The British Museum and Wonder.Land (April 29th)

Today was an interesting day. A long day. Again I woke up earlier than I expected. It's good and bad, I have lots of time in the morning to do stuff before I need to leave but I'm getting a full night of sleep. Time will tell if this will be a reoccurring thing.

So this morning we went to the British Museum. Remember how I said that Harrod's was a hue department store? Well The British Museum put it to shame. The place is huge! There is so much stuff there from every part of the globe. We got there at 10am and I didn't leave until 3:30pm and I still hadn't been to most of it. It's mind-numbing how much stuff is there. Dozens of mummies from Egypt. What seemed like the entire known collection of greek statues and friezes. The Rosetta Stone, which was the most crowded part of the entire museum. Giant guardian statues from Assyria. Clock as big as a TV and as small your thumb dating as far back as 1500 AD and beyond. And this was only what they had on display. The store literally millions of other pieces and regularly change out their displays.

The South entrance and East side of the building

The Great Court (Inside the Museum)

Roman Statue

Assyrian Gate Guardians and Gate

We ate at one of the museums cafes called the Gallery Cafe. It was surprising well prices and high quality. I used to museum food being low quality and high prices but this wasn't too bad. For 7 pounds, I got a huge slice of pizza and a Caprese salad on the side. The pizza crust was about 1" all the way through. It had a delightful crispy layer on the outside but the all of the fluffiness of my mom's pizza crust on the inside. And the Caprese Salad was just awesome. Everything was fresh and great. I was full and satisfied.

Upon departure of the Museum, we found this lovely little park called Russell Square. It was like a breath of fresh air after the museum and being in such tight quarters everywhere I've gone for the past few day. We stopped in the middle by the fountain and just sat for a while. I read a book. Someone was writing in their journal. Other people were just sitting looking at the fountain. It was the so quiet and peaceful there. So much of the vegetation reminds me of Monterey. I wish I could have stayed longer but we had things to do.

Russell Square.

Russell Square (Fountain)

Later in the evening. We went to see a play called Wonder.Land at the National Theatre. The dot is supposed to be there in the middle of the title so don't freak-out. It was probably the most original take on the Alice in Wonderland story I've seen. It took the concept of "going the down the rabbits hole" in terms of virtual worlds and spaces. The premise is that Alice is a girl whose parents have just separated. She has moved with her mom to a new home and she is trying to fit into a new school but proceeds to be bullied by a number of fellow students. She gets sucked into this online game called www.wonder.land and tries to create a new identity for herself. It's a really interesting look into why some people go to online games and communities and the benefits/downfalls of such escaping. It also dives into themes about trying to find oneself. The production design was top notch combining traditional theater with multimedia. A very well done performance. Caution though to those of you interested in see it but are a bit sensitive to strong language. They drop some heavy words a few times. I still highly recommend it.

That was today. I'm now caught up with the days. And now I'm off to bed.

Food, Class, Food, a Ritziest Department Store, and Food...(April 28th)

...I went to bed at 11pm. My alarm was set for 7:30am. I woke up by myself at 6am. Now I know that I haven't really done a lot of math lately, but after being awake for close to 30 hours straight you'd think my body would want to sleep more than 7 hours.

Hello everybody! This is me playing catch up on events that have transpired while I've been here in London. So this post is everything that happen yesterday, then I'll post something else tonight about what happened today. Hopefully these posts will be a nightly thing from then on.

So yesterday, since I didn't buy anything for breakfast, started off with me trying to find something to eat. Thankfully we're in London and there are food place everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I have not seen one street yet that didn't have some sort of restaurant, cafe, or food truck. It's a foodies paradise. Anyways, a couple of us went across the street to a little cafe called the Chelsea Quarter Cafe. I bought a croissant and a pao de chocolate (a rectangular croissant with chocolate). Those were the flakiest croissants I've had. Very good.

After the baked goods were savored, a few of us decided to walk to our classroom located inside of the visitors center of the London England Temple. It's an interesting building because it's a Temple, Visitor's Center, and chapel all combined into one. It has everything a ward or 2 needs to function. Now twice a week, it becomes our classroom too.

Classes are interesting as our professors, Tom and Jeff, are essentially trying to teach 6 college level classes to 40 students (who are each taking different classes) at the same time. It's interesting to say the very least. Since I've only had one class, I can't really say what it like to be taught in this manner. That will be saved for another time. Today's class was more, going over what activities we will be seeing until the next class period and what to expect in terms of classes. We're also got our ward assignments. So how this works is the Stake President receives the names of everyone who is coming for this study abroad and then proceeds to assign them to the various wards in the stake. I, along with 2 others, got assigned to a Portuguese speaking ward. I'm so excited! I doubt I'll run into anyone I know from Brazil there but it will be great to finally come into contact with Portuguese speakers again.

After class we went to lunch. A group of us went to Nando's. It's a "Afro-Portuguese chain restaurant serving flame-grilled chicken in spicy chilli sauce." I didn't get any of the chicken but I did get a Portobella Mushroom Sandwich which was probably the best Portobella Sandwich I've had ever. The chicken also looked very good but that sandwich was great.

After that we made our way to Harrod's. The ritziest department store...ever probably. First of all the place is enormous. It has 8 floors with everything. There are clothes of every style, food, chocolate, toys, books, games, tech, motorcycles, guns, perfume, hats, and more. There are a lot of marble floors and elegant wood carving everywhere. The top floor is exclusively perfume and the walls, ceiling, and floors were made of marble. I'm pretty sure that the gold on the walls are actual gold. The main escalator is designed with Egyptian themed statues and carving. And I heard someone found out you could actually by real gold bricks and coins there. So the entire time I felt really out of place.

