Now that classes are done...

The beginning of last week was a bit hectic because I had 3 papers due in the span of 2 days. But I got them all in on time, and actually turned one in a whole day early and I feel very good about them.

But then it was time to relax a bit and get back to the “abroad” part of study abroad. In fact I had resolved that once classes were done, I would not focus on the “study” part at all for a week since I had been doing that intensely for the past few weeks.

My period of relaxation began with seeing two movies Crazy Heart and The Blindside. I had seen both of them before, and intended on seeing both on the same night. After one I decided to put The Blind Side off until the next night because of an upset stomach that I think I can blame on too much sugary candy eaten too quickly at the beginning of the movie. Both were just as great as the first time I had seen them.

Thursday brought the big event of the week: Terry’s parents came to visit her and see London for a couple of days. I first met up with them for dinner and a show on Thursday. After a rain-soaked adventure trying to find their hotel, they came in a cab to get me since at this point we had dinner reservations. Dinner was at a very nice restaurant and I felt a little out of place in my drenched jeans. After dinner, it was time to go to the show, under normal circumstances, we could have walked to the theatre, but since we were running late, we caught a cab to the theatre.

The show for the night was Jersey Boys, which tells the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. We arrived just in time, but were actually not the last people to arrive. The show was very good, but like the other West End shows I’ve seen, the actors had a little bit of trouble with accents. This time however, the problem was not dropping an English accent, the problem for some of them had trouble doing a Jersey accent. Some were better than others, especially the actor who played Tommy DeVito. The actor who played Bob Guadio was also very good.

The next day I met Terry and her family at their hotel for breakfast before we headed out for the day. First stop of the day was the British Museum to see the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone . This was the third time for me, but here are a few new pictures:

Then it was off to the Victoria & Albert Museum since Terry wanted to see a special exhibit they had on Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill since he wrote the first Gothic Novel, The Castle of Otranto, and she is taking a class on Gothic novels. What amazed me most at the V&A in our short time there was the amazing glass sculpture hanging above the information desk in the lobby:

It looked to be around 30 feet tall and probably around 6 feet wide at its widest point.

After the V&A, it was time for dinner at a nice Italian restaurant before another show. Tonight we saw Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which has been running continuously since 1952. The acting was superb and even though I had been involved in a production of it many years ago at church and knew whodunit, I still enjoyed the play very much.

The next day I met them again for breakfast after which we took a short walk in Hyde Park before Terry had to go back to Bath and her parents had to catch a plane back to the U.S.