the ersatz diary

2009-03-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

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Journal #7

2009-03-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

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2009-01-20T18:37:00.000-08:00

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2009-01-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

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English 418 Journal #1

2009-01-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

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ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

2008-11-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

While studying at BYU’s London Centre, students explore their heritage by encountering those who created it.

A pleasant early-summer breeze stirs curtains through open windows in the BYU London Centre library, the mystery of the small room belied by the fresh air and serene students, who ponder peacefully at tables or tap thoughtfully on computers. But on a wall near the window, a simple black frame hints at the building’s suspicious past.

In 1909 Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton lived in this Victorian town house, then owned by his brother, Frank, the page in the frame reports. Only a few years earlier, Frank had been on the verge of bankruptcy, but after the Irish crown jewels were stolen, he suddenly came into money and purchased the residence. Many accusing fingers pointed to Frank Shackleton, who had connections to the jewels’ guardians, but the jewels were never recovered and Frank was never tried.

The mystery remains unsolved, but that hasn’t kept political science associate professor Raymond V. Christensen (BA ’84) from looking. In the middle of a conversation, he will stop, turn inquisitively to the wall, and rap his knuckles lightly, listening for hollow spaces. “The Irish crown jewels are somewhere in this building,” he teases the students, a tone of mock mystery in his voice.

Shackleton and the Irish crown jewels aren’t the London Centre’s only connections with fame. These rooms once housed an embassy, and the center stands almost on royal ground. A block away is Kensington Palace, where a long line of royals have lived, including Prince Charles and Lady Diana. London Centre students often study, jog, and play soccer in the palace’s gardens and in neighboring Hyde Park.

The 40 young people who study at the London Centre each semester almost can’t turn around without coming face to face with some luminary from the past, stepping from the students’ texts and coming to life in churches, gardens, houses, or museums. Shakespeare, Austen, Nightingale, Shackleton, Churchill, Lennon, and a parade of monarchs with names like Henry and Mary—the ghosts of history are everywhere. With a two-pound coin, students can descend to a Tube station and soon emerge near any number of landmarks, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, or the British Library, where they can listen to a recording of Virginia Woolf talking about words, view the last letter from Thomas More to Henry VIII, or touch a screen to turn pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s notes. That same two-pound coin, turned on its side, reveals the words of Sir Isaac Newton, who credited his achievements to “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Students in the London Centre experience Newton’s words firsthand, learning about their political, cultural, and religious heritage by discovering those who created it.

The Ebb and Flow of History

Walking through London with students from BYU’s London Centre is like receiving a tour from a historian with a mastery of obscure trivia. One evening as a group of students passes Kensington Palace, they mention that Princess Victoria passed an unhappy childhood here, and when she became queen, the 18-year-old made a surprise move to Buckingham Palace. While approaching a Lebanese restaurant for lunch, a student says the Whiteley’s department store building ahead was admired by Hitler, who spared it from bombing. And on a bridge in St. James’s Park one warm Saturday morning, another student points out distant white waterfowl and explains that pelicans were introduced to the park hundreds of years ago as a gift to the king.

In classes the students gain broad knowledge of things British, and through their explorations, they enhance their knowledge with actual experience. From sites of rebellion and coronation to mysterious arcs of standing stone to the crumbling remains of a wall built by Romans around their city Londinium, real-world illustrations of in-class discussions appear around every corner.

“I love seeing the interaction of old London and new London,” says Gloria Jean Gong (’07), “to walk the Londinium Wall and to see this old pre-Roman temple to a sun god that was then built on by the Romans and that was then turned into a Christian church and now just has a little iron railing about it. You can look out at London and see this kind of ebb and flow of civilization.”

In a city rich with history and culture, almost every excursion out of the London Centre becomes a learning experience. Embarking on one such adventure, the students on the St. James’s Park bridge are hurrying to join the crowds who will celebrate the queen’s 78th birthday. Across the bridge and through the park, Jessica A. Hulse (’06), Hillary C. Cox (’06), and Andrew T. Brown (’07) race to the edge of the Mall, the grand avenue leading to Buckingham Palace. Several people deep, spectators watch the empty road for the procession of soldiers that composes the annual Trooping the Colour. Finding a place where the crowd thins, the students stop to wait under the towering sycamores that line the road and shelter the walkway like arched cloisters around a medieval church. Hulse climbs atop Brown’s shoulders, camera in hand, for a better look. Like other young women in England, she has become intrigued with the young princes, William and Henry, and hopes they’ll make an appearance.

