“The hurrieder I go the behinder I get.” At least that is what my mother used to say. It has been very true the last couple of weeks. I have been having lots of fun, working hard, seeing lots of things and have not taken the time to write in the blog.
Penny and I are in Frankfurt, Germany as I write this. I will try to quickly catch you up on the last two weekends and then we will try to keep up with Germany.
This may be brief (no applause, no applause) because I have slept several times since the events unfolded and when I sleep some creature enters my brain and gnaws on my memories. That at least is the story to which I am sticking
Penny and I went to London on Sept 14th to the 16th. We decided that we wanted to check out a few more things. The first lesson we learned was not to believe anything you read or indeed anything you hear. We both read and had been told that you could not get tickets to see the musical Spamalot at the half price ticket booth in Leicester Square. So believing this, we went to the theatre box office on Friday and bought tickets for Friday night. We got good seats on the main floor. We did, I think, get a better price than face value of the tickets. But then we walked to Leicester Square and they were indeed selling tickets to the show. We did not check where the tickets were located or how much they cost, preferring to believe that they would have been way in the upper balcony behind a large man with a hat who has season tickets.
Spamalot was a heck-of-a-lot like the movie Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, which is what it was. I had not seen the movie in years but most of the jokes came back to me. There were the knights that say NEEE, the knight being dismembered who keeps saying “tis only a flesh wound.” They were sent on a quest to find a shrubbery. But it was still fun for the most part. They did throw in highly stereotyped references which we were uncomfortable with to Jewish people and of course there was the obligatory gay knight. I felt pretty good about the overall experience until the next night.
On Saturday we decided to go see “The Lion King.” We started out at Leicester Square half price booth but could not get tickets. We walked to the theatre and we were able to get some tickets there. Now while this show was also based on a very familiar movie, I enjoyed this one far more than Friday’s theatre experience. Lion King was a beautiful and entertaining production. It is a musical (with all of the familiar songs) but it also is an elaborate dance production and an entrancing puppet show.
The characters almost all have puppet features. The adult lions had head dress masks that moved up above their heads at times and at other times with a head flick the mask would float down in front of their face as they made a particularly lion-like move or statement. The actor that played Pumbaa, the warthog, had a puppet warthog face that was huge and the actor was sticking out of the back and working the head (mouth, tongue) with his arms and hands. The giraffes were people in costumes with stilts on legs and hands. They used birds on strings that they spun above their heads. It was amazing how they drew you into viewing the animals and not the puppeteers/actors who were clearly visible at all times. At times they marched up and down the aisles of the theatre. The show was completely engrossing and very entertaining. I had a great time.
On Friday we spent some time at the National Portrait Gallery. It is a marvelous collection of (drum roll please…..) portraits. Many of them are well known figures British history. Henry VIII was there along with most everyone else you would know. But then there were lots of other folks who were not so well known but who were just as cool in their own ways. Unfortunately I did not take notes and my memory for names is abysmal. So you will have to go to their web site to get the story. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp
On Saturday we went to the British Museum. We did the audio tours and that was very nice to hear about the highlights of the collection. We saw the Rosetta stone which was the key to decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphics because the stone had the same text in Greek, Latin and Hieroglyphics.
We also learned about the Elgin Marbles (which has nothing to do with a school yard and little glass balls). They are the marble carvings that were surrounding the top of the Parthenon in ancient Athens. The Parthenon was used as an ammunition dump in a war between people and consequently it was largely destroyed. A man by the name of Elgin got permission from the government to salvage and remove the stone carvings. He brought them to England and subsequently gave them to the British Museum. They are a marvelous work of art and hearing the details of the carvings (which never stick out more than a few inches from the flat surface of the stone) made me appreciate the skill in carving stone that was used.
Also at the Museum we got to see the traveling exhibit of the Terracotta Warriors of China’s First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi. It was only a few of the thousands of warriors they have uncovered in China. But they gave lots of information on how and why they were made. The why was the attempt at immortality on the part of the Emperor. He thought if he were buried with all of these clay warriors that somehow he would be taken care of in the afterlife. Check out this blog from my student who went to China and saw the whole army.
Rachel Vig’s blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-173822.html .
Then we came home to Harlaxton.
The following weekend we stayed at Harlaxton because (brace yourself) we actually had classes on Friday to make up for the classes we are missing on Thursday of this week. The Harlaxton weekend was pretty relaxed. We went to Grantham to the market on Saturday. We walked around and ate at a Thai restaurant that was pretty good. We saw some interesting folk. I was walking behind a man and a woman. They were both wearing leather clothes. He was toothpick thin and had on big black leather boots with spikes and skin-tight pants and shirt. He had chains and tattoos over all the skin you could see and long hair tied with a red and white bandana. He had chains hanging down. She had on a short skirt (leather), lots of tattoos and chains. They were quite the pair. And that was from behind. When they paused to look at something in a booth we walked by and I got a peek at their faces. They were at least 60 years old. Or maybe they were 40 and looked 60. But I do believe that they were in their late 20s or early 30 when the Beatles came on the scene and they were still lost in the 60s. They were cute.
We went to Church on Sunday at St. Wolframs Anglican church. It is the very large building in the center of Grantham. There were maybe 100 people there. Everyone I have talked to has said that England is becoming more and more a secular nation. Fewer and fewer people seem to go to church, especially the young people. There are some large evangelical churches but most folks are not interested in Christianity. England is a nation of immigrants and they have brought their religion with them. There are many Muslims and some are very radical in their anti anything but Muslim stances. One of the most radical, calling for violence and what not, is an Imam who is head of Mosque in Nottingham not very far from Grantham.
Student storys:
One of our WJC students hurt her foot by kicking her boyfriend in the shin when he was tickling her. I told him it was his duty to throw some soft part of his body in front of her foot if that ever happens again.
Tuesday we had a very drunk student in the cafeteria at 5:30 during dinner. She came back from town. I don’t know what the consequences were but Student Affairs took care of the matter.
On Wednesday all the students had their first British studies exam. They were pretty stressed. Before class one of my students was talking about Sir John of Gaunt. She was trying to find information in the text and could not find it by flipping the pages. I suggested she use the index. Voila!
Later at the late night study break in the cafeteria I asked another student, who had said she had been studying hard, if she knew who John of Gaunt was? They about had a panic attack wanting to know why I asked and if I knew anything about the test. I assured them I knew nothing about the exam.
Ray
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