Day Twenty-One:

This morning our whole group adventured out to the Globe Theatre. (It's just across the Thames we've passed it before.) The Globe burned down a very long time ago (mid-1600s?) but they reconstructed it about 11 years ago just a few minutes from its original location. It was really neat to see. The whole thing is made of wood and the roof is thatched with a big hole in the middle to let in sunlight. We had this fabulous tour guide who was also an actress, thus she was very animated. We'll be seeing a play there in a few weeks and I'm actually really excited.


After the Globe, Sarah and I spent an hour or so at the National Portrait Gallery. I'll have to go back and spend more time there, but for our women's class we're eventually supposed to see the Victorian section. The portraits were a lot the same... sleek, successful men with moustaches and black suits and women in gaudy dresses looking sheek and expensive. But the style of paintings, the actual techniques used, were really beautiful and so I quite enjoyed it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent writing "journal entries" for my classes, doing some research, and sorting pictures on my computer. After dinner my Political Science class was required to watch "Lord of the Flies" together. Its based on a novel I read early in high school about boys who get plane-wrecked on an island and end up forming tribes, if you will, and becoming increasingly barbaric. We had a long discussion afterwards about how the movie relates to the philosophies of Hobbes that we've been studying in class. For me it was a really helpful depiction. The movie itself was ho-hum. It was black and white, but the worst thing was that it moved extremely slowly. There were times where I was certain the camera stayed on one boy's face for 2 minutes without anyone saying anything. I guess the most exciting thing was the naked boys' bottoms... haha... or the pig's head being eaten by flies.

Well, more homework is calling my name and we're leaving the center at 7:15 tomorrow morning to go to Stratford so I'd better call it quits for now.