About 20 feet apart, guards in red coats line both sides of the street, their tall black hats mounted atop somber brows. A guard shouts an order and others stamp feet in response, sharply punctuating the spectator chatter. More orders initiate more maneuvers and soon the first of the parade appears. Five guards on black horses precede regiments of mounted soldiers in shining breastplates and helmets, accompanied by music from a horse-mounted band. Suddenly, cameras begin clicking and whirring, and there she is, not 20 yards away: Queen Elizabeth II in a carriage pulled by two white horses. From her perch, Hulse clutches her camera in one hand and waves to the queen with the other, awed at the sight of the venerable sovereign.

Mingling with the celebration crowd, the students gain more than a memory of seeing the queen. They witness the British affinity for nobility, a concept that is difficult to comprehend in the democracy-saturated United States but that has defined much of this nation’s history. “Studying here brings the issues home to you,” says Gong, a Chinese major from Madbury, N.H. “Instead of reading a newspaper that says, ‘Many people feel this way,’ you talk to someone who says, ‘No, I feel this way.’”

In their London Centre classroom, Hulse, Cox, and Brown have read books and watched documentaries about the history of the throne. Now they walk among Britons who pledge allegiance to the queen, and the ground they cover is emblematic of the monarchy’s millennia-long power struggle. The festive procession traces a route similar to that used by a much more somber march in 1649, a march that led a king from St. James’s Palace through the park to his execution.

The BYU students, having left the Trooping the Colour, now stand with a smaller crowd at Banqueting House, a regal yet simple three-story structure with a white-stone facade. Behind a large building across the street, the birthday ceremony for Elizabeth II continues on the field where jousting tournaments entertained Elizabeth I 400 years ago. The students have paused here to await a possible back-door exit by the royal family—the elusive princes in particular—and as they wait Brown mentions matter-of-factly that Banqueting House is where Charles I lost his head in 1649.

The execution was the culmination of years of civil war between the king and Parliament. But as the students have studied in their history course, the civil war itself was the culmination of centuries of tension between the monarch and the barons. That rocky relationship led to one king’s reluctant signing of the Magna Carta and to the formation of Parliament. But most kings had little respect for Parliament, and Parliament chafed under tyranny. When the feud escalated to open war, Parliament won, and on a cold January day, a crowd of thousands stood where the students stand now and watched as King Charles I was led to a platform. With one stroke of the ax, the kingdom became a republic and the monarchy was abolished.

The new order, however, was short lived. In this building a decade later, Charles II accepted the crown from a new Parliament. But the balance of power had been irreversibly altered, and a generation later, again in Banqueting House, William and Mary were welcomed to the throne—but only after they signed a document asserting Parliamentary supremacy. Within one century, the windows of Banqueting House had seen the British throne whittled from absolute rule to constitutional monarchy. And the voices raised here to challenge royal authority would echo a hundred years later in both Philadelphia and Paris.

“You learn in your class that King Charles was beheaded at Banqueting House,” says Brown, an accounting major, “and we’re standing right here at the Banqueting House, exactly where he was beheaded. Things like that where you can go out and see the exact site—it’s more memorable to me, and it means a lot more. History comes alive.”

Through the living laboratory of London, students not only witness evidence of the rise and fall of nations over millennia, they gain a grasp of how events led to the current state of world affairs. In Professor Christensen’s course students delve into the intricacies of world governments, and in the city around them they have front-row seats for one of the main theaters of modern international politics. Parliamentary debates, the prime minister’s decisions, and international criminal trials unfold before their eyes.

“To be able to discuss an issue in the morning and then have the students down at Parliament in the afternoon, listening as they’re debating that issue—it’s just something you can’t achieve in Provo, clearly,” says Jeffrey F. Ringer (BA ’84), director of BYU’s Kennedy Center for International Studies, who teaches the students’ British history and culture course. “The ability to integrate classroom with field work is an amazing opportunity.”

The process produces well-educated political observers. A couple of London Centre students were recently stopped on the street by British television reporters and asked for a U.S. perspective on world affairs. The broadcasters were so impressed with the articulate young Americans that they invited the students to be guests on a TV talk show. This sort of growth in political knowledge is common. Spend an hour with London Centre students—of any major—and you’ll likely get an earful of international politics. “Something I’ve gained that I didn’t realize I was lacking in is political understanding,” says Kimberly Gardner (’08), an early childhood education major from Orem, Utah. “Being here, my eyes have been opened to a totally different view of the world.”

Living Literature

Studying in London is an international experience that is only slightly foreign—but it is foreign, just enough to take students out of their comfort zones. Students can almost think they’re in just another big U.S. city—until they order chips and get fries, look left at the curb and fail to notice the car coming from the right, or groggily approach the tour bus in the early morning and learn that their transportation for this trip is a coach, not a bus.

