OXFORD!

Today we left at 7:55 am to visit Oxford University! We toured around the city, Hertford College, in the Oxford University Press, Christ's Church College, went to St. Mary's Cathedral and then walked around the city.

During my winter semester last year, I took a HIST 202 class. The professor required that each student choose and read a text from a list of about 5-10 different books. I chose Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer. I highly recommend this book. Not only is it about the rediscovery of the brain (Thomas Willis), but other people's discoveries. These include: William Harvey, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Nathaniel Hodges, William Petty, Christopher Wren, and Rene Descartes. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book is about how William Harvery discovered that blood moves in a circular pattern around the body.

As I have trekked around Ireland, Wales, and England, I have seen the actual books and documents that these men wrote on as they tried to piece together how the body functions. I feel so connected to them, especially as a science/med major. I even found out that Thomas Willis graduated from Christ's Church College with an M.A. and I went there today! I know that these men had to be inspired by God to discover these things and I am so glad that they had the courage to stand for what they knew to be true. It's very amazing.

There is one spot in Oxford that is dedicated and never paved over. This particular place is where two men, Nicholaus Ridley and Hugh Latimer, were burned for defending what they believed was the only true church of God. As they were burning, Latimer encouraged Ridley by saying, "Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." This reminds me of the many courageous men, women, and children who were put to flames for their testimonies of the scriptures. I hope that if the day ever comes, I will be just as brave.


Hertford college was pretty neat. Now that I think about it, I don't remember much except that they have a huge stained glass window in the chapel with William Tyndale in it. He is the guy who decided to translate the Bible in English and he was murdered for doing so, but because of him, King Henry VIII was able to distribute Bibles for even the poorest farmer to read. (Although his intentions had more to do with his numerous wives than with sharing the gospel with the world. No matter his intentions, though, this was an important turning event for Christianity.)


Here is what I learned about the Oxford University Press: they are constantly working on the next dictionary. They have people read books for them and find words that aren't in the dictionary already or meanings that have changed and then these people spend hours changing the OED. The man we met with has been working with the longest entry ever to be added to a dictionary so far which is the word "run." We use run in so many different ways that he has spent from November until exactly today trying to find each way we use the word run. 


We visited Christ's Church because, of course, the Great Hall from Harry Potter is situated there. We actually got to walk in, take pictures, and then leave. On the way out, we stopped to see where we could exit and this old British man said, "Move along." Loitering laws??


We then went to see St. Mary's Cathedral which was pretty cool, but I think Lauren and Janelle got more out of it than I did because they recognized some of the people who were either buried there or connected to the cathedral.


And lastly, I bought an Oxford sweatshirt. I could have resisted, but I didn't and I'm glad. It makes me look very slim. :)

British Museum, British Library, and the Phantom of the Opera!

I went with Ashley and Janelle to the British Museum and Library yesterday. I am not really an artsy person, but I was amazed by the number of statues that the Greeks, Romans, and Middle-Eastern people were able to preserve. As I walked around the exhibits, I sort of wondered what it would be like to be walking around Greece in the country side and stumble upon a statue or two. It reminds me of a scene in the Little Princess when she climbs on top of this massive stone head while listening to an Indian story. To find these sculptures naturally where they were left is a privilege that I hope archaeologists remember as they go searching in mounds of dirt for these things.

One of the coolest parts of the museum was seeing the Rosetta Stone. I truly think it was inspired by God to be there for man to use for translation. It has truly changed my life and probably the lives of many others. The Rosette Stone has been used to translated Egyptian hieroglyphics and by doing so, has helped us obtain an small understanding of what ancient Egypt was like. The translations are also supplements to the scriptures. As we understand the history of these people, we will be able to understand the Bible and the Book of Mormon better.

In the museum, there was also a clock room. On the hour, the clocks were all supposed to go off at once. This did not happen, but I did not care too much. I just enjoy looking at clocks. I like them.

Oh yeah, and I totally saw Cleopatra except as a mummy. The kind that is wrapped up in strips, not the kind pushing a stroller.

