Notting Hill Carnival

So it just so happens that the LARGEST STREET PARTY IN EUROPE was yesterday and today, the first weekend we were in London. This is the Notting Hill Carnival, which is a big/loud/fantastic Caribbean-themed festival sort of thing that has been going on since the late 1950s. It was started to counter racial attacks that were pretty widespread in the UK at the time. Now, it's just a (3 1/2 square mile) block party about unity and happiness and joy and all things good!

Susannah and I went together and this was the first thing we saw when we exited the tube station: crowds of police officers on duty to make sure the party didn't get out of hand.

This is some of the parade from afar...

...but looking at things from afar isn't really our style so we jumped right in and joined the parade!

A lot of people were dressed up in exotic costumes.

And everyone was dancing to the live music coming from the parade floats.

We met some Spanish friends...this is Chris looking very serious. And I'm obviously amused by something!

Susannah got some attention, too!

We also met some beautiful costumed ladies who were nice enough to pose for a picture.

Another Full Day

Our first ticketed event for the GIL program was a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington. A few of my friends and I decided to make a day of the 40 minute trip and hit up a few museums in the area before the evening concert.

Our first stop was a science museum for kids that was down the street. The first exhibit we saw was a history of medicine and medical practices reaching back to the 14th century. It was super interesting and complete with exquisite models demonstrating the techniques and practices of doctors for each time period. I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of this exhibit because everything was behind glass and I haven't yet figured out how to turn off my flash :(

The next exhibit was probably my favorite. It was called "the launchpad" and was pretty much a glorified playground for science kids and contained geeky toys about the physical properties of everything around us.

For this activity, we sprayed a thin layer of water on a cold piece of glass. If you just looked at it with your bare eye, the glass looked clear. However, when you look with a polarized lens, you can see these pretty patterns form as the water freezes!

Here we are under a thermal camera. Can you make out which one is me?

Deb was trying to circuit a light bulb, but it was much harder than it looked...











There was another exhibit we visited that was all about raw materials and different uses for them.

This was a really interesting display made out of layers and layers of different recycled materials.

Here you can see the layers a little bit easier.

I learned at the museum that the only part of a telephone that cannot be recycled is the phone cord, because there's no way to uncoil it. Maybe that's another reason why most phones are cordless these days!




We also visited the Victoria and Albert Museum. The part of the museum I spent time in contains a lot of great sculpture-portraits. There are other wings of the museum: a great fashion exhibit, and a special Grace Kelly exhibit right now. I decided to save those for another day, though, as my feet were pretty tired!

We all went outside to eat our packed lunches in the garden, and we sat by this refreshing fountain.

So many adorable little British children were playing in the water!

I stayed out here for awhile and read my book. I also decided to lay down and look at the blue sky that is SO very rare in London.

This was incredibly soothing; I haven't seen clouds this white and fluffy since I've been here!










After a brief stop at a coffee shop, we headed to our final destination, the Royal Albert Hall!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We were there to see a performance in the 116th season of the BBC Proms Concerts, which is a tradition that was started to bring the best of classical music to a wide audience. 'Prom' is short for 'promenade,' because over 1,000 people could purchase cheap tickets to stand in the middle of the arena to view the concerts. The whole idea of promming keeps this tradition casual, even though it's eloquently performed classical music. This particular program featured Beethoven's Ninth (so it included the famous 'Ode to Joy'), and both an orchestra and a choral group performed. Also, we had seated tickets (instead of the standing ones in the lower arena) in one of the upper circles, giving us this massive view from above the stage!

HAIR!

Susannah, Deborah and I decided to start our London theatre experiences off with a bang by getting tickets to a performance of the musical HAIR. It was so much fun! The show is a famous musical about US cultural issues in the 1960s: hippies, the draft, anti-war protests, etc.












The actors were fabulous (the New York Broadway ensemble!) and they did a really great job of getting people in the audience involved. There were several times throughout the show that the audience was encouraged to join in the staged protests and songs. Sometimes they came into the audience and played with people's hair, too!

This is a picture I snagged of the stage at intermission. The show was full of trippy-colored lights!

The audience was invited up after the show to dance on the stage. Being the theatre enthusiast that I am, I couldn't resist the chance to show off my rockin' dance moves with all the famous Broadway stars!

Here's a picture from the stage of all the BORING people in the audience who didn't come up and dance!

Being onstage allowed a good picture of some of the actors hanging out on "fire escapes" to the side.