Whatever it is, the 50-passenger vehicle becomes a familiar transport. Every Friday morning they board the coach for a daylong excursion out of the city, and occasionally it takes them away for several days at a time.

One Thursday morning in May, students settle into the coach’s plush seats with pillows, study material, and headphones, preparing to head to England’s southern coast. The coach maneuvers into traffic and begins its winding route through the city, the stately parks and facades slowly morphing into rough urbanity, which eventually melts into the rolling green hills of the English countryside.

Several hours into the three-day journey, the coach begins a long, gradual descent toward a small coastal town. In their bags many of the students carry a book they are reading in their literature course, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, in which this town plays a key role. Flanked on either side by gray cliffs abutting the English Channel, Lyme Regis rests at the base of a long green slope, separated from the wide blue channel by a thin beige line of curving beach. In life, Jane Austen frequented this place, and she devotes a page of Persuasion to a fond description of the environs.

Walking the narrow, meandering streets, filled with pastel-colored houses, the students start to understand Austen’s love of the place. They arrive at the Cobb—a long two-tiered stone breakwater creating a sheltered harbor—and begin to tour its length. The sun periodically breaks through the partly overcast sky, and a gentle sea breeze disrupts carefully combed hair.

Halfway out on the jetty, Kristine Hansen (BA ’73), a BYU English professor, reminds the students of the Cobb’s significance in Persuasion. It is here that the impetuous Louisa Musgrove jumps from the upper tier to the lower, injuring herself and necessitating weeks of nursing at Lyme. In that time, she falls in love with a naval captain who helps to care for her. This new romance leaves Louisa’s former suitor free to court Anne Elliot, the novel’s protagonist.

Upon the mention of this event in the story, a spontaneous reenactment develops, with a male student on the lower Cobb declaring that the young woman above should not attempt the jump. She, however, insists. She leaps. He reaches. She falls. Others gasp in feigned horror.

From the Cobb, looking back across the water to the beach and the slopes of Lyme, Austen’s description of the place resonates with reality. “Lyme Regis is a quaint place that makes the soul smile,” recalls Hillary Cox later. “It is of no wonder that Jane Austen set a portion of Persuasion to take place in the salty air there.”

From Lyme, the coach rambles on through southwestern England, visiting, among other places, Tintagel, the legendary birthplace of King Arthur. On the return trip Saturday, the coach enters a small village south of London and slows near the plain red-brick house where Austen revised two novels and wrote three more, including Persuasion. Pushing open the white door, the students begin to explore the cottage. From room to room artifacts hint at Austen’s existence: on a bed lies a floral quilt she worked on while her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was at press; in an upstairs room naval memorabilia from her admiral brothers offers context for the frequent military references in her books; on a wall hang framed letters from Austen to her sister, alluding to romances Austen may have had and from which she may have drawn characters for her stories. And in the dining parlor, students take turns sitting at a round mahogany table the size of a wide-brimmed sun hat, where Austen did most of her writing.

Sitting where Austen sat, a connection develops between the woman who penned the book and the one who reads it, says Heidi Harris (’06), a humanities major. “You get a feel for this woman who never got married but could capture characters so well, and so she must have known people pretty well. A friendly but maybe shy woman who would just sit and write these wonderful worlds that everyone relates to,” says Harris, who identifies strongly with Anne Elliot.

Back in their all-in-one home—the London Centre includes rooms for sleeping, lecturing, cooking, studying, eating, writing, and washing—the students return to a few days of book-learning and afternoon excursions on foot. When they board the coach again, their destination is Bath, a city in which Austen lived and which also figures prominently in Persuasion.

As students wander through this ancient Roman resort, the dissimilarity of Bath and Lyme becomes apparent. The appeal of Bath lies in its formal, manufactured aesthetic. The carefully laid out streets are closed in upon by cream-colored neoclassical facades with abundant pilasters and pediments. Lyme, on the other hand, displays a natural, unpredictable beauty. For many, each carries its own charm, but Austen strongly preferred Lyme. That inclination shows clearly in Persuasion, and the author uses the personalities of the cities to reinforce character and plot.

Such excursions to illustrate the context of literary works foster a depth of knowledge that comes only from direct exposure. The students have read Beowulf and then visited the British Museum to see artifacts from medieval England. They studied William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and attended a production of the play at the Globe Theatre. The group has also toured Oxford, the one-time academic home of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll. But for the students, Oxford’s real draw was a more current literary figure: Harry Potter, whose movie-set dining hall is the real-life dining hall of Oxford’s Christ Church College.

