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!