"West Trip"

Tuesday, May 11
Chauton (Jane Austin's House)
Winchester Cathedral and Great Hall
Bath

Wednesday, May 12
Glastonbury Abbey
Wells Cathedral
Devonshire Coast

Thursday, May 13
Tintagel ("King Aurthurs" Castle) Cornwall Coast
Exeter Cathedral

Beautiful, Fun, Challenging, Educating, and an overall great experience! Driving on a coach for hours and hours has it's challenges with a four year old boy, (he tossed his cookies)  but it was so neat to see the south west coast of England. I love London, but sometimes I feel claustrophobic. So it was really awesome to see the ocean again. Here are the highlights of our trip!

Jane Austin's Home in Chauton

Jane Austin's writing table. I "illegally" took this picture!

Daniel playing across the street from the house.

Winchester Cathedral (taken in the winter)

King Aurthur's Round table
If he existed, King Aurthur
was born in the 6th century.
Table built in the 11th century. Go figure!

Daniel listening to the kid's audio guide in Bath

Bath Abbey in the distance

BYU students (the three on the right are Cougarettes)

The Royal Crescent

Daniel LOVES mazes!

Glastonbury Abbey ruins

The kids playing in a weed mound at Glastonbury Abbey
while the students were on a tour.

The students were laughing because the kids looked like
prairie dogs poking their heads up and down.

Wells Cathedral

We arrived in Devonshire at the end of the day. We just
spent the night there before moving on the next day.
The water was FREEZING! Not like California in May.

Daniel collecting sea glass and rocks.

Tintagel in Cornwall

Laura on a cliff. Yes I was scared!

The main chapel at Tintagel. The castle in the
background is a hotel or something.

Exeter Cathedral

Whew! Time to go home to London. It was a four plus hour drive with a stop on the way. I'm glad to be home and we're not doing anything with the students next week! Just Scott. Heather will go on one day trip to Oxford University and Stratford on Avon (Shakespeare's home). I'm going to chill with the boys and try to catch up a little on their school.

Beautiful Stourhead

I was in awe and amazed at the beauty the first time I came in the Winter. It's so much prettier in the Spring. I wish I could see it in Autumn. These pictures don't do it justice. There were Spring flowers all over the place. I must have been so sidetracked chasing Daniel around that I forgot to take pictures of all the colors! We had a really great time.

My all time favorite country church in England 

is this one in Stourhead Gardens.

"Apollo's Temple"

Wilton House

A beautiful house where the (very handsome) Earl of Pembroke lives. The students were asking about him because he's still single. Some were actually disappointed that he's engaged to be married.

I love Wisteria. It's all over London and smells so good.

Only in a royal backyard could you have a playground like this!

The students liked it as much as my kids!

Stonehenge

These aren't just a bunch of stones stacked on top of each other.

You can see how they cut grooves so they would fit well.

 

Look at the little "ball" on top of the tall stone.

These were all over. Some were worn down more. 

They were like a ball and socket so the stones would stay put.

Pretending to be Stonehendge

Barrows. There are some in the distance among the trees.

These are ancient burial mounds near and around

Stonehendge.

I don't think we've seen enough sheep since we've 

been in England!

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

 

The White Tower (Central and oldest part)

Yeoman Warders (Beefeaters)

Traditionally they look after the crown jewels and guard the 

prisoners at this castle. But they are 

also the tour guides and are hilarious!

Guard #1

Guard #2

Guard #3

Plush Beefeater outside a gift shop.

cool sketch book/journal Laura bought.

Natalie

Natalie, one of the students here, sat at our table last night at dinner. Her father is a practicing Jew and her mother is a Catholic. She's obviously LDS. She has an amazing story. Her grandparents are Polish Jews and somehow managed to survive the Holocaust. Her grandfather enlisted in the Russian Brigade and survived that way. Her grandmother went to Auschwitz. I'm guessing she did some kind of work labor that was needed and she must have been good at it. For those of you who don't know Auschwitz was a death camp and you didn't "just" survive. I was fighting the tears as she told me. Not because of the sad story that the Holocaust is, but I think I was just in awe with her and what she was telling us. I really felt the Spirit and I've never met anyone who was that close to survivors before. Plus she's a convert to our church. Her parents, though committed to their own religions, must be open minded. (I would love to read her Patriarchal Blessing!) She didn't go into a lot of detail. I hope to ask her another time. As a person she is very nice, BUT a very pretty BYU coed and was more interested in talking with another student (a guy) at the table.

 Natalie is the black haird student in the background on the right.

The students are posing at "Apollo's Temple" at Stourhead.

The sad faces are because Elizabeth Bennet said "NO" to 

Mr. Darcy's proposal and they almost, almost,almost kiss, 

but didn't. These students love P&P as much as the last group!

"Cutsie Word Land"

I know I posted something about this on facebook a while ago, but I just can't help myself.

I'm well aware that in America, we have our own funny ways of saying things, slang, and "weird" phrases. But sometimes when I'm out and about I just start to laugh because of the things that I see or signs I read. For example: McDonalds had a shake in the winter that was called "Tasty Toffee Tastic!" It was plastered on the outside of the restaurant everywhere we went. I wish I took a picture. Here are a few I did take pictures of.

chesty cough

tickly cough

wibbly wobbly jelly (jello)

one hour photo place

scrummy cereal bars

Do you notice a theme? Everything has an "ee" sound. The funniest to me was at the British Museum. There was a mummified cat, who's description, written by experts on ancient Egypt,  said that they can tell by something or other that the cat "had a "STRIPEY" tail. This is a massive museum of ancient world history, with PhD's contributing, and they say "stripey." I laughed out loud. Isn't it just "striped?" With an "ed?" 

Anyway, I had to get this blog post done just for me. I'm in "Prim and Proper" England but everywhere I go I feel like I'm in a land of cutsie words!

Charades

We played charades (again) tonight after our family home evening lesson and treat. Here is one Daniel did.

First he gave the sign that it was "one little word." After a series of odd motions and gestures and no one could guess it, this is what he said in one sentence:

"There was an army ant and he was trying to fly but he couldn't so he tried to learn but he couldn't and his dad was at work so he started digging to find a worm to be his pet and then someone gave him a worm but he didn't want it so he punched him in the face and then someone dropped a hurricane of rocks on him and it smashed him to the ground and he fell off the mountain!"

That's all "one little word."

Saint Paul's Cathedral

I love this cathedral! I think it's my favorite. Or maybe my favorite next to St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. I love mosaics and the ceiling in St. Paul's has a lot. I love how the gold makes it sparkle. I wish we could have taken pictures inside. I think I like it because it's NOT Gothic. All the other cathedral's we see are Gothic, which I really like, but am kind of tired of. This is refreshing. The original St. Paul's was Gothic but it burned down in the 17th century. Christopher Wren designed this one and it was built between 1675 and 1710.  I also love what St. Paul's means to the British. A symbol of hope in trying times. See my blog entry on February 1 (President Chittock).

The last time we were here it was in January and the roof was closed due to ice. This time it was open so we went up and up and up AND up! It was a lot of fun to see London and the places we go to from way up high.

Picture we took in January

Inside St. Paul's. I found this online!

The kids played around outside while we waited for the students 

to come from another museum we didn't go to.

Daniel in Time-Out. He took off his shoes in rebellion of being in Time-Out.

I think Laura feels bad for him so she sat with him.

Us

From the top of the dome looking at the garden area.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the left 

and the bridge the Death Eaters broke in
one of the more recent Harry Potter movies.

 Going down was really slooow with Daniel. He gets sacred. 

It was hard on my knees!