Tuesday marked our second trip outside the constant rumble of central London.  This time our destinations were Avebury and Salisbury, about 2 hours due west of London.

Avebury boasts one of the largest henges in England… think Stonehenge, but about 4 times the size (according to Wikipedia), older, and interactive.  In fact, much of the village of Avebury lies within the henge.  We had about 90 minutes to explore the area which, given the blustery conditions, was probably sufficient as several people ended up exploring the medieval church or hanging out in the souvenir shop.  The hardier souls walked the entire 1 mile circumference of the henge interspersed with frolicking in the grass and photo ops “pushing over” the stones.

Shortly after noon we loaded up the coach and made our way through the verdant English countryside to Salisbury.  The tallest church spire in England is perched atop the Salisbury Cathedral.  Peppered with many other historic sites and one of the oldest continuous markets in England, Salisbury had plenty to offer.  Among the afternoon activities were:  trekking to Old Sarum, a hilltop fort and the original sight of the city of Salisbury; climbing the Cathedral’s 400 foot (well, most of the way) spire; and an impromptu football match on a lovely pitch near the Cathedral.  If you score football by the number of times the ball passes between the posts then I suppose Cody’s team (comprising him, Jenna, Lindsey and Jenni) won.  If, on the other hand, you score by possession time and the number of completed passes then I submit that Team Laura/Kat/Jerry were victorious.

(today’s photos courtesy of Lindsey and Jerry)

But the good thing is, this is the time when each of us spend the majority of our free time working on independant projects that can only be done in London. Mine is on the wonderful British painter of light, JMW Turner.

Others are doing their projects on local gardens, English composers such as Purcell or Gilbert and Sullivan, or church architecture. In the past, the Beatles have been a source of inspiration. And who could forget William Shakespeare?

As we all try our best to get as much done as possible, we still have our final Arts Activity to go to, and for some of us that will be tonight. The show is the opera Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten. It was one of Britten’s operas to become relatively well known during his lifetime and is still performed widely today. The story focusses on a fishing village on the coast of the UK where Peter Grimes, a fisherman, has been wrongly accused of the murder if his apprentice. Though he is found innocent of the crime, his reputation is ruined and the idea of him as a murderer follows him everywhere. It is a tragic opera. I myself am anticipating it as Britten has a unique style characterized by large leaps in the vocal line and bordering on atonality. It should be a wonderful show.

Needless to say, our group passed up the fine art of bear bating to see a tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, at the Globe. We entered the theatre as groundlings — patrons with standing room tickets on the floor in front of the elevated stage — and quickly found a place just below the feet of the actors.

Now Romeo and Juliet is a long play to stand through and our poor hooves ached before the end. One woman, quite justifiably, fainted in the crowd. (Don’t worry, she was doing well after a few minutes off her feet).

The acting was excellent and the crowd responded exuberantly. Tears, jests, music, and elaborate swordplay were enterprises of great pitch and moment on the stage. Hats off  to the cast. Cheers to the theatre who gave us great tickets for only £5.

Its been a little too long since the last posting.  Sadly, (well, not sadly at all actually) we’re off shortly to hear the London Symphony Orchestra so I’ll have to keep this brief.

I occasionally wonder… If there was a way to plot on a map all of our daily journeys to and from multiple venues and galleries and shows and concert halls, what the spiderweb would look like. I also muse on how awesome a 3D representation of all the tube tunnels would look.  Hmm… I’ll try to coax more literary input from our overly be-journaled students in the near future. Stay tuned…

*Saturday morning addendum*

Chelsea beat me to the punch with her post last night. Also, due to an obstreperous wireless connection I’m still configuring the photos I was planning to attach to this post.  I’ll post this and add the photos later today…. oh… the LSO was magnificent.

Last Wednesday we went to Coventry Cathedral and Stratford-upon-Avon on our very first day-trip.  It was wonderful to get out into the countryside after a week of busy London. Those who managed to stay awake during the early morning coach ride were treated to glorious views of the English countryside, complete with fluffy sheep and neat hedgerows. However beautiful the landscapes were, Coventry Cathedral surely surpassed it. It’s actually two cathedrals in one; the original cathedral was destroyed during the Blitz, and all that remains is a shell of a nave and the tower. As a testament to Coventry’s perseverance and commitment to peacemaking, it was rebuilt in a way that preserves the past cathedral, but adds on a new nave that runs perpendicular. What I loved most about the cathedral was its inclusion of more modern approaches to religious visual art. Although many of the pieces were more abstract or non-representational, they still radiated symbolism and Christian teachings.

Stratford, in contrast, had a much more traditional feel. Many buildings from the Tudor era have been painstakingly maintained, especially ones that are related to William Shakespeare. Anne Hathaway’s (Shakespeare’s wife) cottage was especially beautiful, with large flower, vegetable and sculpture gardens and an orchard in full bloom. In the evening, we attended a play, As You Like It, by the Royal Shakespeare Company. We had wonderful seats, generously sponsored by Goshen College. Many people have stereotypes of Shakespeare’s plays being boring with archaic language, but the way in which the RSC  performed the play shattered these stereotypes—the actors interacted with the audience, and the setting was visually exquisite, and grew more elaborate as the play went on. It was a very full day to say the least, but definitely worth it! Hopefully our trip to Salisbury on Tuesday will be equally rewarding!

