But at the same time, I'm still very disappointed to be giving up the au pair position. I really wanted to that particular position in addition to really wanting to stay in England. The children and the whole family seemed so nice and smart, and I would get to be a small part of a British boys' boarding school (because the parents both work at the school and live right next to it). (As a sidenote, this school--Harrow School--was used as one of the filming locations for the first Harry Potter movie!) I would have really liked a "gap year," as the British call it. It's a year where you purposely live in a totally different environment doing something completely different from what you had been doing before. This year generally occurs between college and career/further schooling, and it's become a big part of British culture. I wish it was a part of American culture, but alas, I'm stuck in the workaholic USA. No, but as I said, I think taking the publishing internship was a good idea, but I still feel like I'm missing out a little bit. I would feel that way no matter what I chose though.
Anyways, this decision has been weighing on my mind so much that I've fallen behind in blogging and uploading pictures. So I'll try to rectify that a little bit now. Last weekend...on Saturday, I went to Hampton Court Palace. It's a really interesting palace because it's half-Tudor (Henry VIII's time) and half-baroque (William and Mary's time). William and Mary tried to renovate it completely but ran out of money. There are also some interesting artifacts and rooms from Georgian times. One of my favorite parts about this visit was seeing the current exhibit of costumes from The Other Boleyn Girl movie. I am, for some reason, really obsessed with movie costumes, particularly costumes from historical/fantasy movies. And I'd just like to mention that, after seeing Natalie Portman's costumes, she is even flatter than she looks on screen! (Sorry if that's too much information for some of you.)
On Sunday, I went to the Transport Museum, which was fun. Even though the Tube is hot and completely un-glamorous, I really like it. Probably because it's such a nifty system and we have nothing like in MN. The museum also talked about river transportation, horse transportation and some stuff about cars (which I went fairly quickly through). One interesting thing I found out was that, in World War II, people hunkered down in the Tube stations for shelter. Eventually, so many people were taking shelter there that they had to purchase tickets for that. The museum had tons of Tube-related advertisements (like "Cut your journey across the city in half with the Victoria line"), and the advertisements about taking shelter in the Tube said stuff like, "Be a man. Leave the places for women and children." Kellie and I were talking about how we in America were a part of World War II, but in some ways, we have no idea what it meant to be a part of it. Almost every building (and even every garden I research) in England was damaged or affected by the Blitz. It's really difficult to go anywhere historical in this city without hearing about how WWII affected it.
After the Transport Museum, I went to Hyde Park Speakers' Corner. I was somewhat less than impressed with the particular speakers that day. There just wasn't much originality. There was one person preaching Christianity and another preaching Islam. There was a third saying that those two people were religious nutcases and that he hates religion because there all angels are white, not black. Another person was going on and on about how everyone who wasn't English was not favored by God. She was the most interesting because everyone listening to her was getting really annoyed or at least greatly amused. She told one person in the audience who was clearly a British citizen that she couldn't be English because she had black hair. It would have been disturbing except that it was clear she wouldn't be able to amass an "ethnic cleansing" type of army. After the Speakers' Corner, I went to the British Library (see a previous post to read my effusions on that subject).
Then I participated in a group activity of playing football (aka soccer) in Regent's Park. I didn't want to go, but I had signed up a few days ago on a whim so I felt I had to go. It really wasn't fun. It reminded me of being in middle school and sucking at sports. There was one girl on my team who was very know-it-all-ish about sports, which was annoying. Granted, she did know what she was talking about, but the game was supposed to be just for fun. In the evening, I went to the huge Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square and saw the new Batman movie. It was really good! There was quite a bit of action, of course, which made it a bit difficult to decipher how they were developing the themes that they had begun in the first movie. Fortunately, though, they WERE developing the themes, even if it was a bit subtle to fully grasp after just seeing it once. I think I'll have to wait until I see it again to write more about it. But I just have to say--even though everyone who sees this movie says it--Heath Ledger was AMAZING as the Joker! I really don't think they'll be able to get anyone half as good to replace him in the next film.
