The Continued Adventures of Shannon in London (to Satisfy the Masses)

To continue on with my brief summaries...

June 27: [This is from my journal, but I thought it was too good not to add in here.] The first day of classes is always rough. Always. You have to find the rooms and you sit through syllabus talk (which makes my palms sweat and has me counting points before I've even turned in any assignments). Classes are worse when you are in London, when it's 3 hours of art history at 8am and when you know you better get up because your professor could literally come get up.

A few days later, I still stand by that. I have two classes in London. You'd think we just get to play the whole time, but there are actually real classes. I'm taking VASTU 101 (which is Drawing) and English 317R (which is Writing Creative Nonfiction). Don't even say those are just easy classes because producing art is hard work.

More importantly than class, we went to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for lunch. It's the oldest pub in England and famous writers like Charles Dickens used to dine there. I got my first fish & chips.

June 28: Thankfully, we didn't have to do classes two days in a row. I mean, who does that? :) We did a walk in the city, hitting spots like the Royal Air Force Cathedral, the Somerset House (which had AMAZING sculptures by Ai Weiwei outside) and St. Paul's Cathedral.

This is as good a time as any to say that you can't stick out a ten-foot pole in England without hitting a cathedral. I just used the word "cathedral" twice in that last paragraph. I would argue that there are more churches here than in Utah. And they are absolutely beautiful buildings. The stained glass, the huge organs... I'm glad that we keep going into all of these.

The next adventure was going into the Museum of London. I loved it, but it is an enormous museum because England has 100 times the amount of history that America has. I swear, I'm like a 4-year-old because I kept running to all of the interactive things, like the "Medieval Game of Life" (where my character thankfully survived the Bubonic Plague). The more recent London years were fun because of the Beatles memorabilia and the Suffagettes section (like the UK Susan B. Anthonys). I also loved the Great Fire of London exhibit (although the display didn't blow up when the fire hit, which was a little disappointing). I got this shot for my dad:

Can you imagine if firefighters now had to use this stuff? That bucket was heavy. No wonder half of London burned down. Anyway, that night was the best part of all. We went to see "Richard III" at the Old Vic. My professor tried to explain the whole plot to us beforehand, but I'll spare you the horror of hearing about the Lancasters and Yorks and trying to get all of the Henrys and Edwards in order. The play had Kevin Spacey in it. THE Kevin Spacey. Oscar-winning Kevin Spacey. And it was directed by Sam Mendes. As a movie buff, I was stoked. It turned out to be the most awesome play I've ever seen ever. Spacey played the role terrifically, giving Richard a dark comical side behind his mad desire for power. There was a point at the end when he was hanging upside down that I worried about the guy. (His face was getting all red... maybe the British want to kill off our good actors? You've already won, Brits. You have Colin Firth.) But he made it through for us to give him a triple standing ovation.

June 29: More classes. Oh joy. But we actually went out for our art class to the National Gallery. My professor was correct in saying that there's no way to tackle that gallery in one day. It's just too massive. I got to stare at Botticelli's "Venus and Mars" for a half hour though (which sounds awful until you actually try it and then it's rather fascinating) and then I went and oogled the Monets for a while.

After a full day of class, a few of us decided to go to the Peter Pan park for the evening. You read that right. The Peter Pan park. You have to have a child with you to get in so we took our directors' kids. I wish I had grown up as a kid in England so I could go to that park every day. There is a huge pirate ship, several playgrounds, Pirate Island (which actually has water around it), teepees, musical things... it was awesome. And I'm 21.

You can kind of see the ship behind me there. (By the way, I swear that almost all of my pictures don't have me in them. I'm not that vain; I just thought I'd post the ones of me to prove that I am actually here. Satisfied?)

The day ended with me getting the UK versions of the first and last Harry Potter books. All was well. (You Potter nerds can say how clever I am now. Lol)

June 30: I might as well quickly finish off the month. We had class (which involves me drawing the negative spaces in a stack of chairs) and then several of us went off to an Arcade Fire concert that we planned several months before the trip.

It. Was. Awesome. Hyde Park is huge. As I tried to explain before, the parks in England aren't little things like in the U.S. So they fenced off part of the park specifically for this concert. And there were 60,000 people there. There were so many booths with food and stuff. Quite the party. Arcade Fire was great (there were quirky little videos to accompany the songs... and ribbon dancing), but honestly, I thought the best part came from the opening act of Mumford & Sons. They deserved a concert in Hyde Park all on their own. They sound just as excellent as on their album, even more so. They played a few new songs too. I have to say, though, that this concert was a new experience for me. We were close to the front of the stage with these 60,000 people so you can imagine the shoving. People here apparently get excited and throw their beers because I got hit three times. Yum. So I came home smelling like smoke and alcohol, but I had the sweet folky sounds of Mumford keeping a smile on my face.

Well, that's June, y'all. I'll be posting more about London and about our trip up north soon. Then maybe I'll finally be caught up, who knows?