Massive Day Trip Through England's Green

So last weekend of May 9th, I went to London to visit a friend, Rebekah, from SB who was studying the year abroad at London University at Royal Holloway...which wasn't actually in London at all but in Egham, 40 minutes outside of the capital.

An old roommate of hers, Serena, was visiting her.
We'd planned to spend that weekend with a visit to Stone Henge on Friday and the next day we were to attend the May Ball that was organized by our study abroad program.
I'll be recounting our day trip on Friday in this blog.

So, we all got up bright and early to some drizzle and headed for the train station by bus. On the bus were some students heading for campus for exams...most of whom were actually American. I was thanking my lucky stars I had no exams to worry about.

We got to Bath and the sky started clearing up.


Serena and Rebekah

It really is such a lovely town. Rebekah gave Serena and I a little tour which included the Royal Circle where all the posh people live.


Royal Circle

We were thinking about visiting the Roman Baths but got too distracted just exploring.



Gardens that you have to pay to get into...





Around lunchtime, our tour bus for Stone Henge arrived. It was quite a long drive out...and I might have slept through most of it.

Once we got to the site, I just couldn't keep my eyes off the Stones. I almost had to pinch myself, I was just thinking, "Oh my god, the famous Stone Henge is, like, right there!!!"






Halfway through our walk around the stones, we stopped for a bit to have our lunch. It was the picnic at Stone Henge I'd always wanted!

On the way back to Bath, our tour guide made a stop at the lovely town of Lacock where they filmed some of BBC's Pride and Prejudice (with the Firth) as well as some of Harry Potter . He insisted we all get out to stretch our legs and let him show us around the town which was really quite small.



Imagine no cars, some dirt roads, and we have the town from P&P!



This was apparently the cottage that portrayed the house of Harry Potter's parents. It supposedly appeared briefly in the Mirror of Esired in the first film installment.


St. Cyriac's Church where Laura Parker Bowles was married


On the drive back

When we got back to Bath, we walked around a bit more looking for dinner...and I suggested a picnic by the river. We ended up doing just that.
We found a Waitrose, gathered up a light dinner and settled ourselves at a picnic table.





It was the perfect conclusion to a very eventful day.

Springy Summer Term

Easter holidays ended April 27th. That weekend students were returning to their accommodation and I was beginning to miss having the flat to myself.
In the third term, there are no actual lectures at the Uni's. The summer term (they call it) is devoted to revision (studying) and exams.

As a drama student, I have no exams- only papers which I turned in April 28th and 29th. The week we got back, all the drama students had tech and dress rehearsals for the final scene performances for our Theatre Praxis class in which we applied theories of multiple theatre practitioners to a scene of our choice. We'd been rehearsing these scenes all Spring term. I mentioned before that my group was doing a scene from a play called Independence which UC Santa Barbara had put on last year.

Monday and Tuesday (28th and 29th) were our tech and dress rehearsals while the 30th and 1st of May were our final performances.


Here are two members of my group, Helen (seated) and Emma (on the floor) backstage waiting our turn to go on. Helen played my elder sister and Emma played our mother.

The evening of our last performance on Thursday, we thought it'd be nice to go out and celebrate the end of our assessments. We did this at a club called Mechu. A small group of us went out earlier to have dinner at the bar before it opened for clubbing.


Lydia was also in my group and played my younger sister. The resemblance is uncanny, I know.

It was quite the night. Although we have no exams, the rest of the drama students aren't entirely free as they have their technical theatre allocations in which they help out on the crew of the performances of some of the third years. As a California exchange student, I was not allowed to take any of the technical theatre courses in preparation for this (for some odd reason) so I am basically more free than my fellow drama students. I am hated a lot for it. :)

After our theatre praxis assessments we were required to turn in a paper two weeks afterwards explaining what theories of which practitioner we employed. It was a measly 2,000 words so naturally I procrastinated a bit and enjoyed the spring-time atmosphere and sunshine that had imbued England these last couple of weeks.


On campus

Later that week Paul and I went into town.



This is the symphony hall where I saw Rufus Wainwright perform last year.

The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous lately (not typical English weather at all). And with my school work ending the earliest it ever has, it feels like my summer vacation has already begun.


View from my flatmate, Candy's, room; Maple Bank at it's best


One of the hottest days on the Vale lake

A Couple More Getaways to London and Gloucestershire

For most of my five week Easter holiday, I was in quiet Birmingham working on my final essays and play adaptation.
Within those last four weeks after Alex came to visit in London, I made a couple more visits back.

April 11th & 12th:

Some friends that had graduated from Birmingham Uni last year had a house party in London.
They had named their house 'Archie', so the celebration was called Archie's Going Away Party as they all had to move out soon.



As you can see we had quite the night.

I had stayed the night at Flo's house who lives in Angel and her house is literally a MINUTE from Sam's flat.
Sam was working at the cafe the next morning, so I decided to take a later train than everyone else that came from Birmingham so I could stop and say hi.

April 17th-21st:

I made a speedy return later than week with my friend Thom who wanted to see History Boys before it closed and I was more than happy to accompany him.


This was the guy Alex and I fancied: I think it's cuz he has a John Krasinski look to him.

Our hanging around London was rather disorganized as we just ended up wandering aimlessly...both of us with our luggage.
Thom was going to Madrid the next day for a mutual friend's 21st birthday.
I was prepared for a weekend at Paul's after hanging out in London for a bit.




We managed, though, to meet up with our friend Will who was in London for more drama school auditions.



After seeing History Boys, I was invited to crash at Thom's friend, Sophie's, house as my original sleep over plan fell through.
Sure I slept on the floor...but it was on the floor of the building where Daniel Radcliffe lives. Like, whoa.

The next morning Thom and Sophie had to get up extremely early for their flight so I got up with them.
Our paths split at about 8:30 AM, so I thought I'd give Sam a ring to see if she was up and had time to hang out before her classes.
Surely enough she was up, and didn't have class til about 11 so I got to hear all her goss from the past week and then I left her to have breakfast at the cafe where she now used to work.


The cafe lives just at the foot of the steps of this church.

From there I caught a train back to Birmingham and from there I got a cheap ticket to Gloucestershire where Paul and his dad picked me up.

I stayed there for the weekend and for one of those days, we went on a day trip to a local castle called Beaverston.




There was a nice greenhouse there that I thought you'd like, Mom.








Oh yeah and there was this three-legged dog that Alan and I couldn't help but admire.