Pickwick's (and my) Farewell Speech

Saturday night's sky reflected on the Thames:

One of my favorite Dickens characters, the endearingly bumbling Mr. Pickwick, after two years of travel, comes to the end of his adventures and addresses his friends. Here is his speech:

"I shall never regret," said Mr. Pickwick in a low voice, "I shall never regret having devoted the greater part of two years to mixing with different varieties and shades of human character, frivolous as my pursuit of novelty may have appeared to many. Nearly the whole of my previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of wealth, numerous scenes of which I had no previous conception have dawned upon me--I hope to the enlargement of my mind, and the improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection to me in the decline of life. God bless you all!"

Neither shall we ever regret devoting these last few months to England Semester. Through meeting varieties and shades of human character as well as seeing scenes of which we had no previous conception, this trip, we hope, has enlarged our minds and improved our understanding. 

As for the Babes Blog, if we have done but little good, I trust we have done less harm, and we hope that none of our adventures have been other than a source of amusement and pleasure for you as they will be for us for many years to come. God Bless.

Here are some last pictures from me:

Stephanie and I sipped our last breakfast tea at Notes (a favorite coffee shop near our hotel) and, on a whim, decided to ride the London Eye for our last morning in London.

     Gloriously sunny last London morning

SHE LIVES! The Fourth and heretofore largely silent babe speaks and tries to redeem herself on account of her lack of contribution throughout the semester with a final post about a magical weekend in London. She fails.

For starters, the title of the post is (hopefully very evidently) a joke. In fact, it's a very specific joke, namely a play on the title of chapter 44 of Dickens' Oliver Twist which is named, "The Time Arrives for Nancy to Redeem her Pledge to Rose Maylie. She Fails." Congratulations, Dickens, you have officially infiltrated the creative life of the blog. Victory is yours.

In other news, the last few days have been rather magical. Our departure from Belsey Bridge had the extra magic of the ground's being freshly covered with a tiny layer of snow, a dusting if you will. Appropriately, Miss Gracie Miller (one of our traveling companions) posted this lovely little tune to our communal England Semester facebook page. I will share it here as I have no pictures to share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-87ivR7igWc

We arrived at London at around mid-afternoon on Thursday. Madeline spent the evening on a reunion date with Kyle, while the other three babes were joined by some friends and enjoyed Indian food at a very fun restaurant that had booths like lofts, stacked on top of other booths and with ladders to get up to them. We didn't get to sit in one such booth but they were still fun to see. After our early dinner, we (the three babes not named Madeline) walked through the Christmas market along the Thames. There was even a merry-go-round which Annie and I rode, evoking memories of that first merry-go-round ride in Santa Barbara freshman year. Ah, memories.

Friday consisted largely of one thing: Harrod's. After an early breakfast (9 am...ok, so not that early but early when you could technically be sleeping in because you have no scheduled events), we headed down to England's famous department store. Let me tell you, it lived up the hype. You could buy anything there. ANYTHING. Ok, maybe not a anything, but you could buy a puppy (yes, a REAL FOR LIVE PUPPY) along with designer clothes for said puppy or a treadmill or a grand piano or skis or a ball gown that costs about a semester's worth of college tuition. Almost anything, I tell you. The store itself probably employed about 1/3 of the London population and felt a great deal like Santa's workshop given all the Christmas decorations and many merry workers. And, of course, the presence of Santa himself. (I wasn't kidding when I said anything...). After each of the babes was in some way successful at supporting the British economy (that's code for we each bought something), the babes took a much needed afternoon tea break at Laduree (envision an accent over the first e), a lovely French cafe attached to Harrod's. This high tea was no ordinary high tea but a much awaited, somewhat belated celebration of Madeline's birth (actual date: November 1). According to Morgan's wikipedia search, this lovely little French bakery invented the double decker macaroon and made the pastries for the film Marie Antoinette. Who knew?! Suffice it to say, we hand an AMAZING time. In less succinct terms, our dining consisted of service from very nice French waiters, teas ranging in flavor from rose to vanilla to earl grey, and a triple decker silver platter covered in finger sandwiches, pastries, tarts, chocolate logs, and macaroons all of flavors of our choosing. Simply magical. The Babes would specifically like to thank Mrs. Celley for financing this wonderful, belated birthday celebration for Madeline! We all enjoyed it so very much.