After leaving that, we decided to head home and have dinner. Before dinner though, we spent a good bit of time just trying to find a place to get both towels for a couple friends who forgot to bring them. We eventually found the place but it was closed by the time we got there. A lot of places here have very specific hours. There isn't a 24 hour store anywhere. Anyways, we didn't get any towels. So we went to the grocery store and got a few things we needed before heading to dinner.

At this point I was with my friends Erin and Michelle. Michelle is a vegan so getting food can be a hassle sometimes. Thankfully London has so many options and are very conscience of people's dietary needs. We went to a burger joint called Byron. Good food. We asked the waiter if he knew what was vegan on the menu and he pulled out a 'food bible' with a list of all their food and columns that showed if it was safe for vegetarians, vegans, or gluten-free people. It was quite impressive.

After that, we headed home and went to sleep...

London England Temple/Visitors Center/Chapel

Over the Pond, Overnight, Overtired - (April 26th)

Alright, for those of you stumbling across this. I'm Travis Clark, Video Editor and Film Student. This is my blog documenting my adventures from day to day while on my trip here in London.

I'll be frank. I've never been good and keeping a journal or diary so I can't guarantee a daily update but I'll do my best. This is as much for your entertainment as it is mine. I'm also starting this a bit late so I'll also try to play catch-up to keep the days consistent. This is a long one so let's get started. The flight.

The flight was terrible. I am not a fan of flying for long distances such as this so, yeah. It was a direct flight from Salt Lake City which I have found to both good and bad. The good is that it's very straight forward. No worries about layovers or missing connection. The bad is that you're stuck in a metal tube with very little leg room, potential crying babies (which there were), very little legroom, the constant roar of the engines, and very little legroom. I didn't sleep for all 10 hours of the trip. If you figure that I had been awake for the 12 hours leading up to that point, you can imagine how cheerful and chip I felt after the flight. At the very least, I had access to a lot of movies while being sleepless.

We arrived in London at 1pm. Got our luggage, our Travel Cards (also known as Oyster Cards) which allow use to use the Tube and buses in Central London for "free". And by free I mean that we paid 140 pounds for the pass.

For some reason,"free" is the term being used by our professors and fellow students to describe its function. Anyways, if you use the public transport as most Londoners do, which we do, this will pay itself off very quickly. A Tube ticket can be anywhere between 2 - 6 pounds, and we've been using the Tube 4 or more times a day, everyday. That adds up to be anywhere between 200 and 600 pounds per month. So it can be worth it....anyways, I got side tracked.

...lets see here...right...we arrived in London, got our luggage and our Travel Cards, and we made our way to The Royal Bourough of South Kensington and Chelsea where we would be staying. Our professors, and their wives, met us at the station (or rather we waited 20 minutes for them) and made walked to our apartments. We walked nearly a mile with our luggage to our apartments. When you have to walk a mile, with your luggage, in a country you've never been too...you being to notice certain quirks about traffic:
1) The very first thing one notices is how small the streets and sidewalks are. Now there are about 40 of us students. Just by simply existing, we have become an inconvenience to everyone on the streets. You shouldn't walk more than 2 abreast on the sidewalks. As you can imagine, this is very difficult for a bunch of loud, social, and obliviously tired Americans to understand. Big groups in general don't do well here. (I've already seen groups of 100 walking the streets and it's madness. Madness I tell you! I felt overwhelmed and I don't even live here...technically.)
2) Cars, bikes, and buses act differently. I'm not talking about the left side of the road driving thing, though that does take some getting used too. Nope. Not nearly as big a culture shock as this. See, in the US we have a thing called "right-of-way" for pedestrians. Except for certain (apparently rare) crosswalks, this right-of-way does not exist. If you are in the middle of a street, at a crosswalk, and there is a car coming, they will honk at you and keep moving at a constant speed at you. Remember that thing I said about big groups being annoying and that thing about luggage that we were carrying? Let just say that the British automotive loved.

Our apartments, dorms really, aren't nearly as posh as the rest of the neighborhood. They make my apartment in Provo seem like luxury suites. They're small but comfortable enough. I'd say that they're narrower than the dorms at Helamen Halls at BYU but longer in order to accommodate the bathroom. Considering that we're mostly walking around London, I'm just happy we have a place to rest at the end of the day. After we got settled into our apartments, our professors took us to a pub for dinner. It was mostly traditional British food and quite good actually. A lot of people got the fish and chips as you could imagine, but I got the Lamb Shank Shepherds Pie. Most Shepherds pies I've seen in the US are made in layers (shredded/chopped meat topped with mashed potatoes). This one was just a lamb shank with mashed potatoes were decoratively baked to encase it (Think of a corndog and you've got the basic concept) served with a little cup of gravy. My first experience with food in Britian and it didn't disappoint.

By the time we finished, it was around 5pm. I've now been up for 26 hours straight by this point. I feel like I've been awake for month and I could tell you what day it was. You'd think I be allowed to go to bed and sleep for 12 hours but our professors had other plans. We were going to visit the British Film Institute that evening. Now I wish I could tell you about the BFI itself, but honestly I can't remember much. What I do remember is my first look over the River Thames while crossing the Golden Jubilee bridges. I didn't take a picture but it's a bridge I'll be crossing often so don't worry. Pictures will be coming soon.

After our quick visit to the BFI, a couple of us made the trek back to our flat in the London rain. And finally, at nearly 11pm. I slept.