“We don’t come to London and just sit in the library,” says J. Craig Moffat (BS ’04), from La Crescenta, Calif., on the coach as the rolling Cotswold Hills glide by outside the window. “It gives you more of a perspective, really. If I were studying this back in the States, I would do the readings in the library, and it wouldn’t make as much sense—as far as time and place—as if I’d been to the museums to see the pieces on warfare of the time or to Thomas Hardy’s house to see the land that inspired his writings. It gives you a better feeling of what motivated the poet or the writer.”

Uncovering Roots

After a few weeks in London, students feel more like residents than visitors. They navigate the back roads, parks, and public transportation without maps. They slip easily into proper British pronunciation and understand the various uses of terms like cheers. They get impatient with slow-walking, loud-talking, guidebook-gawking American tourists.

“We claim to be natives because we have an address,” says Jennifer D. Gonzalez (BA ’01), the term’s teachers’ assistant and an English graduate student.

For most of the students, their native claim also includes deep genealogical roots. And if their literal line doesn’t reach into Britain’s isles, their figurative heritage certainly does. Being here offers an opportunity to dig into the soil of the past and see those roots up close—sometimes in unexpected places.

Walking among the towering stone columns in Westminster Abbey, Lisa Marie Smith (’07) and two of her classmates follow a tour guide across the nave’s black-and-white checkerboard floor and past numerous monuments and tombs. Kings, queens, knights, and bishops—scores of historical chess pieces—along with scientists and poets, are buried or commemorated within these buttressed gothic walls. Portions of the building date back a thousand years.

As the guide tells the students about the translation of the King James Bible, part of which took place here, Smith mentions that one of her ancestors, John Rogers, published an English translation of the Bible about 70 years before the version commissioned by James. The protestant Henry VIII encouraged that earlier version, but when Henry’s Catholic daughter, Mary, acceded to the throne, the Bible translators came into danger. Some escaped, but Rogers was burned at the stake, becoming the first of “Bloody” Mary’s religious martyrs.

Upon hearing her story, the tour guide offers to take Smith and her friends into restricted-access areas of the abbey for a closer look at Bible translation. Through a labyrinth of confined passageways, the guide leads the group to a narrow spiral staircase. At the top of the stairs they step into an ancient room crammed with books and documents hundreds of years old. When the librarian hears their quest, she quickly retrieves a time-worn volume with more detail about John Rogers than Smith’s family had previously known.

“Genealogy always seemed like something that grandmas did,” says Smith later. But standing in an early-Renaissance room and reading about her Reformation progenitor, that changed. “To see his conviction and that he gave his life for what he believed in—it made him a real person to me and more than just a name on a genealogical chart.”

In another stone church, much smaller, simpler, and younger than the famous abbey, other students similarly awaken to their heritage. On a late-spring afternoon in Herefordshire, the London Centre coach stops at Gadfield Elm Chapel, built by the United Brethren in 1836. In the spring of 1840, the surrounding countryside was stirred up by the missionary activity of one Wilford Woodruff, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Woodruff drew hundreds to his sermons and baptized almost daily. Most of the United Brethren joined the Church, and they soon donated their building.

Many students can trace their family histories through this or other British fields of early missionary labor. Throughout the day their huge coach has been rumbling down tiny country roads as the group visited the pond at Benbow Farm, where Elder Woodruff’s first baptisms occurred, and another small pool where he baptized five people while a mob hurled stones at him. Inside Gadfield Elm Chapel, the group settles into the eight rows of wooden benches. Someone begins to sing “The Spirit of God,” and others join in, filling the small building with a hymn their ancestors may have sung here 165 years ago. The song ends, and for several minutes an emotional silence reigns.

“It became sacred space to all of us,” Heidi Harris says later, her red hair revealing her British ancestry. For her, singing a hymn in the chapel was like coming full circle. “We’re the children of the children who went across the plains who came from England, and we’re back here now. Look how far we’ve all come from this tiny chapel.”

In the heyday of Elder Woodruff’s labors here, the building became a foothold for the Church in England. The Saints in Nauvoo, Ill., were then striving to establish a city in a swamp, and Gadfield Elm Chapel was the only chapel owned by the Church in the world. But Gadfield Elm Chapel was soon left to an empty solitude, as thousands of Church members flowed out of England and across the ocean to bring strength to the center of the Church.

In this little building, thousands of miles from home, students like Harris understand that story a little better, growing in their appreciation of where they come from—and who they are. They observe the lives and learn the stories of those who built their heritage, and they gain awareness of where they stand in history. They come to see that they, like Newton, stand on the shoulders of giants.

