[December 16] London: Christmas Service @ St. Paul's Cathedral

When I looked at the St. Paul's Cathedral website and saw they were having a Christmas service, it seemed like a good idea to go. I kept meaning to go to a service there anyway so this was perfect!

It was really, really cold that evening. The bus took an especially long time to get there, but I was still an hour early, and it was a GOOD THING—the line to get into the service went around almost the entire cathedral. So, I started waiting in line and it started snowing... a lot... then as the line started moving (thank goodness!) a guy came around and said there might not be room for everyone so we might not get in. Sigh. But finally, I was on the steps, so close to getting in, and all of these people from behind me cut me, and although I can generally stick up for myself, whatever, okay. Then one of the ladies in line asked if I 'queue jumped'. "Um, No." She said "How long have you been standing in line?" Me: "An hour. WHY." "Oh, we just thought you queue jumped."Jerk. Sheesh! She's the one who cut me! Loser. Then I had to sit next to the loser during the service.

I just hate it when strangers are rude. 

Anyway. St. Paul's Cathedral! The Christmas Service was a combination of a lovely choir singing, poetry readings, and scripture readings. Really nice, but freezing inside the cathedral as well!

[November 29] London: Westminster Abbey, Oxford Circus, & A Really Painful Ear Infection

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, I was shopping with friends all literally ALL OF A SUDDEN, my left ear had sharp pains in it. It slowly but surely got worse and worse and I was in A LOT of pain by the wee hours of the next morning, so I went to the emergency room and got a prescription for some antibiotic ear drops. When I left the emergency room, I was really confused—I went to reception and asked, "So... how exactly do I pay for this?" I was already imagining a pain in the butt experience with insurance, paying hundreds of dollars, blah blah blah, but she said "Oh, it's free." Me: "...Really???" A little smile, "Yes." 

Wow. 

So I skipped merrily home, but not really. 

That morning, I went to get my ear drops. I got them, they were about $10 as ALL prescriptions are. I skipped merrily home. 

THEN I realized, wait a second—these are EYE DROPS. What?!?! So I took them back and found out the 'Chemist' (they called most of the pharmacies 'Chemists') didn't have them. In total, I visited EIGHT PHARMACIES looking for these ear drops. During which I was miserably dealing with my painful ear. The pain spread to the rest of my head, neck, and even shoulder. I walked a lot, took the bus, and eventually found them. Yeah. But then... I couldn't find the right buses home, and eventually when I did get on a bus, it terminated and it was freezing out and I had no idea what to do so I got a taxi, which ended up being expensive. But I didn't care because I really felt terrible!

To make this already long story shorter, after 2 trips to the emergency room and 1 doctor appointment, I finally got antibiotic ear drops and pills, then I started getting better. But even though it's 1 month later, my ear still plugs up a bit.

During this time, I had a day where I was actually feeling decent! So I went and toured the inside of Westminster Abbey. No pictures allowed inside, though.

Later, I met my favorite person living in London (haha) at Oxford Circus for coffee. Aren't the decorations prettyyy??!?!

[October 22] Daytrip to Stratford Upon Avon

Oh HI SHAKEY SHAKE SHAKESPEARE!

I have to say, I really, really like this pictures of myself lol:

Well! Here we have another day all about Shakes-Master. A group of IES students took a daytrip to Stratford Upon Avon. "Upon Avon" just means that the city of Stratford is right next to the river Avon. But it sounds fancy, right?

Now, at the very beginning of the day, we visited Shakespeares house. We went to a museum where they showed a wax stamp on a ring that had the initials WS on it, and since it was found by a church in Stratford, they decided that "It is quite possible that this was Shakespeare's ring." So the rest of the day... the joke was "It is quite possible this, or It is quite possible that". 

 This is Anne. She is known for her cute sweaters.

This is Becky. She is really famous because she's in a super cool band called Snightseeing.

This is me, being me:

 

This is the church that Shakespeare is buried in, along with other people related to him:

We had lunch and I ordered broccoli soup but it was literally hot broccoli water. Disgusting and I couldn't eat it. Then we went to Mary Arden's farm.... Shakespeare's mom. It was cool but honestly I am used to animals so I wasn't as fascinated as some of the others were.

 

However, I loved the horse. So peaceful. I really want to learn how to ride a horse!

And later... this is the view I had from my dorm window:

[October 20] London: Shakespeare Tour

One day, the professor of my Shakespeare class took our class on a little tour of Southwark. Southwark looks like it should be pronounced as it looks: "South. Wark." But no. Everyone here says it "Sutherk".

Southwark is on the south side of the Thames, and used to be the place you went to have fun since this was where the theatres and all sorts of naughty places were!

First, we visited the Globe Theatre, which I had already been to. But this time I walked through a museum about Shakespeare and we went on a tour.

Then we walked around the area... and we passed what used to be an old prison. "Most notorious medieval prison". Cool. There are these blue circular plaques ALL over London that tell where something used to be or where someone famous used to live. Very informative!

This is my professor walking along with his cane...

Ruins!

And then, Southwark Cathedral where Shakespeare's brother is buried:

This is a statue of Shakespeare and I think he's just in a really funny pose...!

I was FREEZING on the tour!!!

That night, there was a social and a group of IES students headed to a student bar... and then went to a club dancing!

Silly kids...

[October 17] Trip to Ieper (Ypres), Belgium, Day 2: Cemeteries & Chocolate.