On Monday night, Kellie and I went to the Globe and saw Timon of Athens. I didn't know much of anything about it before I went, which was kind of fun. I enjoyed being an "uneducated peasant" standing around and not knowing what was going to happen next. It was quite a disturbing play, actually. The basic plotline is that Timon had a lot of money and gave it all away to his friends without thought for keeping in mind his own expenses. So then he goes broke and none of his friends are willing to help him out. He ends up going out into the wilderness and going mad. He finds gold, but doesn't restore himself to his former position. His friends who had abandoned him hear that he has gold in the wilderness, so they come out to see him. Then he ends up dying in the pile of gold. It's very weird. But there was an interesting people-as-dogs/beasts throughout the whole play, which this interpretation of the play picked up really well. When Timon dies in the gold, his friends all bark and surround him like dogs and they start digging past him to get the gold, and there's all this blood and refuse flying. It's profoundly disturbing. Timon himself was an interesting character, a perfect blend of purity and baseness. In some ways, he seemed like a Christ figure. He was dressed in a white robe for the first half and in a Crucifixion-esque loincloth for the second half. He gives away everything his has without regard for himself. But then at the same time, it's pretty clear that his motives for giving away everything was to receive flattery, attention, and a large following of so-called friends. When his friends aren't as friendly as he expected them to be, his switch flips and he acts very animalistic and goes on and on about how much he hates all people. Eventually I'd like to read more about this play because I feel like there is quite a bit I'm missing.
On Wednesday, I went to yet another play. I saw Twelfth Night in an open-air theatre in Regent's Park. It was good and I enjoyed it, but I was thinking so much about my big au pair vs. internship choice that I don't have much else to say about it. On Thursday, our whole large group went on a Thames River cruise, which was fun. I dressed up in a nice black dress. There was dinner and dancing and drinking. But again, I was so wrapped up in trying to make a decision that I probably had less fun than I would have had otherwise. (I was probably less fun to be around too, haha.)
Yesterday (Friday), I saw Wicked the musical. It was so absolutely incredibly amazing! I absolutely love theatre in general and I've seen quite a bit here, but this show was by far my favorite up until now. I'm listening to the soundtrack right now. The person who played Glinda was extremely good, but the person who played Elphaba was just outstanding...I can't even begin to say how incredible she was! She belted out these extremely powerful lines of music, and I just got chills. I mean, it is really difficult music and she just nailed it. She has the perfect combination of flawless classical training and natural powerhouse voice. The storyline was also really good. One of its purposes is to question how we tell stories and to point out that there can be more than one way of understanding things. It tells the "background" story of the Wizard of Oz, and it turns the Wicked Witch of the West into a character anyone can identify with. She's not perfect, but a lot of her flaws come from being rejected based on her looks (imagine growing up with bright green skin!). She's also a great "strong female" character because she's a brilliant student and a political activist. I enjoyed the friendship between Glinda and Elphaba as well because in a lot of fantasy/fairy tale stories, the strong same-sex friendships are between men. I thought the musical did a good job of portraying the possibilities of female friendships. Another theme is how much importance is placed on superficial things, like labels ("wonderful" or "wicked"), popularity, and appearance.
Today (Saturday), I went to Winchester and Chawton (Jane Austen country). I saw the house where Austen lived when she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and where she wrote Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion. They had a ton of the family's artifacts, which was really fun to see. They had some letters written by Jane and a bracelet of hers, etc. I really enjoyed seeing Chawton village and imagining how it would have looked with even fewer people and buildings, and imagining Jane and her sister Cassandra strolling around like Jane and Elizabeth or Elinor and Marianne. In Winchester, I saw the cathedral where she's buried and the outside of the house where she died. There was also ruins of a castle in Winchester that I enjoyed tromping around.
So yeah...that's what I've been up to lately. Tomorrow's I'm going to Hever Castle with Jessica and her sister, Brittney. Hopefully I'll get all the pics from the past week up on Facebook soon!
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