motion

First and foremost, I must say, Happy Birthday Mommy!!  Today is my mommy's birthday but obviously I am unable to see her and tell her happy birthday in person so I shall say it here.  I will be baking your cake as soon as I get home!

In other news, we went to Oxford today.  Our photography focus was capturing motion.  First, we toured the Bodleian Library.  Some of the tour was quite fascinating but our tour guide was a bit long-winded making for a rather long, drawn-out tour.  It was fun nonetheless; you know me, books + art/architectural history + religion + history = one happy Katy.  After that tour, Elana and I had lunch at a restaurant called The Nosebag.  Sounds appetizing, huh?  Well, chances are we never would have found it, let alone even consider eating there had it not been for the dining suggestion of Elana's friend.  However, it turned out to be delicious.  And huge!  Elana ate one of the salads included in my meal and I was still full at the end of lunch.  We then ventured on down the street for a tour of Christ Church.  Our tour guide James for this tour was marvelous.  I do believe that we have decided that he is one of our favorite tour guides, second only to our beloved Hugh.  I really love the way we tour because we get to go to all kinds of off-limits places at most of the places we see.  It's awesome.  I'm pretty sure that the other visitors hate us.  But anyway, during our tour of the Christ Church gardens, an adorable cat started following us.  Now, we have had a few tag-along tourists when we tour, but this cat is by far our favorite.  But back to the tour itself...  One of the college's most famous (if not the most famous) scholar was Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland.  In fact, Alice in Wonderland is based on the daughter, Alice, of one of the school's deans and her adventures in and around the campus.  James showed us dozens of real-life details of the campus and told us of the stories that inspired Lewis Carroll and his work.  It was pretty cool.

Earlier, I was talking to a friend who asked if I had gotten what I wanted out of this experience.  I told him that I think I have.  One thing that I am particularly proud of is my ability to navigate through an otherwise unfamiliar city with only a map.  Also, I have learned and gained confidence in using the Tube and Metro (and any subway system for that matter).  For this, I must thank Elana who mentored me in the foreign ways of the subway systems.  I have also made some fabulous friends and had some wonderful experiences.  I also want to give a shout out and thank you to all of my friends and family who have been reading my blog regularly.  I never thought that people would care so much or that what I write would be halfway entertaining enough for people to keep reading.  In any case, I love you all and can't wait to see you when I get back!!

thinking differently

This morning, Dr. Everhart charged me with the task of navigating us to the public library in the Barbican Centre as I am good with directions, though I was relatively unaware that this was public knowledge.  In any case, I got us there in time for our 10am tour appointment.  The Barbican Library is the largest public library in the city of London.  They have a large portion of their library devoted to a music collection.  The Barbican Library is located in the middle of a business district of London so the largest demographic of their patronage is men aged 25-40.  Elana and I couldn't help but note that this is clearly where we need to be looking for our respective future British husbands. 

Our photography focus of the day was "thinking differently" which was not the easiest to capture since we were not allowed to take pictures within St. Paul's Cathedral which was the next stop on our itinerary for the day.  The Cathedral was very interesting nonetheless and we had a very good tour guide, John.  In fact, he showed us the geometric staircase in the Cathedral which was used in the filming of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  So, we just had to see for ourselves.  The FSU Study Centre has a collection of DVDs in its library available for checkout so we went and checked it out to watch.  Sure enough, the staircase appears about 40 or so minutes in.  (Actually, we were investigating where in the movie it would come in and found that perhaps it was in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban instead so I emailed my friends who are hardcore Harry Potter fans and sure enough, they responded with the exact movie and scene in which it appears - yeah, they are a little more than fans.)

To end the day, I went to the grocery store (as suggested by our new BFF Elvis) to get a kidney pie as instructed by my friend Donnie.  Yeah, Donnie said it was just called kidney pie, that there wasn't actually kidney in it.  Yeah, he was wrong.  It was alright.  At least I can return home to tell Donnie that I tried it.

brighton

My beloved Fran took Elana and I to Brighton today where we shopped and ate the day away.  We had a marvelous time.  The shops in Brighton are different from the ones on Oxford Street where Fran and I went shopping last Saturday.  Brighton's shops are far more quirky though there are mainstream stores as well.  Our lunch consisted of positively delicious paninis and ice cream.  And of course, we went and sat on the beach for a bit as well.  The beach is different than Florida beaches.  I think that I will use that topic (Brighton beach vs. Florida beaches) for one of my projects - perhaps my digital film.  In any case, I took a picture of Fran with my little sheep on the beach:

After relaxing on the beach for awhile, we strolled up to the Brighton Pier where we made sure to get some rock (a type of candy similar to a candy cane but straight and varying in flavors and sizes) for our favorite FSU Study Centre security guard, Elvis.  From the pier we returned to the beach for a seaside drink then ventured on to Jamie's Italian for dinner.  The restaurant is owned by the famed chef Jamie Oliver and it was fantastic.  We ate so, so much food!  Then we returned to our flats stuffed and pleasantly tired.

replicas

The day's task involved finding a photo on Flickr taken from British Museum and attempting to replicate it as best we could.  This is the photo I chose to mimic; below is photo I took:

Pretty close, huh?  The subject is a portion of the Elgin Marbles, a topic of much discussion for many people.  I used the lines and angles of the walls, corners, ceiling, and base to find the best position in which to imitate the original photo.  I absolutely love Classical Greek/Roman sculpture.  I cannot even begin articulate the excitement I experience when walking through the museum today.  I was also taken with much of the Asian art, specifically those pieces depicting the Buddha and bodhisattvas.  Here, I am imitating the mudras used by the Buddha to my left:  

After touring the museum, we all had high tea at the restaurant in the museum.  Tara and I felt so fancy, holding our pinkies high in the air while drinking our tea.  I then proceeded to go down to the museum gift shop and buy two lovely books: Symbols and Their Hidden Meanings and London's Strangest Tales: Extraordinary But True Stories.  Those will be a couple of good reads for the plane ride home. 

last day before class starts

This morning we went on a historical bus - or coach, as they call it here in the UK - tour of London.  Our original tour guide Shawn hurt his back so Liz gave us our tour.  She was quite funny and gave us a great tour of London.  It made me quite excited to start class and officially tour the many historical and marvelous sites here in London.  One cool thing we saw today was the changing of the guards - here is a video of the guards marching up for there ceremony:



The rest of the day was spent wandering around Old Spitalfields Market where people sell all kinds of nifty handmade items.  Some things were really neat but well out of our price range.  Later, we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant that's a stone's throw from the FSU Study Centre.  It was really good food but I've found that customer service in restaurants is very different here from in America.  American waiters are so attentive to their customers but that is far less true here in the UK.  A good part of that is due to the fact that American wait-staff work for tips while that is not so much the case here.  Just an interesting observation.