An Excursion Through History

I apologize to all for the gap in my posts of about three weeks. School has started and I've been trying to be focused on getting into these classes. They are amazing classes. I have two classes that are specifically writing classes: Writing and Editing for Fiction and Nonfiction, and Craft of Fiction. These two classes are wonderful in helping me learn to write my stories. The former focuses on word choice and sentence structures, which is really helpful, but the latter class focuses more on plots and character development. I also have a literature class called Literary London. I'm still unsure of how I feel about it, but on the positive side, we are reading obscure writings of the renaissance that I haven't read before. We also were reading Samuel Pepys' diary which is a fascinating read and later I will probably try to read the whole thing. Here's the best link for it if anyone's interested: Samuel Pepys Diary

October 12th

On this particular Sunday, Allie and I decided to visit Oxford. So we caught the Megabus that we booked earlier in the week and began our two hour drive. I actually got a lot of reading for class done in this time, which is good since I was behind. We didn't really have any ideas about what we were going to do when we got there but we figured we would just explore. We knew we had arrived when we saw this out the window!

What beautiful architecture!

We didn't have a map so we wandered around for a bit aimlessly until we found a shop and bought a map. Then we meandered through the streets until we happened upon this place called Radcliffe Camera. Unfortunately, it is not open to the public but there was a tower across from it that you could go up inside for four pounds. Needless to say, we did that.

Climbing the tower

Our main goal was to get to Christ Church which is the Oxford campus that inspired Harry Potter. Along the way, we stopped at some other places. We happened upon Oxford's Bridge of Sighs. It was so cute, a recently married pair were taking pictures in front of it and the bride was beautiful. I would love to get married in a place like Oxford!

Bridge of Sighs

I took this because it is very British.

We finally got to Christs Church and it was amazing! We paid to go in for a tour and also got to see the room the Great Hall was based off of.

Can't you see Harry Potter descending that staircase?

The Actual Great Hall of Oxford. (sorry lighting bad)

We also went to this London Castle and walked up this giant mound that had been there since 1066!! It was the pile they dug for the moat around the castle. I was put in the stocks while there.

I was so cold all day that I bought a zip up Oxford sweater as my tourist memorabilia. (I'm wearing it the picture above.) We also stopped at a store called the Alice Shop which was Lewis Carroll's actual store that Alice Liddell would frequent. It has now been converted into a tourist spot to buy everything Alice. I bought a bookmark. We ate a little place that had a bar and that's where I fell in love with a drink called Appletizer. (It's basically sparkling apple juice.) We were so exhausted after that, but we couldn't catch the bus until 8:20! (what were we thinking?) We decided to camp in a cafe for a while. I napped on their couch for a while and then got a coffee. We were kicked out at 7:30 at closing and then we had to figure out what to do til then. We walked around a bit to keep ourselves warm and then we found a Game Cafe. The idea is that you can play board games while you eat. Some where nerdy and awesome like D&D and Magic, and others were like Shoots and Ladders and Apples to Apples. After that we boarded the bus home.

October 15th

My fourth class is called Theatre in London. We learn about the theatre and then go to plays every week. Last week we attended an immersive play called Ring. It was so weird. We walked into this small room and all sat down in chairs. We had headsets and we were left in pitch black for 50 mins. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Using the sound in the headset, they messed with our perception of things by making sounds as if they had moved all the chairs into a circle with people's voices placed appropriately around the Ring. It was a strange experience, one that freaked out some "viewers."

This week, however, we spent our class time going on a tour of the Globe Theater. I was seriously bummed to learn that their production season had ended. I won't get to see any plays there now. 

The stands

The stage

This was such a dream come true getting to be inside the theater. The original theater burned down in the Great Fire of London in 1666. They rebuilt it more recently in last hundred years. It is the only building in London that is legally allowed to have a thatched roof since the Great Fire. It is a fantastic building. I wish I could have seen a show in it.

I had to cross Millennium Bridge to get to and from the Globe. The Globe isn't actually in London, I was told I was in Surrey. So that was interesting. For those of you Harry Potter fans, you might recognize this Bridge from the movie when it is destroyed by Death Eaters. I'm so excited to have a Harry Potter marathon when I get home to see all the places that I've been in the movies!

In the evening, our class met at a theatre to see a production of Shakespeare in Love. I have never seen the movie but was told by my mom that I should. Well, now I have seen it and surprisingly liked it a lot. I'm not usually into romance stories but this was great. It was comedic and Christopher Marlowe was in it (Nick is convinced that he's my favorite historical figure just because I like to tell people that he was died from being stabbed in the eye during a bar fight.) The acting and effects were great. I was truly impressed by the falsetto of one of the male ensemble members. He could sing as high as a female soprano! All in all, it's been a good time here on the other side of the Big Pond. I miss all you guys lots though! Eileen is coming to visit me next week so get ready for lots of posts about that!