Update 1: Travels, Musicals, and Other Fun Stuff

Wow! The last month has been crazy! The third week here, we traveled around to the Lake District, Manchester, and Liverpool. It was AMAZING!! We went to 6 museums, 5 of which were art museums (the 6^th was the Beatles Museum, so cool). So it was a very high concentration of art in an itty bitty amount of time. To be honest, it became a little much. In the end, I would look at paintings for 30-45 minutes, and then find the “Learning Center” that every museum has, and color. I know, I know. I should be enjoying and taking advantage of these beautiful opportunities to learn, grow, and see art that I cannot see in real life anywhere else in the world. But sometimes, a girl’s got to color.

On the 25^th of January, we got to take a tour of the National Theater. It was incredible to be surrounded by theater again. I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed being involved in theater until I was experiencing it again. So far, I’ve seen five plays, Kiss Me Kate, Jersey Boys, Wicked, The Winter’s Tale, and The Life of Galileo. There have been good things and bad things about each play, but all have rekindled in me a love of acting, singing, and performing. It also really makes me miss working backstage as well. I’m so grateful for this opportunity to study and immerse myself in something that I really love.

At the end of January, we traveled to Oxford and Stratford-Upon-Avon. We drove for about an hour and a half to Oxford. We toured Christ Church College (one of the colleges of Oxford University) where some of the scenes from Harry Potter were filmed. Oh my gosh, I thought I was at Hogwarts. And I was a little giddy about it. The place was beautiful. We got to see the Great Hall where they have all the banquets in the movie (though I found out later that it was too small for their liking, and so they abandoned most of what they filmed there and built their own Great Hall). And the corridor that appears in many scenes with large windows that look out the courtyard, we walked down that. And the stair case where Tom Riddle talks with Dumbledore, yeah, I walked up those stairs. It was so fun. We also got to see one of the cathedrals on campus and it was gorgeous.

After that, about 8 of us were permitted to go down to the Ashmolean Museum and go to the print room and view original sketches by Michelangelo and Raphael. Yeah. I got to be a minimum of 8 inches away from uncovered cartoons drawn by two masters. And they let us take pictures. And if we had to sneeze or cough they asked us to kindly leave the room. And then they asked if we wanted to see some Da Vinci's, they're sorry they don't have very many, but if we'd like they could pull them out for us. So we kindly declined. Haha, yeah right, we were ecstatic to see some Da Vinci's. They were all beautiful. As we were leaving, I started to tear up as I realized that this was the greatest art experience I have or will ever have. I am so blessed to be in a place and position to be able to have these kinds of opportunities. It was overwhelming. And then my friend Josh suggested that we all go commit mass suicide because life doesn't get any better than that.

Or does it? Josh, Whitney, and I decided to make it our quest to find a pub. But not just any pub. We wanted to find The Eagle and The Child Pub. Which is basically the hang out place of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. And we found it. We sat in a little room that was essentially a shrine to them and had a nice pot of tea and delicious food. I got fried brie and ribs. Delicious. And I couldn't help but feel that I gained some kind of wisdom just from sitting in the same spot that greater minds once occupied. Or maybe it was gas. Who knows. But at this point, I really thought I had peaked. Life can only go downhill from here.

Alas, I was wrong again. We traveled by coach to Stratford Upon Avon where we went to The Swan Theater and watched A Winter's Tale in sixth row seats performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company. What a tremendous performance! So fabulous. So funny. And really innovative. They did some fantastic stuff. Like they had this huge tower rise out of the middle of the stage. And during intermission, the stage crew outfitted it with a pipe around the outside, and on the uncovered half, a spiral staircase going up the inside. I was thoroughly impressed.

The next night we watched The Life of Galileo, in which Galileo was played by Ian McDiarmid, they guy who played Senator Palpatine in Star Wars. The performance was beyond anything I could imagine. The director used interesting costumes and set pieces to make bold statements and evoke specific emotions. I’ve never seen anything like it.

