Coming Home to the Rusticness...

Sunset from the plane

It’s taken two days to get from London to Alamance County, NC with a hotel stay in Raleigh.  Yesterday morning around 8:00am I had the privilege of riding the tube from Hoburn Station to Heathrow with Angela and Cassie.  

Cassie and Angela heading out the door 

It was a long ride but fortunately not too busy as we carried our heavy bags. They parted from me to go to Terminal 1 while I carried on to Terminal 3. After 14 hours of travel and a layover, my kids and husband greeted me at the Raleigh Durham airport. We went to the hotel, passed out little presents and swam in the pool.  I forced myself to participate in all these festivities until 11:00pm (4:00am London time) and managed to sleep in until 7:00am (noon London time).  It was so nice to have that time to just enjoy each others' company and get some sleep.

Now I’m home!  Ah, the American dollar, low electric current/small plugs, easy flush toilets, and strong water pressure, how nice it is to see you all again.  High fructose corn syrup, preservatives, and plummeting Dow figures?...not so happy about seeing you all.  But you have to take the good with the bad and it is so good to be home with my family.  Here are the kids enjoying some of the spoils from London:

I will miss our Bloomsbury London neighborhood with all of its Italian coffee, French pastries, and free British Museum.  I will miss being able to get around so easily with my Oyster Pass. I loved having so many theater productions right around the corner.  I can't believe I never made it to The Dr. Who Experience. I wonder if any of my classmates ran out on our last night to see London all lit up?  We did so much in three weeks that there just wasn’t enough time to simply enjoy the view.

I am certainly enjoying the view here at home.  It is HOT but beautiful here.  The turkeys have gotten huge and are already outgrowing the coop we finished before I left.  The baby goats are growing quickly too and all the chickens looked happy to see me.  As a matter of fact, I better stop writing so that I can go out and help herd our goats and collect some eggs.  Fun London time is over now and it’s time to get back to business.  Stay tuned for my last project – The Big Photo Book.  

Buckingham Palace and The End

I saw it.

Yes, I saw the dress.

Not only that but I saw the shoes, the earrings, and the bouquet.

The dress was in a huge cage on display in case anyone went crazy and tried to throw themselves onto it. It really is an absolutely beautiful dress. I had no idea when I headed out to Buckingham Palace this morning that I was going to get to see it. It’s such a hassle to get into the Palace that I can see why I never went there before. It is really nice so I’m glad we went. I kept wondering how the royal family feels about all these commoners coming through their house. Don’t you think the royals might just want to hang out in the Green Drawing Room sometime? I'm sure the Queen's private apartment is very nice too. We couldn't take any pictures inside of Buckingham Palace. The only thing I can show you in this glimmer of the chandelier through a window in the back of the Palace.

I also saw "the cake". Kalyca assured me that the bottom four layers of the cake were from the actual wedding. Everybody ate the top three layers. The audio tour explained that both the dress and the cake were made with the finest of English craftsmanship. All the lace and sugar flowers were chosen for their special significance in the language of flowers. Since William and Kate's wedding is so public, it's great that their representation of their country is tied to local craftspeople. This trip to the Palace also tied up our class nicely - the gift shop is great fun.

Everyone is packing, finishing projects, and heading out for one last trip to the pub. Have we really been here for three weeks already? We have seen so much and learned so much. Blogging, movie-making, and other forms of social media are now completely accessible to me. I'm looking forward to using them as teaching tools and to also continue this blog to communicate about the farm, reading, and future trips (fingers crossed). Goodbye London. I will miss you.

I Postered Myself

I couldn't just simply make a slideshow of my weekend in Paris.  Here is a poster about it created on Glogster.  Somehow Paris brings out the girlyness in me.

Music Citations:

Peguri, C. (1911). Pietro. On Pietro (Valse) Accordeon par Mr Peguri (LP). France: Disque Aerophone. Retrieved from  http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Charles_Pguri/~/Pitro

Shirai, T. (2009). She Goes to France. Japan: Bad Panda Records. Retrieved from http://www.archive.org/details/badpanda004

Finding Henry at Hampton Court Palace

Henry VIII became king in 1509 (I learned this from a mug in the gift shop).  That was more than 500 years ago but he is still so present in the tapestry of historical London.  We want to know how he thought, what he looked like when he was young, what he ate, how fat he really was.  He obviously craved power and made strategic moves to increase his power.  But what is equally fascinating (or perhaps more fascinating) was how driven by human personal pursuits he was.  At least, that is what is portrayed in plays, movies, and TV drama series.  And now at Hampton Court Palace, our FSU group got close and personal to his homelife.

