Home for the Holidays

It was wonderful to be home for the holidays- and I do love the Christmas spirit!! We decorated the tree, listened to Christmas music and best of all ate and ate and ate! It was really nice to get away from the big city life for awhile, which made it hard to go back.

London Eye

There was one more thing that I wanted to do before I left London for Winter Break- take a flight on the London Eye!! I had always wanted to go on it, but never had the chance. So, the night before my flight back to California, Matt and I decided to go. We ended up in a pod with only about 10 other people (and the pods are pretty big), so we weren't cramped! The views we had while rotating around the giant ferris wheel were spectacular!! We could see all of London and even as far as Wembley Stadium. We could even spot the ferris wheel in Hyde Park. The ride takes about 30 minutes to go around, which is slow enough that you don't feel like you're moving at all! I got some stunning pictures of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament lit up at night and some nice views of the River Thames cutting through London in the night. It was awesome and I am so glad I got to do it, especially the night before I left!! (Like a farewell to London for a few weeks!)

Christmastime in London

The Christmas spirit definitely came a bit earlier for me while in London! Because the English don't celebrate Thanksgiving, they start their Christmas festivities in early November. Everywhere I went, there were Christmas trees, lights, and other decorations. In Westfield shopping center (mall), there was a giant Santa's snow kingdom that had been created just for the season. There were the Oxford Street Christmas lights, which are different every year and a small band playing Christmas songs outside of Harrods. It was wonderful having the holiday spirit spread throughout the city!!


In the beginning of December, Matt and I went to see Agatha Christie's play "Mousetrap", which is one of the longest running plays in London! I saw why too- it was really good! It was a murder mystery that was so well done, we were totally surprised at who the murderer was in the end. It was really different than seeing a West End musical, but I enjoyed it just as much. Afterwards, we walked by the Leicester Square "Fun Fair". The fair took up the entire square, and had fake snow being blown around, quite a few rides, and game huts. It was pretty late, so we didn't stop to play any of the games that night. On our walk back to Victoria, we passed a gigantic tree in Trafalgar Square and another under Parliament and Big Ben.




I heard about Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland in November, and had really wanted to go sometime before my flight back home for the break. The weekend before I flew home, Matt, Holly and I went to the Carnival and had an awesome evening!! Winter Wonderland was full of authentic German Markets, an over-priced ice skating rink, rides, a ferris wheel, and lots of food! The entire area was lit up and the Christmas spirit was definitely in the air. I tried mulled wine, ate a chocolate covered banana and a lemon crêpe, and went on a few rides- one through the Fun House. After leaving Hyde Park, we walked to Leicester Square's Fun Fair and Matt tried to win me a stuffed animal by 'fishing'. I played too, but I couldn't even get one of the fish. Matt figured the game out, and won me a unicorn that I named Jewel. :)

Spending a few weeks of the holidays in London was wonderful and with all the festivities around the city, I couldn't wait to get home to see all the decorations up in my house!

Class Fieldtrips!

One of the best parts about studying in such a historically and culturally rich city as London, is that most of my courses involve fieldtrips at least once throughout the term!


My Theatre in Performance class visited the Globe Theater (both the new and the location of the original one). We took a detailed tour and learned about the area in which the Globe was located and the history of theatre in Shakespeare's time. The new Globe looks very much like the original, and there are still performances in it over the summer when it's warm (because it is an open air theatre).




For my Nineteenth century London class, we would go on fieldwalks throughout different areas of London. We would observe the architecture, statues, and religious houses to make conclusions about the area in the nineteenth century (as most of London's streets and buildings are the same as they were in the nineteenth century).