We also got to tour the Anne Hathaway House, the place where Shakespeare’s wife grew up and where he courted her. And we got to visit the church where Shakespeare probably worshiped growing up, seeing how his house used to stand across the street from it, as did our hotel. In addition to that church, we saw the church where he is buried.

The last day of the trip was spent at Warwick Castle. It was a fun place to explore and discover. I went on a tour that was an overview of the entire history of the castle, which was honestly fascinating. I wish I had recorded the tour guide so that I could remember everything that he said. But some of the things I do remember were that for about 20 years, there was a zoo at the Castle. It had things like deer from Japan, an elephant, a bear, peacocks, and tigers. The zoo was promptly shut down, however, when the zoo keeper’s arm was ripped off and his face eaten. By the deer. Yeah. Also, the last resident who lived there sold it to Madame Tussaude’s because he was sick of being chastised for selling off items from the house to fund his partying. He sold the castle and all its grounds and contents for 1.5 million pounds. That’s it. He moved to Australia where his posterity currently lives and runs a very successful oil business. While at the castle we got to see a falcon/hawk show. It was very entertaining and the falconer was hilarious. It was quite a trip. Really, I am so grateful to be here. I am truly overwhelmed by all the opportunities I am granted and all that I am learning. I'm so happy.

On the sixth of February, we traveled to Cambridge for the day. We toured King’s College Chapel, which is absolutely astounding. The craftsmanship that went into that church is beautiful. Afterwards, we had the rest of the day to ourselves until 5 pm, when we would meet back at the church for Evensong. To fill our time, a few of us followed our friend Jonah who had lived in Cambridge for 5 years. He showed us his old house, his old school, and places he would hang out and play as a kid. He literally could not stop bouncing. Evensong was a beautiful experience. I had never seen or participated in any sort of church service of another faith until then. I was grateful to gain a little more knowledge of the  practices of other faiths.

One more exciting thing I was able to experience was the Warner Brother’s Harry Potter Studio Tour. Basically, you go to the set of Harry Potter and see EVERYTHING! Yeah, but no seriously, everything. There was the Great Hall (the one that they had to create after deciding the one at Oxford was too small), Diagon Alley (where I got to participate in a wands special effect presentation and wave a wand and half destroy a sign, yeah I know, I’m a witch [actually it was a guy with a button {kinda hate him for stealing my thunder}]), the Burrow, Gryffindor Common Room, Dumbledore’s office, and so many more. Outside there was Privet Drive, the Knight Bus, and a place to try butterbeer (SOOOO YUMMY!). All over the place were set pieces, props, costumes, wigs, prosthetic faces and hands, mechanical creatures and set design models. Crawling all over the place were death eaters that would literally try to scare you to death, and following close behind them were people equipped with wands so that you could get a proper picture of you dueling a death eater. Because we went during wand week, we got to see how wands were made and used, and how the characters learned to handle them. There was also a space where we could hop on a broomstick with a green screen behind us and we could go for a real, special effects broomstick ride. I loved it and yes, I bought the picture that they take. I mean, I was flying on a broomstick, how could I not? The final thing you see on the tour is the large model of Hogwarts, with inspiring music playing in the background, and the lights changing between night and day. It is an incredible piece of art. As I walked through all the sets and saw all the pieces that were involved, and by effect all the effort that went into the movies, it was hard to remember that this isn’t just some fun museum of sorts that has a bunch of cool things for you to look at that are related to Harry Potter, this is the place where they actually filmed and worked. Of course, it didn’t look as flashy as it does now, but those sets are where they acted and filmed and those props were the ones they were handling and using. I wasn’t just exploring a Harry Potter themed place; I was exploring a work environment. And I was a little bit jealous to be quite honest. While I’m certain I won’t ever become a movie star, I hope that with my career, my work environment becomes just as exciting and incredible to me, maybe not in a physical sense, but in a way that makes me excited to go to work and to enjoy what I do.