Rubens, British Museum, Another Play

Me and the Black Prince

Hello world. Not a whole lot to go on about in the last few days. Friday we had an in-London excursion. The first place we went was called the Banqueting House I think. We got there at ten, and they were still cleaning up from a party the night before, so we were given an hour to go do whatever we wanted. I wasn't feeling overly social, so I took of by meself and headed for the Thames. I could spend days walking along this river, there's so much to see. I took pictures of the London Eye (giant, hugely expensive ferris wheel that I may go on one day), the houses of Parliament, Big Ben, etc. On my return trip I ran in to Sarah Marshall and Britin, and we found a sweet little park and took a few pics. The Banqueting House was one of those places that is really interesting for about twelve minutes and then it's time to be done. It's the place where one of the kings was beheaded (a George, I believe), which is kinda ironic because his father was the king that commissioned the building. Architecturally it's sweet because it's the first classical (aka renaissance) building in London. The lower level wasn't much to look at, but the actual banquet area is impressive. There are a number of big murals on the ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens (yeah, cool). They depict Minerva (Athena) in a few places, and show a baby being given two crowns (one for England, one for Scotland) signifying the coming together of the two countries. They were beautiful, but really high up. Can't fault Rubens though...the man was good.

Headed out and grabbed some American food. My order of ribs was really small (America just does it right), but life sucks and then you die, haha. Then we headed over to the British Museum which is freaking SWEET! I played paper rock scissors with a giant hand statue, saw the sculptures from the Parthenon (England really knows how to plunder), got to hold a flint knife from the late ice age (5000 years old!) at a hands-on booth, saw the Lindow man (one of the bodies preserved by peat bogs that I've read about and wanted to see ever since) and some mummies (dead ones, thankfully...although killing them with that knife would make for some sweet pics). There are like 1.5 million pieces at the museum, so I'ma have to go back a couple of times.

Saturday I went to four libraries--the British Library for some research and three local libraries to get more reading material for other research. Then at 645 I headed out with Cameron, Dr. Howe, Katie Bruce, and Laura to go see The World's Wife which is a play based on a collection of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy (British poet laureate) of the same name. It's a one-woman play where the actor acts out (I know...I'm eloquent) the poems one by one. The poems are written from the perspective of wives of famous men (i.e. Mrs. Freud, Mrs. Midas, Queen Kong, etc). It was very well done and Trafalgar Studios was a very small theatre (like...four rows small) so the actress was right in front of us the whole time.

Yesterday was church, today I finished the first half of Northanger Abbey and wrote a quiz for it, now it's off to class and then probably doing a little more planning for freaking ATHENS! And that's all I have to say about that.