We only visited one exhibit in the British Library - I think it may be the only one - and it was absolutely, fantastically wonderful. I am just going to make a list of what I saw and if it is on the list, then you know it must be important to me:

• Beowulf
• Jane Austen's writing
• Oscar Wilde writing
• Wordsworth's poetry
• Thomas Hardy
• Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim
• Virginia Woolf
• Shakespearean tragedies and poetry
• A prayer roll from Henry VIII
• Music from Handel (I SAW THE "MESSIAH"!)
• Mozart
• Beethoven
• Schubert
• and the Beatles
• the Gutenberg Bible. I think this may actually be the first printed Bible. I think Janelle and I stared at it with our mouths open for quite some time.
• Early Qu'arns (sp)
• Magna Carta
• a very wrong map of Long Island. I wish I could have taken a picture for my dad

And then later that evening, we went to the theater and watched The Phantom of the Opera. That was truly an amazing experience. It was sooo cool! I loved the set and the lighting and the singing and whoo! 

---

Spiritually speaking, our professor related something cool to us. When the Catholics were kind of in power in Great Britain, the pope told his people to not tear down the pagan buildings/places that the Celts had made. He said to instead douse it with Holy Water and dedicate it to the Lord. 

This is what was essentially done with the idea of Christmas. Christ is believed to have been born in April and even people back in the early days believed that. However, we instead celebrate his birthday during a pagan holiday. We have replaced this pagan holiday with Christianity. Now before Christmas was Christian, it was a festival for the pagan's in which they celebrated light. By turning the holiday Christian through celebrating Christ's birthday on that day, they were not only able to change certain pagan traditions (we still have some probably), but they were able to relate Christ to being the Light. As LDS members, we often refer to Christ as the light and the life of the world. Easter was also originally a pagan holiday about fertility. Now when many of us think of Easter, we think of Christ. We have replaced another pagan holiday with Christianity and we can associate Christ with life, if you take fertility to mean the giving of life. So from this replacing of pagan traditions with Christianity, we have shown Christ to be the light and the life. 

This may seem very confusing. If you are really interested, I will try to explain it clearer later.

Well, off to bed with me!

Hmm... what happened Monday?

Everything is mushed together!

Oh, I remember.

I climbed up the 500+ steps to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral.

I'm trying to make this seem like an accomplishment. The idea of someone ascending each of those 500 steps is enough to make a lady's jaw drop. In reality, it's nothing to the people who hike mountains/run marathons/balance a child on each hip while grocery shopping.

Enough said about the steps. The view is what I want to talk about and it was spectacular! I looked out into the distance and glimpsed Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the London Eye, and the tube station straightaway. Then I saw the Millennium Bridge (the one that got snapped apart in the sixth Harry Potter) and realized that flowing under it was the famous Thames. What a sight!

Besides that, I got some homework done and bought a ticket to see Phantom of the Opera. That's tomorrow night and I am super stoked.

What happened today?

Well, I, of course, went through three hours of class which turned out to be quite enjoyable. I feel like I learned much about the history of the English language and also, how to translate Present English into Middle English. I think I will not use this knowledge on upcoming essays.

Today we also saw Henry XIII. I do not like that man, but the play was very enjoyable, though a little hard to hear. I liked the costumes and the story and the fact that I was sitting in the Globe Theater.

And then I did my laundry. Three pounds. That's about $4.50. There goes three cookies. Or two plastic boxes of strawberries. Four frosties. An undershirt. Perhaps, a French pastry?

Places to go after I am done with my no-crazy-sugar-week: Hummingbird Bakery and Cocomaya.

:)

My Stomach

So I think I have been losing weight, but who really knows?

The thing is that I am addicted to sugar.

At the food festival in Wales Friday, Janelle, Chloe, and I were discussing how addictive sugar is. One of us commented, "It's like I have a candy bar and then I am seriously looking for my next treat an hour later!" Someone else said, "I'm going to get back to the States and go to the ice cream shop every day and be disappointed because it's not gelato."

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I wondered how I could treat my body better. It does a lot for me. Almost everything, actually. Maybe I am working off the calories I consume each day as I walk circles around London, but more than just my fat cells are factored into this. First of all, frequent eating without drinking water in between leads to cavities! I want to take care of my teeth. I want them to be shiny and sparkly for as long as possible. Second, think of all the work my liver and gallbladder are doing to break down fat! I have already had a mother whose gallbladder was full of gallstones and a grandmother whose gallbladder contained an aggressive cancer. The second situation is very deadly. I want to live! I want to be around for awhile so that I can be with my family on earth. And third, my boyfriend reminds me of this all the time, I do not want my arteries clogged.

