Day Eight from Melissa

Not much to say today. Today was another class day. We spent three hours discussing the first act of King Lear and a poem called Wasteland by Eliot. 

King Lear, according to our teacher, has a lot to do with the definition of familial love, and how families work. 

Wasteland is about the financial district in London during the 1920's. Around that one, due to WWI, a lot of people had thrown away their values, culture, and faith in God and country. Eliot was concerned, and wrote this poem as a response. 

Frankly, if I'd read it myself, I'm not sure how much I would've gotten, but our teacher really added context. 

Also humor. 

During the course of one lesson, he kicked the table, cheerfully talked about going on "twitface and the interweb," and half convinced us all that Eliot's ghost was at the window. 

Then he fluently translated Latin and Greek. 

I'm convinced he's a genius. 

After class, Miriam and Anna and I headed off to the National Gallery. Note: this is different from the National Portrait Gallery. The National Portrait Gallery has only portraits. The National Gallery has everything else, short of the kitchen sink. In fact, I'm not sure it doesn't have that...

It does, however, have a ton of pictures that you may have heard of or seen. Sadly, I didn't get to see all the ones on my list. One of the rooms was closed for rehanging the pictures.

I guess that means we'll have to go back!

Today we saw paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, Reubens, and so many more!  We had a sort of scavenger hunt list to find, so we had to stay on track. Too bad. 

Miriam got stuck in front of this one. She finds Monet to be very restful. 

Van Gogh. We also saw his Sunflowers painting, but I didn't include it here. 

This is one of the oldest paintings in the National Gallery. It's from around 1312-1315. 

Dinner was rushed, and then we made sack lunches for our road trip tomorrow. I was quite pleased to see mustard. I may or may not have put it on both pieces of bread. Too bad they didn't have beef - that would've seemed appropriate. 

After dinner, seven of us rushed off to see  the play Matilda. I've never seen this one, but heard it was good. 

I took this coming down the stairs into the subway station I almost always use. 

We got a little lost in the way. I'm sure we looked like the stereotypical tourists, huddled on a corner around a phone and two maps. Thankfully, we made it in plenty of time. 

Two pictures of the same thing - they just look different. This is the stage. 

Quite frankly, my favorite parts were the choreography and the set. There was tons of dancing, especially by the kid actors. The set was such that desks and chairs could rise up from the floor, be used (the desks could open and close) and then sink down to become part of the floor again. 

Also, most of the moveable scenery and the stage surround had letters on them. You can kind of see them on the picture above. Some were random, but in most cases you could pick out words relating to the show. 

Sometimes you could even learn extra things. At one point I realized a plot twist before it happened, from a word that showed up in some of the moveable scenery that had just come onstage. 

Oh, on a completely unrelated note. I wore my brand new blue jeans yesterday.  Later, in my pajamas, I looked and realized I must have some kind of very serious circulation problem. Then I realized my skin was blue not because of oxygen absorption, but because of the dye on pu pants!  Ha!

Well, I'd better go. Stonehenge tomorrow (!!!), and the coach (they're very firm - it is not a bus) comes at 9:45. I don't think they'll let me come in my pajamas.