Getting Personal with Jane and Billy, Birthday Celebrations, Highgate Cemetery

Saturday i woke up early and decided to make my way to the British Library, which i had been waiting to visit for AGES! It was FANTASTIC! I saw so many breath-taking things! Sadly, i couldn't take any pictures but i'll give you a list of my favorite. Like a total nerd i took notes so i would remember everything i saw!

1. Original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which i read my freshman fall at trin trin. It was in the original hand, so beautiful
2. John Milton Commonplace book (Original hand written)
3. JANE AUSTEN: They had her original desk, and on it was a few of the last pages of Persuasion. So beautiful. I almost died, i think i stared at it for like 10 minutes. It even had her glasses sitting there.
4. Original Alice and Wonderland: Maybe one of the most beautiful things i saw. They have copies of the hand written (with his beautiful pictures) book in the shop. This ones one of my favorites, the drawings are so beautiful. I was SO CLOSE to buying one because, it is such a treasure. I might actually go back at some point and get one. It really was so beautiful, and it's so wonderful you can buy the entire book with his writting and drawings on every page.
5. Original Virginia Woolfe
6. They had a whole Beetles section with scribbles of lyrics, like Yellow Submarine and even some records
7. Also in the music section they had some original Mozart compositions.
8. They had the most important texts from basically every religion imaginable.
9. Bibles and Testiments and early manuscript of psalms from the 3rd century
10. THE MAGNA CARTA! Which was really beautiful and very very tiny print. They had it in it's own separate room. 
11. There was also a roll of arms dating to  1270 which i thought was really really neat!
12. SHAKESPEARE. I am not kidding you, i almost cried when i saw the first folio of Romeo and Juliet. It's so beautiful. I certainly stared at this for at least 10 minutes with my face pressed right up against the glass. I practically gasp when i saw the huge shakespeare section and ran straight to it from the Mozart section. They even have a sheet from this play that was written by a bunch of different playwrights and based on research they believe that this page is in Shakespeares OWN hand. That was glorious.

Basically it was the best time EVER and i need to go back again at some point. But i loved it. I got lots of wonderful postcards which some of you can expect in the mail someday. I hopefully will send them out tomorrow...we'll see depending on time ;)

Sagan, Me and Stephanie

That lovely saturday night the gang all got together to celebrate our (my and Kate's) birthday's! It was soooo much fun! It was great just to hang out with all (or most of) the LDA kids and just have fun--without worrying about classes, homework or anything. It was great. We even went dancing at a club! I had such a blast, and took lots of silly pictures! <3

Marlee, Caitlin, Me, Sagan

Sagan had the most beautiful white vintage dress! And Kate got us little pink buttons to wear that said "birthday girl" on them!

Steph and Me

Alright, i'm all caught up now :D So i head off for ROME tomorrow! I promise of course to let you know how those wonderful adventures go! I'm not bringing my laptop so i'm not sure if i'll update FROM rome but we shall see. <3

I love and miss you all so much!

I ALSO wanted to make a shout out to both my beautiful grandmothers: BURGA and GRANNY. I miss them so much and i send them all my love. xoxoxo I am so lucky because i have the most supportive and loving family.

My aunt Kathy recently sent me a picture of Burga on her wedding day and it is so beautiful. I love pictures so much, so many lovely memories!

Cheers all,

T

Ps. See post above for Highgate, i'm a dumb dumb and forgot to post about it. :P

Birthday Surprises!

Note: I wrote this yesterday, but because i ran out of bandwidth...i had to post it at school this morning. SO lame.

Mhmm, it's very strange being home in the middle of the day. Today i decided to take my 2 1/2 hour break and go home. It's relaxing but i keep thinking i'm skipping class...even though i know i'm not!

Thought i'd take my spare time and finish up my little update. Monday wasn't too exciting. Twas busy as always! But when we got back from classes Sinead and I got dressed up and went to Ben's Thai (the one above the pub) and had a nice little dinner! It's such a great little place and it's SO GOOD. I'm so happy it's close by! We had lots of fun! It took us FOREVER to choose what to eat because everything is so good! But we finally did, and i got lemon cheese cake for dessert! yum yum!

Then Tuesday, aka the big bday! I can't believe i'm 20. Seriously, it's so strange. Anyway, so we had gotten this message monday night that said there was a mandatory meeting in the lounge after class (which was 12:45). We filed in and everyone seemed to think it was some serious meeting. We'd all been discussing it, and then Kate and Sabina walk in with mean faces...which immediately break into laughter and EVERYONE starts singing happy birthday as Aylia and Sienna walk in with this CAKE BOX! It was SO sweet! I was totally shocked!

The fun thing, is it's not just my birthday but also Kate and Ian's! We're ALL turning twenty! Crazy huh? So the cake was for the 3 of us! It was the sweetest gesture! I couldn't get over it <3 And the cake was beautiful! It's from the tart place we went to last week! Delicious!

Publish Post

yum yum!<3

The new 20 year olds!

Just some silliness!

Then we headed off to the British Museum because it's our cultural outing day! :D It was really interesting. I had most fun in Parthenon section, where they had lots of panels from the original Parthenon! There was SO much there! It's crazy, and it's all FREE! So i'm sure we'll go back, although this weekend i'd very much like to head over to the British Library!

The Rosetta Stone! (they also had a fake one you could touch!)

This is supposedly what inspired Keats to write "Ode to a Grecian Urn"

The Enlightenment Room

I just loved this, it's amazing the grace one can convey through stone...

It was all very beautiful. I mean, i'm not a HUGE historical museum person, but i really did love seeing all the statues. It's interesting to think that this museum has so many artifacts from all over the world!

Then Sinead and i headed out over to the south bank for some dinner before seeing Mother Courage at the Nation. We ended up meeting up with Aylia, Sienna and Geoff too! It was great fun and we ate at this lovely pizza place along the south bank.

At the Mother Courage theatre just getting out was a talk Michael Palin was having! HOW COOL! He was there signing his book! I really wante to get in line to meet him but mother courage was starting. SO LAME. But i did get a shot of him :D

This is really for Dad, i couldn't believe he was there. All i could think about was the dead parrot sketch. ;)

And then. Mother Courage. Oh dear.

Well...Lets just say that Richard left extremely upset at the interval, which was 2 hours and 10 minutes into the show. It was honestly, not great. I like moments, and i loved Swiss Cheese. But the music was TERRIBLE and you could hardly understand anyone. For me, because i've never seen mother courage...i think it was a different experience. I didn't really go in with high expectations so it was better than I thought it was going to be...and i mean it is mother courage--the story is brilliant. But, the production itself was just extremely disappointing. I couldn't believe how upset Richard was. The next day we had a discussion about it and he said It was one of the worst things he's ever seen...and thats saying alot since he's seen (not exaggerating) MILLIONS of plays. ;)

All in all it was a very lovely birthday :)

Hello 20.

I'm 20 now.

It's very strange.

And it seems to have flown by.

I don't feel much different. Just, like there is so much to accomplish.

Mostly, i just feel very tried, but thats because it's been a long week. Mhm, and it's only tuesday.

It was a beautiful day today, it rained.

I can't believe today was the start of my 20's. So much is going to happen in this decade.

Egads.

I promise a big update tomorrow because i'll get out at 4:30!

Cheers and Love,

(Miss you all so much)

T