Yesterday evening we went to a show called Our Boys staring (among others) Matthew Lewis who plays Neville in the Harry Potter movies. The play was about young war veterans, so there were certainly dark scenes mixed in with comedy and lots of other things as well. It was...a lot. Overall, I would call it thought provoking and extremely well performed which are alway two good features of a play I think. Today has been another great day of paper writing at a small cafe (who knew banana bread, greek yogurt, and jam all went so well together?!), perusing Covent Garden, stopping by Buckingham Palace (finally!) and being herded like sheep through an overcrowded Winter Wonderland set up in Hyde Park. Annie enjoyed having her brother Chris visit for the day, and she plus Chris, Grace, Madeline, and Kyle all enjoyed dinner and exploring together more later in the evening. Morgan and I, on the other hand, had the treat of going to the longest running theater show in the WORLD (at least in London? maybe the world as well?), namely Agatha Christie's Mousetrap. It was AWESOME. So much suspense, clever complications, two murders, old jazz music. The works. We were accompanied by Madison and Serena who graciously organized the outing. There may or may not have been a moment when all of us were holding hands in fear that another person was going to be killed. Such fears were never realized, thankfully. I don't think I could have taken a THIRD murder. Of course, as Dwight K. Shrute says, it's always the person you most medium suspect. As a dutiful audience member, I have been swore to secrecy in regards to whodoneit. You'll just have to come to London someday and see the show for yourself to find out!

Tomorrow we head to St. Paul's for one last time of worship as an entire group. Monday consists of class, ice skating, and a group dinner, and then Tuesday we all fly home! It's all very exciting. I can't say whether or not there will be any more posts after this one, but thanks to all our faithful followers! Hopefully you were more faithful in your following than I was in my writing....

The Goose is Getting Fat . . .

We made had a day-trip to the seaside of Southwold. It was rather stormy.

Dickens writes of a similar seaside town when David Copperfield says, 

"I don't know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of the childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em'ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows."

Below is the bus which took us to Southwold. Serena and I posed for this picture BEFORE the bus broke down and left us stranded (and freezing) in a graveyard. 

As it gets foggier and foggier, the Christmas spirit spreads!  Here are pictures from the annual Bungay Christmas Market! Think roasted chestnuts, carolers, mulled wine, and handmade ornaments!

We came back to our Belsey Conference Center, to find that Chris and Cheri had decorated for a special Christmas dinner--complete with Christmas crackers! The Belsey staff made us a proper Christmas feast with traditional plum pudding for dessert (lots of custard, of course). And, to top it off, we had a night of Christmas music, lead by Maddie on the guitar and Morgan on her fiddle. Serena and I show off the snowflakes we made for the event. (SNOW, you should know, is an acronym for Sunday Night Of Worship--a weekly event Serena and I help plan. We've been waiting all semester for the Christmas pun.)

Apparently, it DID snow that night. 3:00am. Some people saw it, but it melted before morning.

A Night of Shakespeare

Last night, England Semester put on its own productions of Shakespeare.

We were put into groups and encouraged to take creative liberties with our assigned scenes. Of course, the Babes stole each of their respective shows. Here's what we looked like:

From Left to Right: 

The saucy and sexy Kate from Taming of the Shrew

 The stunning, love-struck beauty, Phoebe, from As You Like It

The nerdy gamer Angus from MacBeth.

The moody half of a schizophrenic Hamlet from Hamlet

Taming of the Shrew was set in a nursing home to play up the age of the suitors. Kate caught the eye of doctor Petruchio and wheelchair bound Gremio. 

