Bits about the Bitzes: England Trip

Last fall, my thesis adviser announced she would be leading a study abroad trip to England over Spring Break. The trip was titled Shakespeare's England and would consist of time in London and Stratford upon Avon, as well as seeing a lot of theatre. I sat drooling over the trip, and realizing that there was no way I could go on it. I didn't even put my name on the "interested" list because I couldn't bear to get the emails with info.

Then, in late September or early October, she asked me if I would be interested in going on the trip as a TA and having all or part of the trip funded. She couldn't make any promises, but it was a possibility. I was ecstatic but tried not to get my hopes too high.

Long story short, it ended up working out and I was able to go on the trip thanks to the generous funding I received. I have just returned from that trip and was smart enough to write daily recap emails to Henry. I will be working on getting each day blogged over the next couple of weeks. It was a 10 day trip so I hope to have it done within two weeks. (One blog day per real day with time for me to skip days - thesis work is cranking into high gear.) So these posts will mainly be excerpts from those emails and contain a few of the 400 photos I took during one of the most amazing trips of my life.

Leaving Montana!

Day 1: Arriving in London

We arrived at our hostel around 10 in the morning, but weren't able to check in until 2.That made for a very long day. I only got about 1 hour of sleep on the plane last night. The flight from Chicago was 8 hours, and when I stopped and thought about it, that's a whole workday of sitting in a tin can hurtling through the sky with 3 inches of leg room. Luckily, I was sitting next to Gretchen so I had a good seat mate. I listened to some "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and couldn't fall asleep because I kept laughing. I finally had to turn it off but I still had trouble going to sleep.

I'm so tired right now that I'm having a hard time enjoying it. I know that will change soon. I am feeling a little bit of culture shock and homesickness. It would be so great to be asleep on the couch with Siri right now. Our room is on the 3rd floor of the hostel and the lifts are broken. And in Europe they start counting at 0. So I had to carry the suitcase up to the 4th floor. Garr!!!!

The flights were good and uneventful and pretty much on time. Going through customs was a breeze and the luggage was waiting for us at the carousel. Easy breezy. I think it is supposed to be foggy and rainy in London for most of the time we are here. It's a pretty huge place. Not sure I could live here. It's cool, but massive. We have tube passes so we get to ride the tube the whole time we're here. To kill time today we rode the tube down to Picadilly Circus and found a little cafe to eat in and had lunch .

I was able to take a shower and a 1 hour nap and then we had class and went to dinner. We kept getting lost walking to dinner and it ended up being a 45 minute walk through the rain before we found it. It was delicious though. It was at an old pub on the Thames called the Anchor and we had our own room (like 4 floors up) and got fish and chips. It was so tasty. We took the tube home and it only took like 15-20 minutes. :) My tube card seems to have stopped working which is annoying. They have to manually let me through every time. I might see if I can get it fixed tomorrow. Now we're back at the hostel and I'm having some Internet time before bed.

We have a walking tour tomorrow at 9, about 3 hours. I had to give myself a foot massage today. It's so wet here I can't wear my Toms or little flats, but my Danskos and sneakers are doing great. I'm pretty sure I won't be dry until I get back to MT.

Tomorrow night we are going to see our first play. It should be cool. It's an adaptation of a play called Miss Julie and we've been seeing posters everywhere for it. The play we are seeing is called Mies Julie and it's an adaptation that is done with a South African point of view. It will take the class issues in the play and I'm sure race tensions will also become an issue. It should be interesting to see what they do!