I feel that it's not good to be addicted to things. Even sugar. I have decided to take a week off the extra stuff: chocolate, crepes, ice cream, cakes... I've already enjoyed a lot of that in Europe. It's time to enjoy other types of food. I want to see what a week does for my body and then I want to see what two weeks does. Obviously, it's okay to have things in moderation, but if I have a candy bar at this point, then I will have another tomorrow... I need to establish self control first and then break some rules. I think that is the best idea.

I can do it!

Back home!

Yes, "We're back home!" is what I said very loudly as we entered our flats yesterday evening. Bus rides all over the countryside tend to leave me aching for a bed to stretch out on and chocolate. Thus, coming home makes me very excited. I will be excited squared when I get back to the States and have the option of chicken or french toast for dinner. Today I almost ate canned mac and cheese and instead opted for bread and peanut butter (mm!). I hear from my brother in Hungary that the food there is superb. I should get my invisibility cloak on for a small trip to Budapest.

Anyway, while our little trip did wear me out, I was able to visit the most remarkable things!

Yesterday, we traveled to three places: Bath, Salisbury, and Jane Austen's home in Cha..... can't remember the rest of it. In Bath, we entered the Roman Bath museum area and were guided by an audio tour. It was so cool! I tried to think of all the different types of people who could have used the baths. I began to think of the story where Jesus heals a man who has been sitting near a bath for years trying to make it to the healing waters, but never actually gets there. After Jesus heals him, he betrays Christ. Poor man.

In Bath, three other things happened: 1.) I ate the most awesome pastie. It had Thai curry in it with coriandur. It made me miss my boyfriend and his family because we've had coriandur curry a couple of times at their house and I had never eaten it before then. 2.) Katie and I visited the Victorian Art Museum and watched the river for a bit. It was fun to reflect. 3.) We watched a guy balance a unicycle on his chicken. Wow.

When we were in Salisbury, we visited St. Someone's Cathedral and the Magna Carta building. I took many pictures of the tombs and memorials in the cathedral so that I could share them with people trying to finish their genealogy.

Jane Austen's house was awesome! She is by far my favorite author. It was very neat to see where she lived.

A couple of days ago I did a high kick to see if I could reach a leaf with foot and my back popped into place (it has been out of place for some time). It felt so good the rest of the trip, but then when I got back, I was putting away something and it popped back into the wrong place again. It's killing me now. :( That's all right. I'll try those high kicks in my room for a little bit and see if I can get it back.

The Past Three Days

Quick catch-up bullet list:

Today: 

• Met up with Wales group to go look at a burial site and St. Fagan's area. I remet a girl from my hometown, Taalin (sp?). Anyway, she is chemistry buds with one of my other friends, Tom. It was a cool connection. I also remet another girl from my freshman ward named Laura. I remember her testimony from one Sunday. It was a testimony about how as we try to do the right things we will progress and spiritually mature. The burial site was cool. We kind of learned a Welsh song that went something like: Belay me Daniel Belay me Daniel something something Am Beth Am Beth something something. 
• Hiked around the Castle Coch because a wedding was going on inside.
• Went to the Castle Coch. This place is very special to me. As I was touring, I was feeling faintly familiar with the place and the names when I saw the symbol of a crane next to the name George Burges. George Burges and another person living at the castle, Lady Margaret, are both ancestors of mine. I think that the cranes depicted around George Burges are actually on my Crandall family crest. I loved the castle so much, I wanted to buy a painting depicting it (for only 9 pounds!), but it was rather bulky and I didn't think I could preserve it very well on the way back to the States. I decided that I will show Justin a picture of it and have him paint it for me. He would love to do that, right? ;) This reminds me of an experience my Grandma told me about when she was walking down the streets of Norwich - she felt like her ancestors had walked the same streets that she was walking on. When she got home and told my great-grandma about it, she said that in fact, her ancestors were from Norwich! How exciting! I feel like I just had that same experience.
• Got home and decided to go shopping. Got six shirts and a skirt for 18 pounds. Came back to the hostel for a rest and then left to go to the food festival. I tried sheep's milk ice cream. Better than cow's. I bought an organic Wales black beef burger and a rich chocolate pudding cup. Both hit the spot. Also saw a guy being strapped to a stretcher with blood coming out of his head. I had to suppress my urge to bandage his wound.