This morning our group of transient Goshenites  traveled en masse to  Westminster Abbey.

Following music and ceremony beneath the spectacular vaulted arches of the Cathedral, I made my way to the poets corner. Chaucer is buried in Westminster. I found his grave, along with the graves of poets like Lord Byron and Ben Jonson.

There is so much history here, and I’m sure that that Chaucer — that crass genius — would laugh if I had danced on his grave.

After our lovely class session, Deb took some of us students to see a group of women’s choirs at the ‘Various Voices’ festival in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.  They were from Germany, Colorado, and the UK.  Each group had a distinctive sound and fun personality, and as a music student it was interesting for me to compare and contrast the diction, repertoire, and presentation of the three groups.  Still, I suppose my favourite was the British group, a 7 women acapella group that did jazz standard covers, and (my personal favourite) a cover of the Beatles “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (but this is coming from a long-time Beatles fan here).

After the concert, the group who attended the women’s choirs walked along the South Bank to the Globe Theatre to purchase our tickets for Romeo and Juliet.  On the way we saw a group that was ‘knitting for peace’ and they had the most amazing chair sleeve I’ve ever seen.  I have an incriminating photo of Deb sitting in it, but alas I have no way to upload it on this computer.  No worries – I’ll get it to Jerry as soon as I can!

The evening has been laid back.  A good number of us have gone to shows this evening, though a fair few remained at our beautiful hotel St Athans to spend time with the hotel staff and build relationships with the locals.  I myself am currently in the lounge, waiting to be introduced to ‘Jumbo’, a staff member who is relatively famous amoung previous Arts in London units.   Londoners are just so friendly, its hard not to want to sit and chat all day with them.

Reporting to you live from London, this is Dara Joy.

Cheers.

13.5 hours of sleep does a body real good!  So does a large english breakfast, which consists of bacon, egg, a stange (but good) sausage, beans, cooked tomato, toast, and tea or coffee.  After that amazing start to the day, we got to work burnning off those Calories with another, larger tour of the city.  Today’s tour got us used to the London Underground (the subway system), and we visited many of the venues and sites that we’ll ned to find later for mandatory performances.

My group (music) visited Barbican’s Centre, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Tate Modern, The National Theatre, Westminster, and The Royal Opera House.  Other exciting occurances were witnessing my first May Day celebration (and first time talking with Communitsts), getting the hang of the Tube (there seems to be 3x the number of lines as the Chicago L), and exploring some more of our neigborhood by myself afterwards.

Having been on Study-Service Term in Senegal this time last year, I keep trying to relate these experiences with those past ones.  However, I think I’m slowly learning to just take things as they come, one day (and step) at a time.

So we divided into our three groups (music, theater, art) and began our tour. I am in the music group, so our tour looked like this:

1. interesting lunch at a corner sandwhich stop where you never knew exactly what you were ordering

2. finally full and with a little more energy, we headed to the British Library, where we found a painting entitled “Paradoxymoron”. This was a painting of several bookcases, but as we moved from side to side, the bookcases moved with us. Interesting, to say the least. Definitely had us students entertained!

3. Next we headed to find “the park with a statue of Gandhi” . Unfortunately, we never found it! =)

4. We walked to the British Museum and had nearly an hour to look around inside. I would say the original Rosetta Stone received the most attention at least from the GC students. Chelsea Kaufman’s favorite piece in the museum was the Elgin marbles. These marbles came from the top of the Pantheon in Greece. Lord Elgin of England took them and used his own money to bring them over to London, but eventually he went broke because of the cost. Overall, we really enjoyed the museum.

5. Finally, we headed over to Florida State University (FSU) – London where we will be studying the next three weeks.  We had a quick orientation to the building and then recieved our ID cards for our time here. After a final few words from our leaders, we were on our own for the rest of the evening.

Some chose to explore the city via buses, some headed to the a play “Parlor Song”, and some returned to the museum for an Iran Hip Hop perfromer.

Day one was full, fun but definitely exhausting. Many of us were in bed by 7:30 p.m. last night!

Now on to day two! We were given our first taste of an English breakfast this morning. Eggs, sausage, bacon, tomato, baked beans & toast. Absolutely wonderful!

Today we get oriented to the Tube, the buses and the rest of the city! And probably a lot more walking!

We left Goshen around 12:30 this afternoon, following the epic release of the Spain Morocco group and the German SSTers. While these folks journey out to investigate foreign countries with difficult languages, like German, we limited our adventures to a country that speaks, merely, English.

Our group, having studied English since our screaming birth, consists of monolingual experts. Despite our vast knowledge, we were shocked by languages present in the Chicago International Airport. Hindi, German, Spanish? Does this mean that airports are more culturally diverse than our own Goshen College?

Perhaps. But still we continue to wait for our plane to depart, pondering our upcoming flight to this nation’s mother country: England. Our group has carved out a small section of the gate M11 waiting area and students are amusing themselves with good conversation, cards, naps, and short books. London here we come!