Ireland!

2008-10-27T10:36:00.001-07:00

Hi MOM!
So I haven't written on this blog in a while, on account of how I have been giving verbal accounts over the phone. And the internet is really slow roundabouts here. But here is what happened over the weekend in the green land of Ireland.
On Thursday we left on our plane, courtesy of Ryanair, for the low low price of about 40 pounds a ticket. Really cheap, right? Right. Except the wind was so bad that the plane was delayed for a bit, and we had to wait in the terminal for what would have seemed to be an inordinate amount of time had I not bought a magazine. It was very entertaining. When we got to Ireland, we checked into our hostel and then took a bus to the theatre that was showing Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical. I really liked the musical, surprisingly. The music was really good; I want the soundtrack. And it covered some really dark themes, and had a love triangle between a scientist who turned into a homicidal maniac, a prostitute, and a blonde soprano. Intrigued? I thought so.
We went to bed after that, except we couldn’t completely shut the window and it was rather chilly that night. The next night we figured it out so we were much warmer. Sleeping with strangers in the room is rather strange. Rebecca told me it would be smart to put all my valuables in my pillowcase, as it is more difficult to rob someone that way. So my camera, passport and wallet all made my pillow more lumpy than usual, but I felt reasonably secure. Plus there were 7 of us to only 3 of them, so that was good.
Anyway, after getting ready in the dark on Friday, we went down to the kitchen to get a delicious meal of toast and hot chocolate. It was remarkably unfilling. Then we went off to our Wild Wicklow Tour, a bus tour of the Irish countryside. Our tour guide was Steven, a rather cute Irish man who had us sing Irish ballads on the ride. He said we were his favorite group because we sang so well. We went to the Irish Sea first. I stuck my hand in, so I could say I had. Now I’ve been in 3 oceans! (Pacific, Atlantic, Irish Sea, for those of you who were keeping score). I didn’t get in, unlike the incredibly buff old guys that were full on swimming laps in the freezing water. I think they’re crazy, but maybe a brisk swim keeps you young. Steven said that was the trick to eternal youth.
After that he took us to a store to take a rest stop and have some coffee. I only did one, and also bought a book entitled 101 Things to Do Before You’re Old and Boring. I plan on doing all of them, and am very excited to be young and exciting. Then we went on to the hill above the Guinness Lake. Guinness Lake, owned by the family of Arthur Guinness, the creator of Guinness beer, the most popular alcohol in Ireland, is shaped like a pint. A Guinness a day keeps the doctor away. Guinness is healthy because it is made from the local water, which is iron-rich. The iron gives the beer both the dark oaky color and the claim to health. The hill at the top of the lake was the windiest place I’ve ever been in my entire life. We were fighting to stay still. Everyone else fought the cold through a shot of whiskey, but we Mormon girls had to resist.
Then we went through the bogs, which have bog bodies in them. I learned this on Saturday, when we went to the National Museum of Archaeology and History. Bog bodies are bodies of enemies of the Irish. They were put in the bogs because there’s no oxygen down there and their souls wouldn’t be able to escape. They weighted down the bodies and it’s thanks to this barbarism that we have some perfectly preserved bodies. Since the bog has no oxygen, fragile materials like hair, skin, fingernails, and clothing are all undestroyed. One guy I saw had an odd hairstyle, but you could see that his hair and beard were brownish red, like the Irish of today! There was one guy who was nothing but a torso with arms, and his hands were remarkably lifelike. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the part where his trunk was separated from his posterior, but the fingernails fascinated me. They were human once. This was one body that had a potential story behind him. He had very little damage to his hands, as though he were a nobleman or even royalty. He was brutally murdered, perhaps to prevent him from taking power or to prevent him from keeping it. The person who buried him in the bog could have been trying to cover up his crime. Crazy.
Anyway, we didn’t do much after the tour; we got dinner and helped Danielle make her Young Women lesson for Sunday. It was hilarious, a dating lesson. Those are always the best. On Saturday we split up. I went with the group that saw The Book of Kells, one of the oldest Christian books in European history. It was written and decorated around 800 AD. The decorations were so ornate and beautiful, and obviously time consuming. Then I saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it was covered in scaffolding.
Then we walked lost for about an hour and a half in cold rain and wind (I had given up using my umbrella at this point, it kept turning inside out) until we finally found Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced kill-MAIN-hum JAIL). I’m really enjoying my caramel candy corn, by the way. Every once in a while I get one that tastes like butter, which is weird, but on the whole I like them. Anyway, we finally made it to Killmainham after asking 1) a student who didn’t know anything 2) a really old guy who kind of led us around in a creepy way 3) an attractive postman who seemed to want to talk to us longer but by that time we were grumpy. Our backpacks were heavy. So we made it to Kilmainham and it was awesome. Michael would have really liked it. Abbie too. There were two parts to the jail; the old part and the new part. They were all part of an 18th century prison reform trend, revolving around the idea that prisoners needed to be silently secluded from one another to properly repent and become proper members of society. The prison was mainly overcrowded during the potato famine, and then was a political prison for the other half, so the jail, like most jails, failed largely in its aims. There was one room that’s apparently really famous and has been in lots of films, but I didn’t recognize any of the ones she said so I’d have to research. To move on,
Then we went to the Museum and I saw the bog bodies. After that we only had a little time for some last minute souvenir-shopping, and we caught a bus to our plane to a train home. It’s lovely being back home.