My Art and Society class went on fieldtrips each week. The first hour of class would be devoted to a lecture on campus and the last two hours, we would either go to a significant church, gallery, or museum. The first week of class, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which was designed by Christopher Wren. We hiked up 530 steps to the golden gallery, which is arguably one of the best views of London. On the way up, we passed the 'whispering gallery', in which one person can whisper against the wall and on the other side of the circle within the dome, another person can hear exactly what was said. What a fun first class! The next week we went to the Banqueting House, which was, and still is, a place of entertainment for Royalty. Charles I was executed at the Banqueting House and it is now a museum open to the public. Our class discussed the paintings on the ceiling of the Banqueting House, as they are considered very significant and unique pieces of work painted by Sir Peter Paul Rubens. In the weeks after, we visited the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square and many other museums and smaller galleries scattered throughout London.








The fieldtrips that I've taken in my classes so far have enhanced my experience in London, as I am getting to learn with the original pieces in front of me, whether it is a building, painting, or district in London. It is indescribable being able to go to the National Portrait Gallery to research and take notes on a painting that I need to write a paper on, and actually being able to sit there with the original 8x10 foot painting in front of me! (I did this for a paper on the painting 'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' I had for my Art and Society class).

Thanksgiving in London

Celebrating Thanksgiving in a country in which it has no meaning was hard. On Thanksgiving Day, I had classes all day long just as if it were any other day. It was really unusual for me, as I am used to spending the day eating with family. I ended up going out to see a movie (Four Christmases), as I tried to get my mind off my homesickness. It was the first day that I really just wanted to be at home.

Then, on Saturday, I went to my friend Sarah's flat in the East End for a full Thanksgiving dinner at hers. I volunteered to make my grandparent's cranberry sauce recipe and got all the ingredients to take to her flat because I didn't have a blender to make it beforehand. She had invited Annie, another girl in my halls, and so Annie and I went together. We arrived to find that Sarah's boyfriend had invited more people and there were nine of us altogether! My cranberry sauce turned out excellent (I think so anyway!) and the dinner was really tasty and made me feel like I wasn't missing Thanksgiving totally....though it really was nothing like home :)

Day Trip to Oxford

This last Saturday, Matt and I decided to go on a day trip to Oxford! Most people know Oxford because it is where the infamous University of Oxford is located- the oldest university in the English speaking world!!

We took the "Oxford tube" to get there, which is a coach that runs continuously from London to Oxford. It took about an hour and a half to get there and when we did, my first views of the city were stunning. The buildings were beautiful!




First view after getting off the coach...
So then after getting a bite to eat, we walked around the town and discovered how pedestrian friendly the city is- very walkable! The streets were full of people going shopping and there were popular stores everywhere- most definitely a shopper's paradise. It was pretty crowded and people were performing Christmas music in the streets, even though it is still November!


We explored a few of Oxford's colleges- the university is split up into many colleges that have their own structure and activities. Every member of the university, including faculty, is a part of a college. Think of it like the houses in Harry Potter! :-)







This is the Bodleian Library, which is the second largest library in the United Kingdom following the British Library. It houses over 8 million volumes!! Visitors could not go inside.




Most of the colleges are shut to visitors, which is understandable as there are so many tourists and that could easily disturb the students who are actually studying in the colleges. Well, Christ Church College, one of the most famous, is open to the public- for a fee of course! We toured the college and it was actually quite worth it. We saw where certain scenes from Harry Potter were filmed- such as the Great Hall and many of the corridors I took pictures of!!















A man playing the bagpipes in the street!!! We don't get that at home!







We found Oxford Castle, but were both disappointed with it. There wasn't much to it and we decided just to see it and then leave. I quickly came to the conclusion that Oxford doesn't have very much to see in it and the best part about it is that you can see everything in the city by just exploring it on foot.

One of the coolest areas of Oxford, besides Christ Church College, was the protected market that we found off a side street. There were all sorts of shops and Matt and I both got the most amazing cookie at "Ben's Cookies"!! Earlier in the day, though, we had a bad experience with the market, as the butcher decided to leave a freshly slit open animal hanging in the middle of the small walkway, which was NOT a very pleasant sight.



And then we took the Oxford tube back to the streets of London!!

So all in all, I was happy that I went to Oxford, but just didn't find it to be one of my favorite cities. It was definitely a must-see place to go though! And who knows, maybe my opinion is affected by the fact that I wasn't feeling very well that day!