And now... time to blog about the 2nd day of our Belgium trip! Gosh I am SO behind on blogging, as I mention every single post... it just takes forever to load pictures and honestly I bet a lot of you just look at the pictures on here anyway!

The day began with a little jaunt around Ieper to buy chocolates. The city area is very 'European' in atmosphere... and the city has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years! The main reason why we visited Ieper was to see a lot of the WWI history, because A LOT of WWI took place at Ieper. The way I understand it was that the Germans were making their way northward and they would need to get ahold of Ieper... and once they advanced... Britain sent soldiers to fight along with the Belgians and whomever else they could force onto the battlefield. As you can tell, my understand of war is very elementary. I've never been able to understand all of the intricacies of who did what and how that caused this and all of the things that are going on at the same time and, and, and...

Well. Here's one of my friends sitting outside of the hostel we stayed in:

This is the town center and it was built in the 13th century!

In case you can't read this picture of a sign I took, it says "15th century Gothic remains of the 12th century of St. Martin's Deanery. Tombstones, damaged sculptures and fragments of the destroyed St. Martin's church in 1914-1918."

Trying my best to be a Gothic statue...

And then we visited one of many, many graveyards... I can't remember which is named what, honestly. But it was a beautiful day outside and to think of all of the soldiers that were brutally murdered in the VERY SAME place that we walked on that bright and sunny and green day was just unreal.

Right here, battle took place... We learned about all of the wounded and the 'medical care'... the soldeirs would get a shot of morphine if they were lucky and were basically doomed to die. Sanitation was unheard of... chemical warfare was 'invented'.

Then we visited a mock trench. It wasn't actually used during the war, but it was a good example I guess... minus guns and bombs and mustard gas and death and blood and everything else terrible you could think of...

The soldiers made these raised areas to walk on, I think to help prevent getting trench foot, which would happen to them if their feet got wet and cold inside their boots... eventually they'd turn blue and swell up and get blisters and then you'd get gangrene and then they'd have to be amputated.

Walking inside the trench... it was clean and sunny and obviously I can't begin to picture what it must have been like to fight in those conditions, but I know it WASN'T PRETTY...

A little hole to stick your rifle into to shoot at the enemy...

Then we went to the Langemark German cemetery:

Obviously no relation but I took a picture anyway:

And here is the mass grave that is the resting place of almost 25,000 soliders. Oh gosh. How can anyone stomach that? In the rest of the cemetery, over 10,000 soldiers are buried and out of all of the dead in this particular cemetery... about 3,000 of them were SCHOOLBOYS/CHILDREN. They just plain needed BODIES to send into battle. A lot of them were tricked into going. Hitler visited this cemetery at some point, I also remember.

When I got back from the trip, I listened to 'Zombie' by the Cranberries and it suddenly meant something much different to me and I think it's about being shell-shocked (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) during WWI. It's a really powerful song I would recommend listening to, but here are the lyrics:

Another head hangs lowly,
Child is slowly taken.
And the violence caused such silence,
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...

In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, dou, dou, dou, dou, dou...

Another mother's breakin',
Heart is taking over.
When the violence causes silence,
We must be mistaken.

It's the same old theme since 1916.
In your head, in your head they're still fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying...

In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, oh, oh,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, hey, oh, ya, ya-a... 

And then off we drove some more through the Ieper countryside... we were really blessed with a beautiful day...

And we visited another cemetery. It was really breathtakingly gorgeous... really well-maintained and looked after...

And I had to show a few of the ages on a few of the graves...

This one says "Believed to be buried in this cemetery".

Kids from our group:

I really don't have much to say about the cemetery because I think you can see for yourself...

Afterwards we visited Talbot House which was a sort of refuge for soldiers during their time off. It was a really nice little place. We learned about how when a lot of soldiers had their time off, all they would care about was having a good time because it could be their last good time... and so alcohol and women (and I don't know what else) were not in short supply.

Really adorable signs up in the house...

There was a chapel in the attic:

One of the rooms which I quite liked:

And the Talbot House still receives guests there today! I would love to stay their sometime if it wasn't such a pain to get to on my own...

Then of course, we visited a bakery that was just across the street. The man in the picture is Julian, the professor that went on the trip with us. He's my History of London professor and he's really interesting!

My treat! The pink stuff is all marzipan (my favorite!!!) and inside there was a little cake-type thing with cream. Really delicious but I couldn't eat it all at once actually.

Then, we visited a prison. Here's a one of the walls inside the prison, all scratched up by the prisoners:

We learned about all of the things soldiers could be punished for... and of course the most memorable one is for desertion. I can't blame the soldiers that panicked and fled. Sometimes I wonder if our bodies will even physically allow us to march into gruesome battle? Well, I obviously wouldn't know. But a lot of the prisoners were given a last meal, some alcohol, had a bag stuck over their head...

And were taken out here to be executed, oftentimes by their friends or brothers. A lot of the time, they wouldn't even know what was going on because they'd have the gas mask on backwards over their head and it would just be silent. This is all just completely gruesome to me... but it doesn't compare to the torture I learned about in Scotland... compared to the Scottish, this is all quite humane and merciful.

So really, Ieper stands in my mind as cemeteries and chocolate. An awful combination but at least it wasn't all war and bloodshed... it was a great trip but I would only recommend going if you're interested in the history of everything and 'don't mind' being reminded every other second about all of the thousands and thousands that died there.