Weekend Exploration

This weekend was so jam-packed. Saturday we went up to Cambridge and had a tour and then wondered around for a while, and ended the night with evensong in the amazingly beautiful Kings Cross Cathedral. Its one of those places you walk into and just say "wow" and continue to stare up into the height and intricacies of the ceiling and the beautiful colored stained glass. Their boys choir was incredible as well, thats something I didn't realize was such a big deal here in London -- Boys Choirs, you get these 12 year old sopranos singing sooo high. The choir is so skilled though and the way their voices echo in that space is just magical. We stayed for a Messaein organ recital, but it was really bizarre and hard to enjoy, he's on the verge of atonality and so for me I have to step back from it and just sort of observe the strangeness of the compositions.

After that long day, we woke up early the next morning and drove to Stonehenge. It was pretty cool! We all got audio tours which were sort of ridiculous. I mean, very informative, but comical in the way you communicate with this speaking voice box. So there were some good laughs and try-to-be-original photos taken in front of this prehistoric mystery. parts of the past our ancestors left behind. They recently found a body buried near there that was 2,500 years old. pretty crazy! After stonehenge we made our way to Bath and I paid my 9 pounds to see the Roman Baths. It was pretty cool! Its one of the few remains of when romans used to rule what is now England. Basically this sweet hot spring has been pumping millions of gallons of water out of the ground for hundreds of years, so Romans used it to make all these baths, and people from all around came and formed the town of "bath" around these baths, and the spring still flows today. it was pretty amazing!

Sunday night you can imagine the tiredness. Regardless of that though -- Monday I headstarted my day walking around London with Dylan looking for a good deal on theatre shows we're both interested to see. I don't have tons of money to spare on shows, and fate must have wanted us to do otherwise because the one show "Speed the Plow" featuring Kevin Spacey, is sold out completely, and the Magic Flute South African style offers no student discounts! We agreed to reconvene at 6:30pm for Speed the Plow to see if there were any return tickets, and if not, have an adventure. On the way to the theatre, we pick up the free London Paper (which are handed out on every corner and littered in every tube train)--and under tonights events were two things of interest -- 1 BOYZ 2 MEN, yes i almost dropped everything and paid 33 pounds to have my heart stolen by those lovely, now very old romantic men. and the other thing was Jimmy Eat World. So speed the plow rejected us again, and on a whim we took the tube to the station where the jimmy eat world concert was. sure enough we are immediately approached by scalpers with tickets to the show. tickets were supposed to be 18.50, but since we dont have tons of money AND this whole concert idea was so spur of the moment, we walked away from a 15 pound ticket offer, and somehow managed to get tickets for 12 pounds each! So I went to a concert that night and it was really fun! A band from Belgium called "Styrafoam" opened with drums, synthesizer, and guitar --some dancey good songs remniscent of The Postal Service, but a little rockier. And Jimmy Eat world was a blast! The venue was great! Its called the Roundhouse and its completely round so you can circle around and get pretty close.

There's London for ya-- full of surprises. Tuesday I had art class in the Tate Britain, which I really really loved. They had neoclassical sculptures including the three graces, and they were all so delicate and beautifully carved in milky marble making it seem so pure and perfect. I also fell in love with the William Blake room which had lots of his paintings and sketches and a few original books (but not the "Innocence and Experience" books--i wonder where those are!). His paintings are very spiritual and imaginative, people used to think he was crazy but theres some cool stuff in his paintings that you just don't find in the formal paintings of his contemporaries. Above all else, he's a poet, but its cool to see this stuff as part of his life occupation being a creative artist. Tuesday night we headed off to Rational Rec -- the interarts monthly event led by our music teacher Matthew. His 3 dance pieces were featured and they also did screen printing and we contributed to making a book all in one night! It was pretty cool, esp the dance party at the end with some fun techno music.

And today, we had class with matthew and guest speakers who were german performers from last night's performance who talked to us about composing and mixing styles/genres of dance, music, and how to write scores that are different than traditional scores. it was a cool class! tonight we went to see our first ballet, which i really really liked a lot. the body can do so many amazing things! they also opened up with a really thoughtful performance which integrated video projections and audio recorded voices of the dancers themselves talking about what its like to be on stage, and then the performance really gets going... there was this one american guy dancer who was so beautiful and captivating. his body just flowed, it was like magic! Later there were pieces done by whole orchestras, the music alone was beautiful (Chopin, Debussy), but the dancing with it added such life! I really enjoyed the ballet. It was in the Royal Opera House which is SO FANCY its not even funny! We're going to see Salome there tomorrow night and dressing up. And THEN this weekend I'm off to FRANCE to meet Rachael and our friend from previous travels in the US, Ru who is a wonderful woman from Croatia studying English and French currently studying in Paris! I'll be there Friday-Monday, getting back to London just in time for my 21st Birthday on March 11th. :) So there is a lot going on!

I hope you all are having wonderful weeks and not getting too jealous of this crazy experience I'm having, I appreciate your love and support and miss lots of you from back home. Take care,

Jodi