Sunday, September 28th—Thursday, October 9th
I haven’t updated this in a while, oops. A couple things of note from the past week and a half:
-I went to see a play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (The Merry Wives of Windsor) and they had musicians playing baroque period instruments (oboe, bassoon, sackbut (trombone), violin, drums and mandolin). Absolutely hilarious play with great music supporting it. Awesome.
-We went to Hampton Court to see where Henry VIII used to hang out and learn facts having to do with our Art & Architecture class. The Great Hall is absolutely beautiful with giant tapestries on the walls and decorations all the way up onto the ceiling. It’s so humbling to have all of this history surrounding you constantly. It’s also very humbling to take a test on a wealth of information that you don’t know very much about: that’d be my Art & Architecture midterm.
-Shannon and Ernest came to London this past weekend. It was great to see them and show them around town. We did the normal touristy things (Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, etc.) but we also got to go to the Borough Market on Saturday morning which proved to be amazing (I bought two organic onions for 50 pence). Also, on Saturday night we attempted to go to dinner at a Thai restaurant out towards Hammersmith. We got there and it was packed, so we decided to go to one of the Indian restaurants up on Ladbroke Grove. On our way, we see a sign for the “Little India” restaurant, and the sign also said “wellcome.” We should have known. All 10 of us pour into this tiny, dimly lit room with an old Irish lady smoking away in the corner underneath the “NO SMOKING” sign. The waiter took our orders, and it took 45 minutes for us to get our drinks, which were mainly waters. Then we heard random “cooking” sounds while the waiter kept leaving and returning with blue bags (probably with the food we ordered that they bought at a restaurant down the street). After our meal came, we ate it very quickly, and then there was a loud *pop* sound and the radio playing Indian music and half of the lights in the place went out. We immediately ordered the check. Before that came, there was a very large, sketchy-looking man who walked in with a sketchy-looking bag; he nodded to the waiter and went to the back. When we finally left the place (just about 2 1/2 hours later), I was laughing so hard it hurt. It was probably one of the “dodgiest” experiences we’ve had here yet.
-I had an awesome lesson finally. I had time to practice, and it helped not taking the entire weekend off of playing. The only downside is that he assigned me tons of things to work on for our next lesson, and I’m going to Italy October 10th-19th without my euphonium. Ruh roh. At least I’m bringing my mouthpiece so I don’t totally lose all of my chops.
-Andrew, Laura and I randomly acquired free tickets to see the Moody Blues at Royal Albert Hall. A student at the London Center has an internship with some company, and someone donated 4 tickets for this concert to the company, and no one could use them. She called the London Center looking for people to take them, and we got hooked up. It was a pretty good concert (even if we were the youngest ones in the audience by about 30 years), and I learned that old guys can still rock (as much as 70s power ballads can rock, which were pretty hard at times).
That’s about all for now. We’re preparing for our Italy trip and making sure that we’ll be up by 2am tomorrow morning to catch a 3:10am bus at Baker Street which will hopefully get us to Stanstead Airport in time for our 6:10am flight to Palermo, Sicily. After that, we’ll head up to Naples, Rome, Venice and Milan. Should be a great time.
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