scotland!

2008-10-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

the tower of london and shakespeare

2008-10-05T12:43:00.001-07:00

Dear Mom,
Friday was a very exciting day. We went to the Tower of London in the morning, which is chock full of history and mystery. For example, there's the Bloody Tower, where King Richard III murdered (supposedly) his two nephews to keep them from getting the throne. Actually there's a lot of debate on the subject, but Shakespeare wrote a play where he did it, and Shakespeare's a pretty smart guy, so I'm siding with him. I did take a stand; there was a little voting button in the exhibit and I voted that Richard III did it. I made the count like 12,341. It was an exciting moment. The Tower is where many of England's most famous executions happened. Anne Boleyn was beheaded by a sword instead of on a chopping block. Lady Jane Grey (a 17 year old with a claim to Bloody Mary's throne), was executed so her supporters wouldn't try to make her queen. All she wanted to do was get married and have babies.
The Tower is also where the CROWN JEWELS are kept. I saw Queen Victoria's mini-crown in person. It is encrusted in diamonds. I also saw various Georges' crowns and William and Mary's scepters... They were all so beautiful the jewels looked fake. I bought a charm of Victoria's crown because it was cheapest. And on one scepter was the biggest diamond I have ever seen. Other than the Hope diamond, but I saw that ten years ago and I remember being disappointed that it wasn't bigger. In any case, the Crown Jewels are amazing.

continued

2008-10-02T15:42:00.001-07:00

Hi MOM!
So I may have cut that blog post off about mid-sentence. Sorry about that, I accidentally typed Ctrl P instead of whatever I was trying to do. So the other day we went to Oxford on a day trip and it was so much fun. It made me want to go to Oxford for grad school. We'll see, England is really expensive. Anyway, we had about five hours to explore the town (there is no campus really, just an assortment of ancient college buildings scattered throughout the city). We went to Magdalen College (pronounced MAH-duh-lin, according to Dr. Paul, the English like to confuse us. Leicester, for example is pronounced Lester. You can tell who are the foreigners on the Underground by their inability to pronounce Leicester Square, a tube stop quite close to the Centre).
Anyway, we took some great pictures proving that we were there but right now my camera is on the floor and my bed is about five feet up, it's a feat getting up and down. Although Brother Shuler (the caretaker for the Centre; his wife takes care of our food) did fix my ladder, and I don't have to use a chair to get up and down anymore. Yay!
Then we went punting, which is basically getting in a gondola/canoe boat and hiring a boy with a very long stick to pole down the river. Our guide's name was Humphrey. We had lot's of fun going down the river, maybe the best idea we had all day.
Then we went to the Oxford official shop where I bought college paraphanalia for my siblings and myself. Michael's is extra cool. He will love it. I bought Abbie two things to make up for it. My bank account is really looking bare because of all the spending. I've already used over $500... in three weeks. I'm going to budget more, I can't live like this, it's too irresponsible. Sorry.
Anyway, after that we went to the pub called the Eagle and Child, where J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis used to swap stories over a pint (they both went to Oxford) and I bought a bowl of chips (french fries). The barman flirted with us for a bit, which was nice, since we only have the one boy. Only a British man can call someone "my dear" without it sounding creepy or affected. He had a mohawk though, which was odd.
After that we raced over to Christ Church, the official cathedral for the college, and listened to the Evensong service, which is an Anglicized version of Catholic prayer services. There was a choir of boys and men that sang the high and low parts. They sang the Psalms and also from the Book of Common Prayer. It was really interesting and reverential, but not at all informative. It makes me wonder how Anglicans actually learn anything about the Bible.
So all in all it was a lovely day, and I didn't even talk about the morning (we went to Blenheim Palace, where Winston Churchill was born. The grounds were beautiful and so was the inside). I have pictures though and will post them on facebook just as soon as I learn to levitate my camera.
Love you much
Cheers, (the customary goodbye for Britishers. also means thanks.)
Lindsay