As You Like It relied on witty signs to underscore the humor of the scene. Morgan spent the scene flaunting her "Single and Ready to Mingle" sign, retouching her makeup, batting her eyes at "the whole package," and shooting death-glares at her "ugly"suitor.  

Stephanie played both a high school popular girl (a clever take on the 3 witches from Macbeth) then made a quick change to join in the "kingdom" pursuits (World of Warcraft) of her fellow gamers as Angus.

I wore all of Cameron's clothes and was mistaken for him most of the night. 

The Twins:

Cameron was the other, happy half of Hamlet--a confused and angsty Westmont guy from Kerwood Court. Essentially, our production characterized Hamlet as a schizophrenic version of Cameron.

This worked well since everyone on this trip knows everyone else's wardrobe and was immediately able to recognize me as Cameron's other half. For me, the scene included moodily scribbling in Cameron's journal, some angry piano pounding, and lots of yelling. Cameron played guitar and enjoyed tea with friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Like I said, it is hard to tell us apart. :)

The Great Shearing

 The little lamb gets a shave. finally.

Thank you, Rachel.  We all appreciate it.

A British Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving preparations!

We baked to a soundtrack of Christmas music, ushering in the holidays. 

Morgan makes cinnamon roll dough for Thanksgiving morning! yum!

The grocery stores in the UK do not sell "tinned pumpkin."  It is basically unheard of.  So we had to carve out our own pumpkin for our pies!

Serena making crust. :)

Thanksgiving morning the babes went for their own turkey trot.

We told the Belsey Bridge staff who had thanksgiving with us that this is traditional Thanksgiving headwear. 

At home, I am always in charge of the thanksgiving crafts, so I was super stoked to help out with the table decorations!  Thanks to mom and dad for the thanksgiving stickers (we put them down the center of the table).  If you look closely, you can see the handprint turkey on the yellow paper.  :)

Gracie, Serena, Joy, Stephanie, and Chris prepare to serve the meal.

Grace and Cheri make reindeer antlers with the left over twigs. classic. 

  It was a little strange to have Thanksgiving in the country the Pilgrims left . . . but I really enjoyed seeing the confusion on some of our British friends's faces as they saw all of our traditional Thanksgiving foods (I have had that reaction to THIER food many a time on this trip). I especially relished their skepticism of the jello dishes; but they loved the pumpkin pie.  Morgan and I (after looking last week in multiple grocery stores to find pumpkin and failing) decided that only a strange and backward place would not carry pumpkin in their grocery stores.  Perhaps it's time to go back to America.  :) We are all very thankful for our family and friends back home, and we miss you all very much!  We consoled ourselves after an early dinner (with the time difference, we were probably among the first in the world to celebrate turkey day this year) by watching eight episodes of The Office and reading Madeline's new issue of Vogue.  And the feather headbands, those helped too. 

The Ditchingham Doldrums

As you might have gathered from Annie's aptly titled post "Not in Britain," we spent a wonderful 4 day weekend in Paris with Dr. and Mrs. Brooks. Highlights included the graves of Alexandre Dumas, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo (a literary pilgrimage for Annie--her favorite book being The Hunchback of Notre Dame), visiting Saint Chapelle, Notre Dame, and The Louvre, and of course, eating crepes. 

We're back in Ditchingham! And after visiting so many sights and new places over the past 3 months, we've found the relaxation inherent in our location (somewhat isolated, very rural England) welcome. Classes, reading, and writing dominate our days here at the Belsey Bridge Conference Centre, so in the absence of any exciting new photos, I am posting some old ones discovered on Annie's computer. These are back from our Free Weekend in September. We visited the National Gallery on a rainy day...

 Madeline and Kyle: the lovebirds in London

 two more in London

Morgan (#wheresBradley #IllbehomeforChristmas) and Annie (#justhaventmetyouyet #michaelbuble #thatdontimpressmemuch #shaniatwain)