One Week and Counting

Hey everyone...i have 5 days till i come back to sunny old California. I cant wait to see everyone! As much as i have loved London (and i really have) i miss everyone back home. I have created a routine and a life over here but my family and friends are home and i am ready to come home. Although i will miss the BEAUTIFUL weather i cant wait to see everyone!

See ya in a week

Nic

Happy Thanksgiving / My Birthday

Hey everyone,

I hope you have a great Thanksgiving! Eat lots of turkey and food for me. I celebrated Turkey day this past Monday with my "London Family" and suprisingly it was really really good! However it is not the same without my family and friends. Hope everyone has a great holiday!

- nicole


Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes!!! I can believe how young...uhh i mean how old i am :) I know i wasnt able to celebrate it with everyone but i will be home soon enough. I cant believe that i finally get to let my rowdy teenage years behind ;) because i was always a rowdy teen.

Cheers
Nicole

Lion King

So Last Night i went to go see Lion King of Broadway. Whats cool about over here, is that if you go to the box office about an hour before the show and ask for a student discount, they give you the best ticket available for 20 pounds. So i chose an aisle seat without knowing that this show has characters go down the aisle way. anyways i had a really good seat and the show started and they had the people come down the aisles and it was amazing! and at one point the cast was dressed up like hyenas and they were coming down the aisle and one of them hit me with their leg and then as i was watching the last one come down the aisle he came up to me and growled loud enough that people around me were like WOW...it was soo amazing! and then right before intermission one of the workers who sells stuff had a prop up table and apparently was talking to the people across the aisle from me and as i turn to my left table legs swooshed by my face and i moved quickly but it was so close that i felt the wind on my face and everyone around asked if he hit me and they had that face of "o my goodness". The rest of the show was as you guessed...amazing, i was able to get the girl who plays Rafiki to sign my playbill :) i also got a tee shirt that i was excited for because it looks cool and on top of it all it says London on the back of it.


ok so below is a video of the cast that i saw perform the Lion King here in London...the clip is amazing and imagine it with double the cast and their own stage...

so i found an actuall clip of the musical on their own stage so you can get a better image of what i saw :)

Rome

ROMA

coliseum

in the city

Spanish Steps

Trevi Fountain

Vatican City

Train Ride to Airport

Charger Vs. Saints

So i went to the NFL International Series Game here in London at Wimbley stadium. It was the Chargers versus the Saints. Chargers lost because of some bad calls and because they just didn't play that great. Anyways here are the pics

Halloween

So i know this is coming about a week late but HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Fall is definitely happening over here with lower temperatures which don't seem to be that bad (i think i have slowly gotten used to it) and rain and surprisingly SNOW! Yep it snowed over here in London, i think it was the first time in 70 years that's it snowed in London during October. So yes i did dress up and i dressed up as a Chargers Football Player. We went out dancing to a club called PUNK that one of the girls here is a promoter for (her internship) and it was funny because everyone on the streets and in the tube were looking at us like they have never seen anyone dress up before they were pointing and whispering and it was really a culture shock.

Parliament

I was SUPER excited to visit Parliament, not only because it has to deal with politics, not only because of Big Ben, but because it is the place of my internship. How many people from my group could say that we went on a field trip to the place where they are going to have their internship? None, zero, goose egg. As excited as i was to see Parliament i couldn't help but feel a little bad in not remembering all details, because i had such a long day. Mind you i visited the globe theater, Tate modern, and Parliament all in one day! So it was a lot to take in but i hope you enjoy what i do remember.

So the first thing about visiting Parliament that was cool, was when you first enter into the security area they have you look up and smile and before you know it you have a picture ID that it attached to a necklace that you have to wear on the outside of your clothing. It was like airport security and whatever. When you enter, you enter through the side like my photo to the left shows. You enter into this amazing enormous hall that has an all wood ceiling and has lights.
What i didnt know at the time, was that this is going to be the way i have to get to work every Tuesday-Thursday. Unfortunately there are no pictures allowed to be taken after this hallway. However i can tell you that it is enormous! and there are painting all over the place showing the rulers of the pasts. We were able to walk the halls that the Queen walks every year and visit the rooms that the MP's work in and that are televised. It was amazing to see how many cameras and microphones were in the rooms. As old fashioned as everything is, there was a lot of new technology as well.

there are two colors in Parliament. In the House of Commons (where i work) everything is green. And in the House of Lords everything is red. Like i said before a lot of details are fuzzy because i was extremely tires from the whole day of events....but one of my coworkers said that he would be able to give me a tour again so i think i may take him up on that offer to get a personalized tour of parliament and hopefully get some more pictures!