Super fun show! Super great day!

Grinnell-in-London

The same day we did Piccadilly Circus, we had an orientation meeting with the whole group of Grinnell students (about 25 or so) at the Grinnell-in-London site. That afternoon, we decided to head over to the area early and look around a bit. Just down the street is The British Museum. Isn't it pretty?

Like many of the museums in London, The British Museum is free to everyone. I really appreciate this because it makes me feel like I don't have to see everything in one day. I mostly just got a good feel for the layout, and then spent a lot of time in only a few exhibit areas. The British Museum is HUGE, so there will definitely be some return visits!

This particularly day, I spent most of my time in the Greek and Roman Sculpture/Architecture sections. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from these exhibits:

This is a sculpture of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Because she's one of the more famous Greek god/desses, there are a ton of depictions of her in a variety of mediums. However, I think this one is my favorite. In many other art pieces, Aphrodite is depicted as this untouchable, unbreakable, larger than life symbol of womanhood (which is also incredibly beautiful). Here, she is shown bathing (a common task that normal women complete each day) and is clearly surprised by something to the side or behind her, which shows a bit of vulnerability in her spirit. It brings Aphrodite down to a level of human connection that fits her well, I think.

This is the bottom chunk of a column that was recovered at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. It's a little difficult to get a sense of the scale of this photograph, but I can tell you that the doors in the background are much closer than you probably think. These columns were HUGE. It's amazing to think of how much work and resources were put into these pieces. The Greeks were certainly dedicated to their form of worship!

This is from a decorative monument found at one of the temples to Athene. It is not easy to make out, but the very right part of this piece originally continued on to be a lion's head. If you look closely you can see the beginnings of the lion.

This carved inscription served as a monument outside the tomb of a rich Greek man (whose name I can't remember; It must not have been that important!). Just an idea for when I eventually die... :)














Even though I spent most of my time in the Greek and Roman sections, there were a few pieces from various other exhibits that caught my attention:

This is an intensely detailed and accurate Aztec sculpture of a snake.

The Aztecs were so detailed that they even sculpted the UNDERSIDE of the snake! This is a shot from below.

There were many beautiful wall mosaics lining the stairways out of one of the exhibits. I didn't catch which region or time period these were from, but I will definitely be making a return trip to find out!

Please show this picture to Circe. I love her so much that (like the Egyptians) I, too, will mummify her body when she dies!









It was raining when we went into the museum, but when we came out the rain had ceased and left some interesting clouds behind.

This picture was taken from a street nearby both the museum and the school site.

We headed to our orientation, met up with some cool people, and are now getting ready to start our studies. Classes start this coming Tuesday, and we already have a bunch of plays and field trips scheduled for the coming weeks!

Picadilly Circus Adventure

To get to know the area, my friends and I have been trying out this tactic where we pick roughly a place we want to go, we wander around looking at pretty things (usually ending up in some random place across the city), and then we find the nearest tube station and take a train back to our flat. It's worked out well so far! There's no better way to familiarize yourself with the area than to get lost and find your way home, right? Right! Our second day here, we decided to head in the direction of Picadilly Circus, which is a famous street in London.

We made it there and looked at some beautiful buildings.

(sidenote: pretty much EVERY building here is beautiful)

After awhile we started to do our wandering thing, and we wandered into a park...

Wander, wander, wander...

Oh Whoa! That must have been GREEN PARK!

Because now we're at BUCKINGHAM PALACE!

There's a ROYAL GUARD!

And that's the ROYAL LEAFBLOWER???

All in all, a successful (albeit accidental) visit to Buckingham Palace. We discovered that this fall they're opening up the state rooms within the building for tours, so I'll definitely be hitting that up. It's not actually a guided tour, we just wander (which I like to do!), and I'm most excited that the tour includes access to the private gardens within the estate!

Oh, we also learned some helpful things today:

Street signs look like this. They're posted much higher up than I'm used to looking for street signs, at about the second story level on the exterior of most corner buildings. It is rare to see a street sign hung on a pole at the street like we have in the States.

Because there are so many one way streets, directions of which way to look for oncoming traffic are painted on the street for pedestrians. It is even more important for those walking to pay attention here because the driver and NOT the pedestrian has the right of way on the road. And let me tell you, drivers assert this right. They don't stop or slow down, they just honk at people in the street and hope they move.

Okay this one wasn't important I just thought it was funny... ;)