Yesterday:

• Woke up at 3:20 am to visit Stonehenge so that we could see the sun come up over the stones. Unfortunately, it was a misty/rainy day, but the stones were so cool! I loved them. We took many pictures.
• Went on a hike up to the Tor. This has something to do with King Arthur and it is really cool. I went on my own personal hike there and felt very energized for waking up so early. 
• Went to the Glastonbury Abbey. What a beautiful place! The abbey is kind of in ruins, but there is a huge park around it with a garden, a pond, and a lake. I just wanted to spend the whole day there! Only had 30 minutes, but it was so worth it. A definite place to come back to. 
• Went to Tintern Abbey. This was even more spectacular than the Glastonbury Abbey. I think what made it so special to me was the poem that William Wordsworth wrote about Tintern Abbey. Thank you, Becca, for introducing our class to that poem! I loved it and wish I had time to write a poem while I was there.
• If you haven't noticed already, there were many places we didn't have a lot of time at because we were kind of late. I was sad that many people did not want to go to some of these places, but many had stayed up later than me.
• Arrived in Cardiff and went shopping with Lauren and Janelle. Got a skirt and sweater and some flowers for my hair. :) We saw a guy getting arrested and while he was getting arrested, a woman he was with would go up and kick the police in the tush. It was weird to watch.
• Took a long walk with Lauren and got to know her  better. It was very enjoyable!

Two days ago:

• Left London very early to get to Avebury to be close to see Stone Henge in the morning
• Stopped at Stoarhead and didn't have much time! This is the place where Pride and Prejudice was filmed (the scene where it is raining and Mr. Darcy declares his abnormal love for Elizabeth and she refuses his marriage proposal). This was a HUGE park. I could have spent hours wandering in there. Definitely one of my favorites during this trip. You can rend holiday cottages there! I highly recommend something like that.
• Got to hostel and the lady wanted all of us to pay 50 pence for everything. She was funny, but stingy. We actually went to the town of Avebury and looked at older stones and some goats. I bought some White Chocolate with Vanilla Bean. That was good. I played life size checkers with Chloe and I won. She was really good though. It was luck. Silja found some little green worms that had blown into my hair.
• I rode in my first taxi ever.

Two Plays

Here is pretty much what happened yesterday:

* Talked to Brandon on the phone (I finally memorized the phone number to call, my pin number, the 00's, the country code, the city code, and Brandon's number.
* Went to class and learned tons about Indo-European and Germanic languages. Because Justin is in Hungary serving his mission, I tried to remember something cool about the Hungarian language. There are only a few ways in English that we could say sing. Sing, sang, sung. In Hungarian, the word for sing can be adapted into many, many more variations. Another cool things I learned in class has to do with agglutinative languages. In this type of language, you take a word and you just keep adding different parts onto the word until the word means enough to describe what would take us a whole paragraph to write.
* After class, Janelle, Erica, Katelyn, and I rushed over to that crepe place I was talking about earlier. This time Janelle and I split a ham, cheese, and pepper crepe and a banana et chocolate crepe. I really cannot wait to get to Paris. This food is magnificent!
* Janelle and I then went to the Natural History Museum. First of all, those museums are crazy with the toilets. We followed a path of arrows for about five minutes before we reached a bathroom. Besides having  toilets, the museum also contained tons of fossils, stuffed animals (taxidermy kind), rocks, plant life, butterflies, etc. It was cool. I got a present for Mom and Brandon there.
* After the museum, Janelle and I went back to the crepe place and got ice cream. I splurged a little on the sugar yesterday, I know.
* We then went to the grocery shop with some other girls from our group who we saw inside. I found the best tasting strawberries in the WORLD there. They are so red and sweet and regular-sized. Since I finished shopping first (which seems to happen a lot) I waited outside the store and a man from Bangladesh began talking to me. He asked where I was from and I said America. He asked why I was there and I said to study the English language. I guess he was confused as to why I would travel all the way over here to study the english language in britain when I could study it in my home country. I told him briefly that people from the States and the English speak differently. He asked for an example. This is how our conversation went:

Me: Okay, so when I say "car," I say kahr. The English say something like kawh.
Guy: Yes, American voice comes from the chest.
Me: Yes and the English sound like.. Well, I say I am going to the tube station. The English say (I said this in a high voice) I ahm goin'to the choob stahshun.

* Up and decided to see Les Miserables. Best play ever!

Today:

* Talk with Brandon
* Class
* Macbeth play - a very interesting, weird adapted play. Very interesting.
* Victoria and Albert Museum with Janelle
* Ben's Cookies
* Homework