Operation Cut-Out Detail

Friday, October 23rd

This morning we went on a T.S. Eliot Walk led by Professor Dan Taylor from Bethel University who happens to be on sabbatical right now, but had been traveling through the UK and arranged to intersect with us on England Term here. Based on a later class discussion, I believe we semi-concluded that doing a literary walk around Eliot’s “The Waste Land” didn’t really serve to illuminate the poem in anyway, though I think we enjoyed the efforts anyways.

This afternoon I took the chance to do a ton of laundry, which made me SO happy!! I’m not sure if I will be washing my clothes more or less frequently when I return from England Term, though I certainly have a new standard for what it means for a shirt or jeans to be dirty, haha. This was one of those times where I just washed as much as possible because I could.

After my laundry adventure I squeezed in going to see Kensington Palace which had been on my list of things to see in London. It’s located at the far end of Hyde Park, which was absolutely stunning to walk through in October as opposed to September when the leaves hadn’t changed much yet. My mom and I had visited Kensington when I was in 6th grade, so seeing Princess’s Diana’s dresses inside did remind me of our previous visit, though many other things I didn’t remember seeing at all. Overall, it wasn’t the most stunning thing I’ve seen (I mean come on, I’ve see the Palace of Versailles!), but I was definitely glad I went.

Later that evening I made another birthday phone call to a friend which only added to yet another successful day.

Saturday, October 24th

I’m not a huge runner by nature, but for some reason I had it in me to wake up at the crack of dawn and go running in Hyde Park this morning. A couple of my roommates had done it several times while in London and it seemed like a great way to get some time along, so I gave it a go. I was reminded of how serene mornings are when practically no one is awake yet. I love feeling like I’m bursting with energy when everything else looks like its asleep; I think this comes from my craving for productivity, and therefore if I wake up early that means I’m getting things done before everyone else. Crazy logic, I know. Anyway, I took the tube over to Hyde Park and ran while I listened to worship music. The park was beautiful: it was cloudy outside, but everything was wet since it had rained during the night and the trees were all changing colors. The only other people around were fellow runners, walkers, and bikers. I really enjoyed my effort to get away by myself. Plus, in my opinion, listening to worship music while doing anything makes that activity that much better.

We still had class this morning even though it was Saturday. (No comment.) But afterwards in the afternoon I went to the National Portrait Gallery, which ended up taking me all day to walk through. Surprise, surprise. I loved seeing several art pieces I recognized and other world-famous pieces by Monet and Van Gogh. My only disappointments were that 1) the “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” was out on loan, and 2) I couldn’t find “Still Life with Drapery” by Paul Cezanne, which I thought was in the National Gallery, but after I Google-ed it I realized it’s at The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Go figure, haha. The first one I mentioned was a painting I studied in Humanities, and the second one was the painting I painted with a group in AP Euro.

Sunday, October 25th

Today I got to go to Holy Trinity Brompton for church again and absolutely loved it for the second time. On our way out from church (I came with some other students) we saw a kid who was wearing a MN Vikings hat and so of course we had to go over and say hi and introduce ourselves. It turned out that this man and his son were visiting London from Edinburgh, Scotland – where they now called home, but it seemed like the dad had been from the MN area and he still had family there. What a small world! We had fun chatting for a bit and he was so excited to meet us even if it was brief; he even invited us to visit his church if we were ever in Edinburgh again. Then, we nearly made it out the door before I saw another little boy wearing a Wisconsin shirt, so I just kept on a roll and asked if they were from Wisconsin or had been there by any chance. Turns out the shirt had nothing to do with actually being in the state. However, the dad said that he had recently just been in Florida for the Alpha Course and met several wonderful people from Madison, WI! Of course, I got very excited and proceeded to find out that they were probably affiliated with one of the prayer rooms in Madison. So cool!

After church I had lunch with the other Melissa that’s on the trip with me. We had a great conversation sitting outside ‘Pret A Manger’, eating lunch, drinking coffee, and enjoying the beautiful fall day!

This afternoon we met as a class at the British Library to see a performance of a section of Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon with an accompanying harp! It was quite the medieval experience. Mark Bruce was in heaven and the rest of us were enjoying our highly comfortable seats in the dim lighting of the theatre. Haha. Ok, it wasn’t exactly like that, but enough so for me to mention it. It was really interesting to hear that much Anglo-Saxon, I admit. Oh, and there were subtitles to help us out.

This evening I made another trip to Pizza Hut for dinner and then spent most of the night finishing reading “White Teeth”.