What do Jack the Ripper, Henry the VIII, and the Queen of England all have in common?

Not a whole lot, really, except they lived in London! And, I learned a little more about each one, got to see where Henry VIII used to live, and where the Queen sometimes lives! I'll start off on Thursday, the day after my Musuem of London trip. I apologize for this being almost a week later...the wireless internet is very fickle here in my flat.

I had two classes on Thursday morning, Slavery and Globalization. I learned about the charter generations of slaves in North America in the first class, and about the history of coffee in the second. The Globalization professor is going to pick one item every Thursday to talk about its origins and how it spread around the world to be more popular. Anyway, Laura and I walked back to our flat, had lunch, and spent some time doing homework. We had dinner, then left around 5 for the Jack the Ripper walking tour. The tour guide that gave us a short introduction to London our first full day here is the one that gave the tour - Debs. She is a lovely woman, very friendly and fun. So we all met at a tube station in the east part of London, known for being less affluent than the western side where we are. Debs began the tour by taking us to a dark alleyway, similar to the one where the first victim of Jack the Ripper was found. In short, Jack cruelly murdered five women of lesser repute in this area of London in the late 1800s. He was never found, tried, or convicted. It is still a mystery, to this day, as to who he was.

Deborah continued walking us to various places, such as a pub where each of the five women were at one time or another known to visit. She told us the story of the murders, one by one, in much more detail than I would have liked. She is a great storyteller, so we were all on our toes listening as closely as we could. Here's one of the streets where the women were seen. As we continued walking through the streets of London, hearing this dreadful story, it was a comfort to me knowing that God is always with me. Many of the students with us had faces of disbelief and fear as Debs talked, evidenced by the fact that everyone was walking as closely together as they could! It was a group of about 30-35 students, and one professor, who kept a careful eye on everyone. There was another group who went off on the same tour with another tour guide about ten minutes before we did, because there was so much interest in going. But anyway, we continued walking, hearing the stories, which I will tell you more about if you would email me. I do not feel that it is something I should post on this happy blog!

The next day, Friday, was our first free day from school! It's pretty awesome the way they have the classes set up...we have every Wednesday off for a field trip, and every Friday off from school, period! All colleges in London, and perhaps all of Britain, have no classes on Wednesday to allow sports groups, social groups, and clubs to have meetings. It is a day meant for exercise and homework! We were talking to one college student from London at church on Sunday night (which I'll talk about more in a minute!) who also said that they have very few class hours in which they listen to lectures. She said most of her learning takes place when she studies, and that the lectures she listens to per week for a full load are only from 6-8 hours all together! I suppose maybe they are better at independent study here. Anyway, here's a picture of just one of the many tiny, tiny cars we've seen here! I guess they are a more efficient way of traveling in the city. There's barely enough room in the back to put anything, but for a single person, it's perfect!

Anyway, I slept in and then got up about 11, and Laura and I began to book our trip to Italy! We had been making plans in the evening all week, but finally sat down and booked our hostels and flights to Italy. We will be flying into Venice on February 28, stay there and explore two nights, then travel to Florence by train, stay there for 3 nights, then travel to Rome by train and stay 4 nights. When in Florence, we hope to take a day trip to see Pisa, and once in Rome we will visit places like the Vatican, the Spanish Steps, and anywhere else that catches our fancy! We will begin planning where we will go when we get closer to time for the trip, but for now we just booked where we are going to stay - in youth hostels. They are a pretty cheap way to rest your head at night, and thanks to Laura's close study of many available hostels, she got us good ones which all provide breakfast, and have great security and great reviews! We're excited it all worked out. We will be flying out of a London airport that is further away from where we live than we'd like, but it saved us a lot of money. We will have to catch a train to get to the airport, but we'll be able to do it! It took until probably 3pm to finish that and get our reservations printed out!

We decided to get out of the flat for a while and went to none other than Portabello Road! I think it was this time when we walked through Kensington Gardens to get there. The garden is not growing flowers yet, but it was lovely to see all the green grass! And we walked by Kensington Palace too - the place where Princess Diana used to live. It was very pretty - here's a picture! Notice the guards on the right...