Hampton Court does a great job of bringing visitors into the stories of the palace.  As part of the admission price, you can carry around an audioguide that gives you a dramatic explanation of the different chambers and the events that occurred inside.  There are also signs on the walls that provide insight into the lives of the former occupents.  If you are really lucky, you will even be able to talk to Henry or one of his many wives.  There are actors walking around in period costume, playing different characters.  Equally delightful are the gardens.  Truly a beautiful place to find the perfect shot of flowers.  There were interior courtyards for plants and expansive acres outside of the walls.

Over the centuries, many changes have occurred in Kensington Palace.  Spiral staircases and windows have been covered over, walls have been whitewashed, architect Christopher Wren came in and built additions, and some parts have been torn down.  But through the paintings on the walls and the clever museum displays all the scandalous stories don't seem that far away.  In the section of the Palace that explains Henry VIII's young life, there are three high-backed modern chairs that represent Henry, Katherine of Aragon, and Cardinal Woolsey.  As you go through the rooms, the chairs are in different positions to represent the relationships between the three people.  There are also quotes taken from correspondence that are painted on the interior walls of these rooms, bringing the emotions to life.

The Great Hall of Kensington Palace is still impressive with its ornate ceiling and tapestries.  There are long wooden tables set up where visitors can sit and enjoy the ambiance.  A touching reminder of the past is still evident in one corner of the room where an intertwined H and A (representing Henry and Ann Boleyn) in the woodwork has survived Henry's order to get rid of all traces of Ann.  This is a very dark picture, but you might be able to see the letters:

Walking to and from Hampton Court Palace, I glimpsed the nearby town buildings longingly.  That also looks like a nice area to visit.  If only we had more time to explore!  We just have one more full day before it is time to fly away from London and one more multimedia project to complete.

Remembering the Princess

The last time I was in London, Diana Princess of Wales was alive and making her last public appearance with her husband before they were to announce their split.  My housemates and I had run over to a theater on Tottenham Court Road to see her leave.  I can still remember the gasps as she exited the theater in a gorgeous pink dress.  It wasn't a surprise to hear that the royal couple was going their separate ways: they didn't even walk together that evening.  

It has been 14 years since Diana died in that horrible car crash in Paris.  London has changed in many ways since then, one of them being that it's more difficult for photographers to take pictures out on the street and this appears to be partly caused by that night and Diana's mad dash to get away from the paparazzi.  This was mentioned in a wonderful exhibit in The Museum of London on street photography.  Today we saw some other evidence of the impact this Lady has had on her city in the form of a memorial playground built because of her love of children and a memorial fountain that young and old can get their feet into.

Adults without children can visit the playground only between the times of 9:30am and 10:00am.  You can see that we thoroughly enjoyed this time.  Even better on such a hot day? – the visit to the fountain.  We could have spent hours wading along the “lazy river” type waterway, taking pictures of the water.

I wondered before I left for this country what it would be like without the People’s Princess.  It is obvious that she is strongly remembered and missed.  Somehow Kensington Palace seems to have lost much of its luster.  That could be due to the landscape renovations occurring all around it, but I think it is due to the presence that no longer lives there.  The Royal Palaces foundation seems to be trying to compensate for this by transforming the former home into an enchanted palace.  I didn’t go inside, knowing that I would miss my princess adoring daughter too much.

the enchanted garden

subliminal message

Parlez-Vous Francais?

I don’t like to squeeze too much into a trip.  Running from place to place trying to see it all and spending a lot of time on the transitions between spaces doesn’t do much for me.  But when I heard of the possibility of staying in Paris for the weekend I jumped at it.  I knew it wouldn’t be enough time to get to know the city but it could afford me the chance to try to fumble through some French and, of course, to eat le pain, la fromage, le chocolat, and drink le vin.

