day 14

This morning I had toffee yogurt for breakfast, which tastes something like caramel and butterscotch mixed together. I’m also nearly out of jam, which means I need to go to the store and get some. Something I’ve been meaning to add on here but keep forgetting it that in a lot of grocery stores and stores like them, the cashiers sit in chairs to do your check out. They work in small areas where two lanes are up against each other and they sit in chairs almost back to back. I don’t know which would be worse, having to stand all day or having to sit all day. I guess sitting. At least when you’re standing you can move around. You also bag your own groceries in many of the stores I’ve been to. There isn’t enough room for the big counters we have in America, so you have to bag your own and make room.

I had to go back to class today, where we talked about hypnotism, which is what my paper focuses on. There wasn’t too much valuable material in this lecture, at least as far as using it in my paper. We learned about the two theories of hypnotism, the state and trait theories. State means that you are put in a place where the executive ego and the things that keep you from doing things are separated, so repressed memories can resurface and you can be influenced to do something you wouldn’t usually. The trait theory says that only certain kinds of people can be hypnotized, and that they must have certain beliefs, expectations, and a level of suggestibility in order for it to work. We also learned a lot about the people who developed hypnotism, and most of them were nuts.

After class I waited in the Regent Street campus’s lobby for a while waiting for my friends to get out of class. We were going to the National Gallery today, so there wasn’t a lot of time to go all the way back to the dorms and then out again. I was feeling very blah about now because I had slept well because of really weird dreams where my API went to Africa to live with a tribe, and some missionaries were there that had been there for 20 years because the tribe wouldn’t let them go. It wasn’t a very nice dream and it made me wake up really early.

My friends finally got out of class and we made our way to Trafalgar Square, which is where the National Gallery is. On our way we wanted lunch, so we stopped at a Pizza Express to eat. I got the same pizza I got on my first day in London, and it was wonderful again.



We walked by St. James’s Park and saw the hoard of people that were around the read carpet for the Eclipse premier. I didn’t get close enough to see a red carpet or anything, but I did take a picture of the poster on the building. I’ve seen these posters all over tube stations and on buses all over the city. But it won’t even come out over here until July 9th in cinemas.



We got to Trafalgar Square and saw there was a huge event going on that took up the whole square. Turns out July 1st is Canada day in the UK, and a bunch of Canadians and Canadian business were celebrating with street hockey, bison burgers, and Canada-themed trivia. We hung around there for a while, looking at all the crazy Canadians, until we met Alex, our assistant director, to go into the gallery.

Again, most museums in London are free to get into, so I highly suggest you check out this art museum. It has art from 13th up to 20th century paintings and features artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Pousin, Vermeer, Hogarth, Monet, and Van Gough. Unfortunately, my friends were all tired from going out the previous night (something that happens very frequently) and they wanted to go home. They told me this by calling me, and I was in the middle of a gallery when my phone went off, so I was shooed out of the gallery by a museum staff person. I was very annoyed and not feeling to well so I went with them even though I wanted to stay. At least it’s free so I can go back.

When I got to my dorm I talked to Hayley on skype and she reminded me that I’m probably never going to be in London in this situation ever again and I shouldn’t spend a valuable evening sitting in my room. So, I bought a ticket to go see Les Miserables. That was my solution to not wanting a lame evening. I bought the ticket online and went to the theater super early, all by myself. I didn’t tell anyone I was going because I was a little irritated but also because I thought I should be spontaneous and do something fun by myself. I got to the theater, was handed my ticket by the very nice box office woman (Wicked could learn a thing or two from her) and went inside. It all went very smoothly and I didn’t have to wait on anyone or deal with any issues. I must admit I was feeling very nervous about seeing the show because I was all paranoid that something would go wrong, like they didn’t have the record of my ticket and I couldn’t print out the conformation so they would tell me to go away. But everything worked out as it should.

I was on the top tier of the 3-tired theater. It was very tall and skinny. I was in seat C3, so I was on the fourth row and had a pretty good view of the stage. But bad seats for buying the ticket 4 hours before the show. The theater slowly filled in as we got closer to the curtain coming up and, of course, a really tall guy sits in front of me. That wasn’t fun. If he had leaned back the whole time I would have seen just fine, but he kept leaning forward to see the entire stage, which was unnecessary. Lucky for me that tall guy and his family didn't come back for the second half, so I had a perfect view for the best part of the show. They are very strict about starting on time, so I wouldn't be surprised if they missed the door closing to let people in for the second half. I was very surprised to see that Nick Jonas, the youngest Jonas brother, would be playing the part of Marius. I didn’t know anything about the show before I saw it, other than it’s about the French Revolution and that there’s a guy named Jean Valjean in it.

Now I love the show! It is beautiful and moving and sad and very impressive. It’s more of an opera than a musical, where they sing every line, which I didn’t mind. Everyone played their part extremely well. Nick Jonas was surprisingly good and didn’t sound pop-y when he sang, but fit into his role very well. Eponine was very talented and I think she had the best female voice in the show. I think Susan Boyle has Rebecca Seale beat when it comes to singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, but Seale’s was much more vulnerable than Boyle’s huge operatic version, but maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be anyway. I think that “Do You Hear the People Sing?” was my favorite song of the show, but they were all wonderful songs, even though I didn’t recognize any of them.

The stage was also very impressive. It had a huge spinning floor that enabled the actors to look like they were walking down a street with people moving around them when really they were just walking in place. The floor moved silently and allowed for them to prepare one set in the dark, turn the floor to show the set, then clean up the last on in the dark again. There was also a huge shanty town set that was made up of boxes and crates and other things that moved in on moving platforms. When the rebels build the barricade, the shanty town comes back, but as it moves on it’s turned 90 degrees by some very impressive engineering, so that where there were once walls there are now floors and vise versa. It all worked very well and the effects and creativeness of the whole show was very impressive. SPOLIER ALERT There is a scene where Javert jumps from a bridge to kill himself. The bridge set is all the way on the ground, and Javert is just standing on the ground leaning against the bridge, but you really think he’s hanging off the side of a very high bridge. When he jumps, again he’s just standing there, but the way the lights, the moving floor, and the rising set appear, it really looks like he’s falling to his death.



Overall I thought the show was wonderful and I highly recommend it.

I made my way back to the tube then to my dorm, talked the show over with Hayley, then took a shower and went to bed.

British word of the day: aluminium foil = aluminum foil. They put an extra "i" in there. You can't just change the Periodic Table England!