The weekend:

2008-09-27T12:56:00.001-07:00

Dear Mom,
So I already told Michael and Abbie a lot of this, but you very kindly let me talk to them for a bit so I'll recap for you. This weekend I've done so much!
It all started with Thursday (the real beginning of the weekend here in London). I randomly overheard a conversation between a girl named Sam and Dr. Benfell about going to the opera; she wanted to go but no one wanted to go with her. So I decided that that would be a pleasant way to spend an evening, and we went. We got first row seats in the first balcony for only 10 quid (pounds/ $20) so we could see inside the orchestra pit and everything. The only problem was that they were limited leg room seats, so we had to come up with some creative sitting techniques (crossing legs, slouching, knees up on the ledge). But I've decided that while opera obviously requires a lot of skill, it is too long for me to sit through. I did enjoy it though.
The next night, I went to a performance of Chekhov's Ivanov, which was incredible! It had an all-star cast, too. I bought the playbill so I would remember. To start: Fanny from Mansfield Park, the lady with the prominent profile in The Forsyte Saga, the drunk first mate from

The Globe, ice cream, and other adventures

2008-09-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Mom,
I'm so glad I got a hold of you today and that I got to talk to Abbie and Michael. I really miss you all and wish you were here with me, because England is waaay more fun than California. Well, the other day (Monday) the whole Centre went to the Globe Theatre, which is a replica of what we think Shakespeare's theatre looked like. We got to sit on the benches and look out at the thrusted stage (that means there is audience on three sides of the stage, not the picture frame kind we are used to). It's all made of wood, so it smells really good. But the people that built it had to get special permission from the city to give it a thatched roof like the original because thatching is flammable. Incredibly so. Actually, it's how the first Globe burned down. Somebody didn't clean out a cannon properly and it lit the roof on fire. Nowadays there are no cannons and plenty of fire exits, so we weren't in any danger.
On Wednesday we actually went to a play in the Globe. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we actually saw in Tahoe, too, I recognized a lot of the scenes and things from then. Except I actually saw the end this time because I wasn't asleep. It was really good though. The part with the Mechanicals and the play within a play was really funny. At one point the man who plays the moon stalks off the stage because the duke has insulted his acting. And the Wall sounds like a fourth grader who had to memorize his lines. It's really funny. After the play a bunch of us went to Westminster Abbey, which was incredible. It was full of monuments to dead people and it had the coffin of Elizabeth II. I stood next to one of the most powerful women in the world! Well, her remains, but still. She once lived. All the kings and queens were crowned in Westminster Abbey, and a good number of them are buried there. There's a shrine to Edward the Confessor, who lived in the 1100s. The Abbey is so old!
Today I only had one class (yay!) and then a bunch of us went to St. Bartholomew's church. It is the oldest church in London, and has beautiful medieval arches and is all dark and mysterious. They still have weddings there, but you have to be a member of the parish or one of your parents has to have been married there. There's a wedding tomorrow that I may go to. Or I may see a matinee of something or go the London Museum, which is an assignment.
I rode home on the tube by myself the first time today. We had a class assignment to go to a crime fiction discussion by three popular authors. One of them was Anne Perry, who wrote one of the books for our mystery class. She was well-informed and interesting. And I found out that when she was 13 she and her friend actually killed her friend's mom. So it's ironic that she writes mystery novels today. Then again, this is all hearsay, and Perry actually converted to the Church about 40 years ago, so she must be all right now or she'd be excommunicated. Drama, though. And it was really interesting listening to how much they know about mysteries. All three of the ladies say that they create their plots by imagining what would cause someone to commit a murder, then work backwards and stick in clues like flags. One said she was kind of embarassed to admit that's how she wrote, and then Perry said she didn't know there was any other way. So I need to think of some conceivable reason someone would take another's life. I can imagine reasons real people would kill each other, but it's hard to imagine imaginary people and give them thoughts and feelings etc. But the authors all say that they base a lot of characters off people they know. And who would I insult by making them the murderer? It's a gherkin (pickle in British).
So I've been having a wonderful time and will try to put pictures here now for those who don't have facebook. But really they should just get facebook because I'll put far more pictures on that.
Love from
Lindsay