We continued walking to Portabello Road - it was exciting to see it, after hearing about it and seeing it in the movie "Bedknobs and Broomsticks." The song in the movie goes, "Anything and everything a chap can unload, is found at the market of Portabello Road." (at least that's how I remember it!) It really looked nothing like it did in the movie, but we also went later in the day so that many of the separate little stands had closed up for the day. I was disappointed at first, but when we walked a little further down the street, it was amazing! There were so many little shops and stands with anything you could ask for. We bought some French bread, a few yummy bagels, a fresh pineapple, some dark green leafy salad, and plastic containers for our leftovers in the flat! I also bought a blue scarf called a pashmina (you'll be seeing it in some pictures coming up), and a purse/bag thing that I can use for some of the day trips we take. It has a patchwork look to it, making it perfect for my sewing background! It's a great size and would be difficult for any pickpockets to get into. (Pickpockets are even more common in crowded markets such as this one, so I was very careful to hold my purse the whole time!) Laura bought a bratwurst and enjoyed it...I'm not much for large sausages like that, so I waited to eat until we got home! We went back to the flat, Laura went out with a few of our new found friends, and we went to bed not long after, ready for a great trip on Saturday!

We got up early on Saturday, well early for what I'm used to! We got on the bus outside our flat at 9am, with about 40 other students all wanting to go on the trip. The program has many optional trips set up that we can go on if we wish. Part of my scholarship paid a $300 trip fee that I can use to pay for these extra optional trips. Laura and I plan on going on as many as we can! It's just a more convenient way to see all the places we want to see, with a group rate! Also, they provide the transportation, which always makes it easier than us getting lost! So we piled onto the bus and it took about 30 minutes to an hour to drive to our first stop - Hampton Court Palace! It was very big...very big. We all got our tickets and were turned loose to explore until 12:30. This first picture is outside the palace - the beginning of the courtyard. We walked up to the gates, presented our tickets, and were let inside for an amazing self-guided tour!Once you walk into the archway there in the middle of the picture, you are pretty much surrounded by the palace. Straight ahead was a huge, huge poster of Henry the VIII. They have a new display recently created about young Henry the VIII that we went to. It was talking about his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and how everyone was looking forward to having this new king be better than his father before him. Throughout the short tour, you could see how different events and people convinced Henry that he should do things differently than he began...including divorcing his wife because she could not produce him a male heir. Only one child they had survived, Mary. Catherine hoped that Mary would one day become the queen of England, which did happen much later. But Henry had other ideas and divorced Catherine, which in essence led to a chain reaction, splitting England from the Roman Catholic Church. It was interesting to me to note how Henry let what the world thought pull him away from what he knew was right.

We moved on to look at the lovely courtyard outside, and saw some swans in the pond, and birds, perched happily upon a fence! Laura and I got a picture together, taken by our new friends Amanda, Elizabeth, and Crystal. We walked around outside, then made our way to the back of the courtyard where they had a hedge maze set up! It was pretty cool...we all went our separate ways and eventually made it to the middle! Here's me lost, but still happy!

Here's one of the bushes in the garden I thought looked like a big green Hershey Kiss!!

We went back to the palace and walked around inside. They had a self-guided tour again, for us to see all the rooms where kings and queens used to live. One of the workers there told us a story about how a few years ago a fire broke out in the king's bedchamber. No one was living there at the time, of course, it was all set up as a musuem, but it damaged and even ruined many things in that room, including the ceilings and floors. They repaired as much as they could, and ran into a wonderful thing in the floorboards. Apparently, one of the kings who lived there suffered with terrible asthma. When we walked up the steps to the upstairs where the king lived, we noticed the steps were each only about 3 inches high, and there was a landing about every 12 steps. This was to accomodate the king's asthma problem. Usually, the kings lived in the downstairs of the palace and conducted business upstairs, but this king wanted it the other way around. The problem with this was, how would they control the sounds of servants' footsteps upstairs when he was downstairs conducting business? This answer was pretty cool - they filled in between the two levels with sea shells and cockleshells, which ended up muffling the sound! When the fire broke through, the shells did not catch fire, keeping the downstairs levels from burning as well! When restoring the palace, they had to go to the coast and collect seashells to refill the floors. Cockleshells were extinct by this time, so they refilled the floors only with seashells to replace those that had been damaged.

