1. About to feed a goat
2. Crazy goat eyes and Kim3. Emily petting a horse
On Tuesday after our Anthropology class a few of us decided to try to find the petting zoo one of our profs mentioned was nearby in Harlow. My friend Emily in particular was pretty excited to pet a goat. I could take or leave smelly farm animals but it sounded like a fun day out, plus the weather was warm and sunny again (seriously, does it actually rain in England or is that something they tell everyone to keep people out?), so why not? We left down a footpath near the school in the direction we assumed was right, and asked a few locals where it was. So far the directions we generally get in England are, "Yeah, you just go straight and ah, keep going straight, and if you go straight you can't miss it!". I'm serious. How do you get to Anne Hathaway's cottage? You go straight! Where's the Domino's bus stop? Oh, just keep going straight!
Anyways. I digress.We kept going straight and eventually found a children's playground that was way more pimped out than any playground I've seen in Canada. There was a massive 30 foot high spiderweb thing that you can climb (Emily made it to the top.. I watched from the rope lowest to the ground), hippo rocking horses and a zipline. A ZIPLINE.
Naturally, we stopped and had a little play for about a half hour before asking some of the parents watching their kids how to get to the petting zoo. You guessed it, we had to leave the playground and go straight! England must be built in a straight line. I like it.
So we found the petting zoo and spent about an hour petting all the animals. Well, my friends pet all the animals. I fed a goat and banged my head off a horse's face. It smelled really bad there.
1. The Globe
2. Standing outside one of the entrace doors3. The Globe stage
4. The groundlings
5. The Millennium Bridge
6. Katie and a massive coffee
Yesterday, we got our bagged Tesco lunch from the cafeteria and ventured into London to go see Richard III at Shakespeare's Globe!! I can't even tell you how excited I was. For those of you who don't know, the Globe is the theatre where Shakespeare wrote for and probably performed in in the late fifteen-/early sixteen-hundreds. It was used until the closure of all theatres in England in 1642, and was eventually demolished. In the mid-1900's, Sam Wanamaker initiated the project to rebuild the Globe and around 1996 it was finished.
A little history lesson for you. I think that's all correct information.So we bussed into London and walked to the theater. It was so cool there, right on the riverbank. There were stones outside the theatre with names engraved into them, I think they are the names of people who made a donation to help the theatre be built. After a little wander through the giftshop (I bought a miniature copy of Twelfth Night), we walked inside to find our seats. Thankfully, we weren't groundlings and actually got to sit for the play. We were right up top and had a great view.
Richard the III is one of the longest plays Shakespeare ever wrote and I really don't think they cut anything out. Maybe they did. But we were there for over three hours. I'm not going to lie, I've only read Richard III once and was really confused at times. Rich just kept killing everyone and I couldn't keep them straight. It was an all-male cast, which made being in the Globe seem even more authentic (Generally, only men acted in the Elizabethan era), and it was really funny. The sheer volume of the text is impressive, and the fact that it was performed so flawlessly is actually hard to wrap my head around. It would take me a lifetime to learn the lines in this play! Anyways, my experience at the Globe was amazing and I can't really believe I was there. So cool.
Also, Barty Crouch from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was in RIII as well. So, basically, me and Dan Radcliffe are now bff because of that.
After the Globe we trotted across the Millennium Bridge (another Harry Potter fun fact! This is the bridge in the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that gets completely demolished by death eaters.). Luckily, no death eaters were lurking in London yesterday, and we made it across without falling into the Thames. We had a bit of free time before our next show, so we grabbed some coffee at Starbucks (Katie's was bigger than her face), and had a look around the area. Um. Let me just say this: massive Primark, H&M, Lush, Forever 21 and Zara. I will be returning to that mall.
1. The theatre where we saw the Wah! Wah! Girls
2. One of the sets3. The finale
The play we went to see was called the Wah! Wah! Girls. It was actually so much fun. Another Bollywood production, Jamie (one of my profs on this trip, if I haven't already mentioned him) booked last minute because he though it'd be a nice comparison to make to the Bollywood production of Much Ado About Nothing that we saw last week.
The play had great music, amazing dancing, beautiful costumes and a cute, fun love story. It was basically a Bollywood movie performed on stage, which was obviously the idea as the premise of the entire story was that it was being watched on tv. I think most of us enjoyed it and looked like idiots in the tube afterwards because we were all trying to Bollywood dance. It was not a pretty sight.
Also, sorry the pictures inside the play are bad.. I took them illegally. What can I saw? Being in England has turned me into a rebel.
A few people have gone away for the weekend, so it's going to be quiet around here! I'm not sure what my plans are.. but a return trip to that massive Primark might be in order.
Talk to you soon!
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