Dear Mom,

2008-09-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Mom,
So i've decided that i will write this as letters to you, and other people can eavesdrop. i don't like writing a blog, i like emailing, but i'm assuming other people want to know what i'm doing, so here goes. (ps. i also hate capitalization, that's why God invented word processing).
this last week we went to the cornish coast, devon etc. it's west. we stayed in hostels most of the time, but also the ymca one night. it was really clean and nice, but i got the bottom bunk both nights so i couldn't sit up all the way. but the breakfasts were really fun, we had full on english breakfasts most days. there was ham and beans and eggs and toast and cooked tomatoes and cereal and milk and juice. everything was good but the tomatoes.
the first day we went out to stourhead, the place where Elizabeth Bennet gets proposed to in the new Pride and Prejudice. i have great pictures... i'll put them on facebook later. all the pictures look like paintings, it was so beautiful. the next day we went to the cornish coast. the water was beautiful. i got stung by stinging nettles, which is, surprisingly, a plant. it feels like a thousand tiny beestings and it doesn't go away for hours. but that didn't make the beach any less awesome. we also went to an amazing castle called St. Michael's Mount. It's connected to land during low tide and you have to get there by a boat during high tide. we managed to walk both ways, but i kind of wanted to boat... or swim.
the last day we went to exeter cathedral, which was gorgeous. we spent most of the day driving home in a bus. our driver's name was tony, he was really cool. he told us what fly tipping means (dumping litter) and why the cabs are all black (in mourning for Prince Albert). and when some kid threw a rubber frog at the bus when we were in central london, he totally got out and chased the kids down. it was awesome.
church is interesting. they spread us all out into about 15 wards. i'm in the peckham ward with two other girls. it takes about 40 minutes to get there by the underground. i got put into nursery, which was surprising to say the least, but i think i'm going to like it. there are two other ladies in with me, and we're going to rotate going to classes so we don't completely miss out on gospel doctrine, which i already miss. i feel like i'm just babysitting for two hours, which is true i guess. but they're really sweet. this one little boy named cj who i thought was a girl because he had a ponytail but he was really a boy, kept giving me hugs, and he doesn't even know me. during drawing time i drew a picture of some of the kids, and cj wanted to draw on my picture, so i let him, even though my pictures were really good and he scribbles. ps. talking to missionaries is awkward in every country. there are about 4 sets of missionaries in our ward, not counting the couple missionaries. and they all seem to come from idaho. weird, huh?
so today i had a super fun day. we went on a tour of the globe theatre, a replica of Shakespeare's theatre. it's all made of wood and plaster, so it smells really good. and it's the only building in london to have a thatched roof, which is highly flammable. london has a problem with fires. it's burned down several times. then we went to westminster abbey, where i saw Queen Elizabeth I's tomb. i was inches from Queen Elizabeth's body. the lady who defeated the spanish armada and maintained peace in england for over fifty years. her tomb was fantastic. the whole abbey is covered in monuments to dead rich people and the monarchs. there was a shrine to edward the confessor, who died in the 12th century. that's almost a thousand years ago. the british have such a tradition, it's breathtaking. there are cloisters that have wall paintings that go back to the middle ages. and we were there for the minute of prayer that they have every hour; westminster is england's oldest working church. it was so cool.
then we came home for dinner and went to primark, which is this incredible english department store. it's like a classy walmart that only sells clothes. the clothes are really really cute and i bought four tops and wish i hadn't brought so many clothes with me. thanks for supporting my frivolousness, it's incorrigible, i know, but the styles here are so different from the states, and so attractive. the sizes here are different too. i'm a 12 in the states but a 16 here, which is confusing. but luckily everyone here is so stick thin there are always things in my size, which is a pleasant change of pace. in shoes, on the other hand, i'm a 9 instead of an 11, and there seems to be a much bigger selection of larger sized shoes. woohoo! but they're also expensive, 25 pounds ($50)... so i don't know if i should. if they're comfortable, maybe... basically i need to budget, since i'm going to two or three plays every week plus buying souvenirs and presents, which are really fun to shop for! i love trying to figure out what part of england would appeal to michael or abbie (don't tell them what i got them).
i'm having an amazing time here, and will keep up this blog so you can hear how i'm doing. i'll buy a phone card tomorrow when Ashley and i go buy some yarn. we want to be like those old ladies that knit on the tube, like Miss Marple!
love ya tons
lindsay

dreary dentist days

2008-08-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

As the most insignificant member of Dr. William J. Black, DDS's dental squad, I salute the tooth. Thank you, tooth, in all your enamelly splendor, for breaking down and getting cavities. Thank you for having flaws in your seemingly perfect design, so that you can undergo costly maintenance and repair. In short, thank you for writing my paycheck.