNCHTIME FOOD" on it, so we took them at their word. It was pretty good. We've only wandered around one or two streets, but the city is just so cozy and the architecture is so beautiful! And I love how walkable it is!
Today we took two diagnostic essay tests to determine our skill levels, and we got our course books. I have one million course books. I'm pretty excited about our classes, though; I get to see the movies Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Twelve Monkeys, and Solaris, the plays The History Boys (which I was going to see anyway!) and The Merchant of Venice (yesssssss), and whatever else we see when the program takes a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.
Cultrual mistakes I have made in the past two and a half days:
-asking for ground beef
(Grocer: How do you mean ground?
Me: Uh..... you know, small? And cut up?
Grocer: You mean corned beef?
Me: No...
Housemate: Like for hamburger?
Grocer: Oh, MINCED beef.)
-asking if "this is the line"
(Random guy: What? Oh, no, nobody's queuing here.)
-sitting at a table for ten minutes before realizing you have to order + pay at the bar
-relatedly, getting asked if I "know what pickles are," saying yes, and then receiving some sort of weird brown glop instead of pickles.
(pickers? peakers? picas? what was that stuff??)
edited to add: actually it was chutney; the entire onion on my plate was in fact a pickle.
Also, skim milk is "semi-skimmed milk," ketchup is tomato sauce, the first floor of a building is the ground floor - the second floor is the first - and there is no tax on anything here. Woo!
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