We saw this guy here dressed in period clothing and had to get a picture with him! We went through the rest of the palace, seeing the king's and queen's bedchambers, the queen's huge tub in her "bathroom," without plumbing of course! We saw their sitting rooms and the business rooms, and even talked with two of the workers there who told us about a strange occurance that morning - they had opened all the shutters when they first got there, walked down the hall, and when they walked back, two of the shutters were closed in the long hallway! Also, another guard said that he heard and saw a doorknob on one of the doors in the room he was in turning on its own! He ran to get his coworker down the hall, who came back with him. The turning had stopped by then, but they were talking in the room a few minutes when it started happening again! This worker, Peter, that we talked to, seemed quite spooked with the whole idea. I don't know how much I believe about it, but he did seem sincere. Or was is just a scare tactic? I'm not sure, but it was an interesting story! We kept walking through the palace, and saw a tudor kitchen - it was more of a series of rooms, all doing kitchen duties. There was a meat chopping room, a vegetable room, a baking room, a large dining area, and a room for the dishes! They actually have a cafe-type area set up there, where we stopped for a quick bite to eat. Here's one last picture of the palace from in the middle of the inner courtyard. We returned to the bus and drove about 45 minutes to Windsor Castle!!!

Windsor Castle!

Windsor Castle was amazing! It was the first real castle I've ever seen. It was more of a big deal than I thought it would be. But actually, the Queen conducts business there sometimes, and sometimes stays there in the summer. We all had to go through metal detectors to get into the castle which was guarded by the Grenadier guards, guns and all. We were again set free until 4:30ish to explore all around the castle! Here's Laura and I at the one of the gates. Now, I don't know what any of you know of castles, but I was expecting to walk into the castle, being inside the whole time. But actually, it was like a little city! People live there, too. I'm not sure what these people have to do to live inside the castle - whether they are government officials, or if they just pay a hefty price for the place, but they live right inside the castle! The first stop we made was to walk through St. George's Chapel. It was beautiful - very simliar to Westminster, very similar to a lot of the churches I've seen here! It's pictured here on the left, with the private housing on the right.

This is the last of the pictures for a little bit - we were not allowed to take pictures inside any of the buildings. We walked around outside after that, and made our way to the display of Queen Mary's dollhouse. The dollhouse was about 6 feet cubed, and was so detailed, I cannot even explain it well! It was large enough to keep any little girl fantasizing about a real life going on inside! It is sure to amaze the "little girl" inside of every woman. The dollhouse had real electricity, and I'm told real plumbing as well, but I'm sure if that part was true! That display area also contained several dolls that Mary used to play with, each doll having a wardrobe of at least 5 outfits per doll, and we're talking about fancy outfits! There were drawings in the next room by DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and portraits of some of the kings and queens weddings. We saw the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II, and Queen Victoria and King Albert.

Next we walked into the official rooms of the castle, beginning with a stairway of armor, full of guns, revolvers, shotguns, and things they had collected from all over. There was a golden tiger head that had teeth made of solid rock crystal - the teeth were so clear they looked like glass! This tiger was once part of the throne of a ruler in India. There were robes from King George's coronation, the bullet that killed Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar (remember where the Russian festival was?), in 1805.

The next room was the Waterloo Chamber, which was created to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. This huge hall contained portraits of the people who had met Napoleon in person and helped defeat him. Next was the King's Drawing Room, which is used for official duties. Charles II filled the room with paintings by Reubens and VanDyke, and it also contained a very ornate clock containing a copy of God's word. The King's Bed Chamber was next, which was used for meetings and ceremonies when he got up every morning. Can you imagine having a ceremony to celebrate you getting up in the morning? I hope no one was there to take pictures!

The King's Dressing Room contained original Renaissance art by Hans Holbein, in the 16th century. The King's Closet (bigger than two of my dorm rooms put together!) had Italian Renaissance paintings by Rembrant. These paintings were collected by Charles I when he reigned. At his death, all the paintings were sold and thus distributed all over. His son, Charles II, set about finding and buying back all these paintings that his father had collected. Next was the Queen's Drawing Room, which held paintings of influential kings and queens, followed by the King's Dining Room. It had an originally painted ceiling, which were food-themed paintings. Wood carvings on the wall were food-themed too. The Queen's Ballroom followed that room, which contained a painting at the end of the hall by Sir Anthony Van Dyck - it was a painting of the five children of Charles I. The picture is tragic because the children are fairly young and Charles was beheaded soon after that portrait was done.