My classmates and I discussed the advantages of making an effort with French.  Most people in Paris know how to speak English but it’s probably rather rude to assume this.  My goal was to make it through two days by at least starting every conversation in French and seeing how long I could stretch it out before resorting to English.  The fun started when our group that was staying for the weekend ascended out of the Metro station into the Bastille square and needed to find the hotel.  It’s not easy to see all the street signs and the area is huge!  There were quite a few people milling around so I decided to give my French a try, “Excuse moi, ou est La Rue de la Chemin Vert?”  Nobody knew, they were just all heading out to get to the next restaurant or bar.  The exciting part was that they told me they didn’t know in French and I actually understood them!  That was a first.  We eventually interpreted our map and the streets and found the hotel on our own.   I tried speaking in French to the gentleman behind the counter.  He could understand some of what I was trying to say (and it was rather obvious that we were checking in) and he told me that my French was good.  I know that he was lying and that he was just being nice because he has to be.

The next day I was on my own.  My proposed endeavor to just explore the streets of the Latin Quarter, linger in cafes, and perhaps take a tour of the sewers of Paris didn’t appeal to anyone else.  It was a bit lonely but also freeing to set my own pace (too slow for most people) and it also meant that no one I knew would be around to witness my language interactions.  It was a wonderful day.  Most people that I spoke to would quickly switch from French to English.  It took an effort to respond in French, knowing how ridiculous I sounded, but I remembered my goal and kept going.  I apparently have a difficult time recognizing the number “douze” and would hear “deux” instead.  “That tshirt is just two euros?  What a bargain!”  I decided to skip the sewers since it was such a beautiful day and wandered, eating and drinking along the way, until I made it to Musee de Cluny which is the largest purely medieval museum in Europe.  Luckily, it’s not that big and it’s not that popular so I could wander around seeing most of it without much trouble.  It was already getting late in the day, so I asked the man behind the ticket stand what time it was.  With a smirk on his face the whole time, he answered me in a combination of French and English, obviously amused that I was continuing this French charade. 

Roaming the streets of Paris, you can hear all sorts of different languages and they affect me in different ways.  I love to hear people speak, especially children who sound so sophisticated speaking in French or with their British accent.  I realized while I was wandering and trying to communicate with shopkeepers that I haven’t made much opportunity to talk to people outside of our FSU group while we’ve been in London.  I think I’m embarrassed about my own flat boring voice but it would be a shame to let that stop me.  Of course, this means that I’ll need to go into many more shops, cafes, and pubs but what must be done must be done. 

So I think my language experiment went well.  I found a surprising amount of people were willing to go along with me and didn’t give me the “No.  Just speak English” response I have gotten in the past and expected. 

Paris from the top of a bus…

Friday was a whirlwind of a day.  Luckily, we spent a lot of it sitting on a bus and then sitting on a boat.  This was very necessary due to a few reasons; a wake-up time of 4:00am or earlier to catch a 5:30am train and needing a way to see a lot of sites in a short amount of time.  Aubrey, Angela, and I had finished a quick run through the Louvre, making sure to see “the biggies”, the Mona Lisa, Venus, and Winged Victory of Samothrace.  Now the big monuments swung into view as we lurched along on the double-decker open-top bus.  It was easy to get great pictures of everything.  There aren’t any skyscrapers in the way and the many bridges spanning the Seine make it easy for the bus to travel back and forth from site to site.  We all had a bus pass that would enable us to get on and off the bus at any of the sites.  We stayed on for most of them but made sure to get off for the Eiffel Tower.  We knew we wouldn’t be able to go up it since we didn’t have time and the line snaked on and on and on…It was still very interesting to get a close-up look at the structure.

I took a picture of it while I waited to go to the euphemism.

Whether you look at Notre Dame from the street, the bus, or a boat it is incredible.  I think I preferred the look from the boat since it was such a gradual approach and seems to reach up so much higher when you are down on the Seine.  The Arc de Triomphe can’t be seen from the river so the bus makes the view very accessible.  The sheer magnitude of this structure is amazing.  I could see lots of little tiny people up on top of it.  More buildings sped by – The Louvre, The Musee D’Orsay, The National Assembly, The Grand Palace, and I tried to make mental notes about where to go back to.  

The boat ride allowed us to see each unique bridge from underneath.  Our tour guide gave us the spiel on what we were seeing in French, English, and then Spanish.  Here's a little slideshow of what we saw from the road and then from the water: