BES Reflective Journal-Week 6

After two weekends of trips and travelling this past week I attempted to do what I could to make this past week more budget friendly. I'd say I did a pretty good job. Regardless, it was still an awesome week, but seemed to be filled with things that reminded me of home.

Monday night we went and saw "One Man, Two Guvnors," for theatre class. It was hilarious, but contained a lot of strong British humor that made me step back and think, "Whoa, are they really allowed to do that on a public stage!?" I really enjoyed it, but I don't know how well it will do in America because of how strong the British humor is throughout. Tuesday and Wednesday I had my internship, filled with different tasks (which if you care to learn about are in my internship blog from last week). Before class on Thursday I was not feeling well, good thing we took the bus because I had to get off at a random stop and try to find a bathroom...good thing I have such good friends :) The weather has been super nice, so I've found myself walking to more places and going on night excursions. It's fun to see the city at night-time, every place is different. For example, the area that we live in, Victoria, shuts down around 8pm-ish...but go to Picadilly or Trafalgar and things are lively until the wee hours of the morning.

Hillsong Church

A lot of peoples' friends, family, and significant others are starting to come and visit. It's fun to meet new people, but it makes me wish I had someone I knew coming to visit me. I was able to Skype for a couple of hours Sunday with different people from home. I miss everyone, but am certainly not ready to leave yet :) I spent like 4 hours doing homework this weekend and am done for the next 3 weeks...rough life! ha. Another thing that reminded me of home this week was going to church at Hillsong on Sunday. It's a large church held at the Dominion Theatre (where they host "We will Rock You"). With its loud-rock music and fun atmosphere it reminded me of my church from back home...which surprisingly is even bigger and more awesome, but I may be a little biased. Previously I'd just been attending Church of England's conservative services, so it was great to go to a service that I actually get something out of. Finally, one of my friends from the program, Ashley, had two friends (Colin and Breann) from Spain come to visit her. Ashley and I learned early on that we were from the same hometown, but we had never met before, even though we knew a lot of the same people...so of course her friends were also from Arvada too, and also knew a lot of my friends. Colin's mom and my mom even knew each other from the twin's club...oh and we live like 5 minutes away from each other...weird, I go halfway around the world and meet people from my neighborhood that I've never seen before.



This weekend I had two new cultural experiences. On Saturday night I went to see "The Vow," at the O'Dean theatre. Although it was an American movie, the experience of seeing one in a British theatre was just a bit different. We were given assigned seats, in America it's first come first serve basis. The screen was set back behind what looked like a theatre stage. Other than that it was about the same, it was nice to see an American movie, to remind me of back home. Then on Sunday me and a group of girls went to John Lewis on Oxford street and did afternoon tea! Originally, we made reservations at Bea's of Bloomsbury, until we found out it was 17 pounds! We found John Lewis where we paid 10 pounds for a pot of tea and a whole plate of assorted goodies (finger sandwiches, biscuits, cakes, jam, and cookies). It was awesome, I loved it. But I was so stuffed that I didn't eat anything the rest of the day. Before going I remember Mark telling us of a certain type of tea that's really good but will clog your arteries...so I obviously wanted to try it. So while ordering I asked for the 'clotted cream tea'...out waiter looked at me like I was an alien...turns out 'clotted cream' is butter...I felt like such an idiot, but it was mildly hilarious.

Afternoon Tea...yummy!!!

Even though I did pretty well budgeting this week, I still managed to make a few exceptions for big-scale thing later. We bought tickets for Phantom of the Opera this Thursday for Abby's birthday. I've seen it on Broadway before, which was awesome, so I'm excited to see it here and compare the two. In addition,we bought tickets to the 'hot in demand' Warner Brother's Harry Potter tour in April. For thirty pounds it better be awesome, and I'm crossing my fingers that they allow me to fly a broom to Hogwarts :)