Stratford-upon-Avon

Pictures: 1) A Stratford Street, 2) me with the Guild Church - built in 1269, 3) "crying flowers" as I call them with Anne Hathaway's cottage in background, 4) Close up of me with the cottage, 5) me and cottage, 6) me sitting on a tree in the yard of Holy Trinity Church, 7) eight of us with Professor Selassie on the Avon River, 8) me with Holy Trinity behind





Sorry it's been a few days - but honestly, there wasn't a whole lot to tell until yesterday. Wednesday I just did homework until class that night. Thursday my class met our art teacher at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea (a really nice area of London). The gallery's exhibition was on Middle Eastern Art and many of the pieces dealt with the oppression of women and the impact of war and terrorism on cities and people in the cities. It was interesting, but after two hours of walking around looking at one piece after another, it gets a bit tiring.

After that the flatmates and I went to lunch at EAT, then I came back to our area and stopped by Winston House (our UNC location) to print off a graduation application. I had been going crazy because I kept emailing people in the Journalism School and the English Department trying to make sure all my credits would transfer seamlessly and asking whether I had to fill out a graduation application if I wasn't participating in the commencement ceremony. I finally got an email from the J-school and the lady sent me the form to fill out and asked me to mail it in. SO, after I printed it, I went to the ULU and bought some envelopes, came home, filled out the application and mailed the thing.

At 7 I had drawing class, so I left here about 6:30 for that. The kid who sat next to me this time was from Atlanta, GA and went to UVA for undergrad and is now at LSE (where the art class is) for his graduate degree in history. The guy's name was Alex and he asked me if we were supposed to bring our own drawing materials to the class, and I said yes, but told him I'd loan him some this time. I think he was a bit shocked when the nude model came out - he thought that it was a still life drawing class (as in plants and stuff). He'd only done architecture drawing before, but for all that, he wasn't terrible. He paid my £3 fee for letting him use my expensive materials, which was nice of him. It was nice to talk to an American who I didn't live with 24/7. lol The model was another woman this week, but she wasn't a professional like the last lady and thus didn't do the best poses (as far as making sure everyone in the class had a good view and such).







Friday morning I got up at 8:45 and we all left the flat by 9:35 to take the tube to Marylebone Train Station. Here we met Dr. Selassie (the professor who came to London with us from UNC) and he gave us our train tickets for the 10:54 departure for Stratford-upon-Avon. The ride was about two hours (with all the stops) which was a bit long since it's really not that far away. Dr. Selassie appointed me "official tour guide" for the day since I'd been there before, which was kind of funny since I didn't remember the specifics of where everything was or anything like that. When we arrived I bought a £1 map of the town and led us toward the center streets. Everyone was hungry so we found a Chinese restaurant for lunch (after being turned away from two Italian restaurants who did not have room for a group of 10).

I had packed my lunch, so I just had my sandwich and some fruit and ate a little bit of left overs from Lennon and Ashley. By the time we got out of there it was about 3 pm. We decided to walk to Anne Hathaway's cottage (she was Shakespeare's wife), and on our way to the trail head we stopped into the town hall and got a little tour of that. It is approx. 400 years old (and that is after the original burnt down). It was really pretty inside. When we finally got to the trail head it was still a mile+ walk to the cottage, but it was such a lovely day and the walk was pleasant. We went through open fields of people playing soccer, and past quaint houses and school yards. When I saw the soccer fields I really wished I had a Frisbee.

Once we made it to the cottage Dr. Selassie paid the £5 per person to get us in and we were given a brief history of the place. This is the house where Shakespeare would have come to call on Anne before they got married, and Anne's family had lived in that house from the early 1500s. Parts of the house were added on, but the original 2 rooms are still there and there are still many pieces of furniture from all the centuries within. In the kitchen of the house there was a man dressed up like Shakespeare reciting the sonnets. He was pretty cool, and the ones we heard him say were all ones we had just studied. Outside there are also gardens and orchards and a hedge maze. Obviously none of the flowers were in bloom, but we did go to the maze and sculpture garden.

Once we walked all the way back to Stratford it was after 5 pm, and I really wanted to see Holy Trinity church (where Shakespeare and Anne were buried) before it got dark. Of course since it was after 5 we couldn't go inside the church (and they are buried inside) but we did get to enjoy the beauty of the architecture and the very old graveyard. The church is right on the river Avon as well, so that was our glimpse of the river.

After that we walked toward the center of town and five of us went to a coffee/sandwich shop called Costas for dinner and the other five went to McDonald's. My group picked up the McD's group after dinner and we walked to the Courtyard Theatre where we were to see "The Tempest" at 7:15. The production was really quite amazing - the acting was just delightful and I was so excited that I totally understood what was going on (granted I'd just read the play a week before, but still, it can prove difficult to understand Shakespeare if the text is not directly in front of you).

We got out of the performance at 20 till 10 p.m. We were supposed to catch an 11 pm train back to London, but everyone was wanting to leave earlier than that, so Dr. Selassie said there was probably a train every hour so if we booked it we could probably make the 10 p.m. train. SO, we booked it all the way across town and made it to the station with 5 minutes to spare. And alas, there was a train there, but it was the 11 p.m. laying dormant for it's departure the next hour. That was disappointing since we had hurried so much. It was also an outdoor platform, so we had to wait out in the cold for the next hour. We all started entertaining ourselves with cell phone games or thumb-war-esque games and a few charades. I was getting chilly so I finally put on my iPod and just started dancing. I figured it was good aerobic exercise and since I didn't get to go to salsa that night, I thought I'd get some dancing in. My flatmates probably thought I was crazy, but nobody really said anything and I had a lot of fun.

The train finally started up around 10:45 and we got on, arriving in Oxford at 12:15. From oxford we switched trains and took a 12:19 train to London Paddington. We arrived in Paddington about 2:15 am. ICK! We were all so tired and finally managed to hail 2 cabs to take us back to our flat. Each cab fits 5, so it was perfect and about £3 each. Dr. Selassie was in our cab and he said we could pay him back later. We all filed up the stairs and got ready for bed. I finally hit the sack about 3:30 a.m.

I woke up at quarter to 12 today and don't have plans for today except for homework and grocery shopping. I think I shall look up a low-fat banana bread recipe to make.