Along the Thames River

Hey these are just a couple pictures while i walked along the Thames River to all the different locations that i went to :)

Tate Modern

So the same day that i visited the Globe theater i also visited Tate Modern Gallery. This has some of the most amazing paintings like Monet's Lillypads which was absolutely beautiful in person and really big. But it also had a lot of modern (hince the name) and weird stuff. I wasn't too impressed by the artwork in there except for the Monet and there were some paintings in there by people who we have researched in class like Vanessa Bell (the Charleston house) so that was cool but besides that it was this huge place with a lot of weird stuff in it that some people consider to be art.

However at the top floor of the Tate Modern is a cafe with a view of the Thames River and St. Paul's Cathedral so here are some pictures, hope you like them.

Sorry

Hey everyone!

sorry i haven't put anything up in a while. I am feeling very sick and as soon as i get better i will update my blog with everything.

Globe Theater

OK so i guess the first thing to say about Globe theater, is that its not the real Globe Theater. Its an EXACT replica of the original that is up to today's safety codes. Aside from that fact the theater is amazing to see. The stage itself is somewhat small and there are no side wings. The actors simply would go on stage or off stage. The seating was interesting, because not only could you be standing (cheapest) but you could sit in the wooden bleachers around, or if you had money you could sit in special "boxes" very much like we have today. Those boxes were painted to make them appear more important.

However is you were royalty and if you had an immense amount of money, then you could actually sit up on the balcony with the orchestra which was situated on the 2 floor balcony of the stage. So they didnt actually pay to see a great show because obviously they were looking at the back of the actors head the whole time they paid to be seen at the shows. In some cases you could actually purchase a seat on stage with the actors which really amazed me.


All of it forced the actors and the audience to eliminate that sense of fantasy in a play. Because the actors were completely surrounded by people and because the people could see everything the actors did and they would address the audience it forced everybody to be included. Some other facts that i found out, when we think of Shakespeare's "to be or not to be" monologue we assume that he didnt address anybody and that it is in all of his head or he is talking to himself. When you are at the Globe theater you realize that he couldn't help but not address the audience when he talks, so in fact he is talking to the audience when he did that speech. Also i learned why certain things are called what they are.

When a person says that they have a roll like ( i have the role of Juliet) its because back in the day they printed their lines on actual roles. And not only did the roles have their lines, but also only had their que lines before their own. So each actor only had their parts and no one elses. So every single play was basically improve because they had about 2 weeks to rehearse and about 2 hours a day to do it. These facts amazed me, perhaps its because i'm a theater minor or maybe not but it was still fascinating.

Charleston

So i went on a field trip with my English class to visit the home of Vanessa Bell who is the sister of Virginia Woolf. The house is formally known as Charleston and it is about 2 hours out of London in Sussex. The country side was beautiful and the house was just adorable on the outside. Vanessa Bell and her husband Duncan Grant were both artists and they painted all over there house. It was amazing to be in a home that was very old and once was the home of some very prominent English artist and writers. The garden was also beautiful filled with flowers of all different shades of color and apple trees were ready for the picking if you know what i mean. So here are some of the pics from the trip to Charleston...hope you like them.

First Dessert in London

OK so i had my first dessert at a restaurant called Bella Italia which is just around the corner from me. It was HUGE it had brownies, vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, chocolate candy and chocolate cookies. Don't worry i didn't eat the whole thing, i shared it with a girl named Rebecca.

The Area Around Me

I know that i have told a few people, but for those of you who don't know about the are i am around let me tell you. It as of right now is the most expensive and the richest borough in London. I'm in the city of South Kensington. The same city where princess Diana lived, where Madonnas kid goes to school. Where London fashion week was held and where many different stars and celebrities have been spotted. Here are some pictures that i have taken of the surrounding area. So you can better understand where I'm at.

This is the street my flat is on
This is what i see when i walk to school both above and below pictures

Below is my relaxing on the lawn in front of Kensington Palace..see it in the background! and there is a pond that i am facing which look like this

Here are a couple of pictures of Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace is about a 5-10 minute bus ride and a 15-20 minute walk from my flat

The next picture will describe what kind of cars are driven around the area I'm in.
The dealership is a 2 minute walk and its just around the corner from me
The typical cars that i have seen are the following: Range Rover, BMW, and Mercedes. However i have seen some Rolls Royce's, Ferrari's, Ashton Martins. Forgive me if i spelled any of those names wrong :)

British Museum

The British Museum is one of most beautiful museums that i have ever seen, not only on the outside but on the inside as well. from the picture above, you can clearly see why i was completely stunned when we approached the museum.As Beautiful as the outside is, the inside is even more stunning.

the British Museum is not filled with British things like one may think, however it is filled with all the things that the British took from people from battles and wars that they won. Basically all the stuff they stole after they won.

This is said to be Athena the Greek goddess.

these artifacts reminded me something out of the movie "the Mummy"
These chess pieces are used in the first harry Potter film