There were many more rooms after that...the Queen's Audience Chamber which had huge ceiling paintings as well - the guests of the Queen would meet there to chat with her. Before they entered that room, they would wait in the Queen's Presence Chamber until she was ready. The Queen's Guard Chamber was after this - it was decorated with all types of weapons to suggest to any visitors that the Queen is carefully guarded and they'd better watch out! This chamber had busts of four of the greatest military commanders that England has had - Winston Churchill, his ancentor John Churchill, Lord Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington. Saint George's hall was next, filled with the shields of various knights of Great Britain. Some were completely white - those were the shields of knights who had dishonored the crown in some way and their shields were blanked out to show the shame of it. The room contained a throne at the end of the room that looked like you would expect - ornate wood carvings with a cushy-looking velvet seat. The Lantern Lobby was after that, filled with gold chalices and flagons, and the armor of Henry VIII. The Crimson Drawing Room was probably my favorite - it was done in all crimson and gold. It was so beautiful, all the elaborate wood carvings and smooth seating. The State Dining Room was after this - a room with a gigantic table for 24 people, where the Queen entertains official guests.

Okay, bear with me. Only a few rooms left. Imagine my surprise at how big this place was, wandering from room to room! The Octagon Dining Room was next, named for its shape. There was a great view, and the hallway next to it led to the Grand Reception Room, where the Queen greets guests for state receptions. The Garter Throne Room was the last room we saw - in June, any new knights are celebrated and once they take the investiture and are knighted, they join the Queen for lunch.

Whew! That was a lot, I know. Thanks for keeping with me. I took notes and I know that if I don't record it here, my notes may get lost! This is a good way for me to remember my trip as well! I also wanted you all to experience what I did - being amazed at the size of the whole place! I couldn't show you pictures, so I tried to show you with my words.

So here's a bunch more pictures, some with me in them, that I thought were amazing of the castle.

Here's one of me with a Grenadier guard - he was so young looking! It was a little weird too, standing next to someone for a picture, who didn't even move! He didn't look at me, or at least if he did I couldn't tell because I didn't look at him! It was a little scary because just as I was handing Laura my camera to take my picture, he stomped his foot really loudly, stiffly switched his gun from one arm to the other, and stomped his foot back into place! The gun, even though I'm comfortable with guns in general, was a little intimidating. Anyway, I braved it long enough to get the picture, and look halfway like I wasn't scared to death! I also got a short video of a guard on the complete other side of the castle marching back and forth in front of his post. I wonder if he did that to keep his legs from getting too stiff, and if this guard in my picture switched arms to keep them from getting stiff? I don't know...I guess if I meet one in real life that will talk, I'll ask him!

That was our Saturday trip. We got back and took a trip to Sainsbury's, the grocery store where we can find the cheapest food. After some regular shopping hassles, we made it back to the flat and had dinner, relaxed a while, and went to sleep!

Sunday morning we slept in and went to ChristChurch London at 4pm that afternoon. I don't know why they hold their service so late, but it was awesome! Sharde, a friend of mine and Laura's that was here studying in London last year, directed us to this church. It was held in the Picadilly Theatre, where they currently show the play "Grease" every week. We were welcomed as soon as we hit the sidewalk in front of the theatre, and met over the course of the night about five other people! The church has an amazing working group of people who greet all those who come in and make them feel welcome. There was about an hour of praise and worship music with a wonderful band up front. We stood and sang our hearts out - it was great to do that again! Here's the words to one of the new songs they sang that I had never heard before. I'm not sure what the song was called, but the lyrics were so amazing that I wanted to share them!

"Jesus, what can I give, to so faithful a Friend? To so loving a king? Savior, what can be said? What can be sung, as a praise of your name, for the things that you've done?

Oh my words could not tell, not even in part, of the debt of love that is owed by this thankful heart!"

The speaker spoke about work - about being a full time Christian example for those around you in the the work place, in the home, and in your whole life! He pointed out that the average person will spend 70% of his lifetime involved in some type of work, whether being paid for it or not. Shouldn't we be a living example of Christ in whatever we do, no matter where we are? It was a great sermon, just what my heart needed. We were welcomed in a nearby room with orange juice and doughnuts, where we were again greeted by some very friendly people, including that college student I was talking about earlier. We stayed there for a half hour and talked, then went home on the tube, ready for a good night's sleep! I was very impressed with the church. Most of those attending were my age, making me feel welcome too! I hope to go there every week. We are thinking of starting a Bible study with a few girls we've met, so maybe that's an option for Sunday morning!

So Monday classes went fine, except that the teacher for my last class had to suddenly go back to the U.S. because of some health problems his wife is having. He has contacted us through email, but until he returns, we will have no scheduled classes. That means my classes on Mondays and Tuesdays will now be finished at 10:30!

I have to go to my night class now, I'll talk to you all later!