Wednesday morning we had a rehearsal for our weekend at Oxford. We met in the chapel and decided who would be using the roll out keyboards and who would be using the real pianos. Like I've said before, the building coordinators are very particular about who gets to use what pianos and what rooms and when. Luckily we were able to split our entire class in half so that three groups would come early and rehearse on the pianos and three groups would stay late to rehearse. My group met early and what an exciting rehearsal that it was! Our parts are a bit unbalanced. I am the only alto and Chris Buttars is the only tenor which doesn't bother me one bit but it sure makes for a challenge when we are singing a piece with two choirs. We had fun reading over our music and I especially had fun really testing my sight reading skills. I must say I was rather proud of myself for holding my own through that rehearsal.
Our next stop was the Science Museum which is just right down the street from the chapel. We spent about three hours there and had a total blast!!! The first exhibit was experienced was about early household appliances such as the record player and it's evolution to the cd player, the vacuum, the toilet, power tools, the coffee maker, the clothes iron, central heating, and home security. My favorite part was the home security interactive stuff. We were challenged to get through some light sensors without setting off the alarm. I tried and totally failed. Scott tried and failed. I tried a second time and I just got down on the floor and scooted along army style. muahaha. Scott managed to make it happen his second try also. The next exhibit we saw was this sort of exploratorium. There were just a bunch of random things to touch and set up and experiment with. There was an ice block that you could pour water over and use a special magnifying glass to see the ice crystals formed. There was an infared camera that showed us our body heat and I discovered that my nose is rather cold. Scott and I decided it might be fun to attend a special presentation on bubbles and it was a blast. There were small children bouncing all over the place just giddy with excitement about these bubbles. Interestingly, they call liquid soap "washing up liquid" and this is across the board! In the grocery stores, in conversation, and in bubble presentations. I also really enjoyed this sound box head resonation demonstration. They had some speakers in a sound box with a metal rod attached. There were straws that you could put over the rod and bite onto. You could not hear the music (which was R&B by the way) from the speakers until you bit down and this demonstrates how your head can resonate sound as clearly as if you had ear buds in. So, picture this: me, crouched over this box that was clearly made for the height of an average 9 year old, dancing around to the music in my head. Fan-tastic.
The museum closed and we headed back to our flats to grab a quick bite to eat and deposit some groceries we just purchased. We headed out to get rush tickets for Les Mis but didn't make it in time. I was totally bummed out. We had just barely missed the start of the show and tickets would have been discounted in a big way. I sort of moped for a minute while Scott suggested all the different things we could do to entertain ourselves. He had some good ideas. My favorite was "let's jump over stuff" or "let's go pan handle and try to make some money". We looked for some instruments to play but couldn't find anything so, we decided to go with the jump over stuff option. More like, I watched Scott jump over stuff. I was nervous I would hurt myself. Eventually I gave it a go and found that I'm a pretty good jumper. :) We happened upon an amazing looking cafe and popped in for some dessert. We saw some decent prices and decided to have a bite. We went in and took a seat only to find that the prices were twice as expensive to dine in! Ridiculous. So, we ordered and took it out to the fountain around the corner and ate it right there. I laughed at all the tourists walking by taking pictures of this random fountain as if it was important to them. Pssssh. Scott and I plopped right on there and chowed down. Eventually we got on a bus in search of adventure. Scott said, we'll just get off when we see something fun to do. Before we had even reached the next stop we found the new Robin Hood movie was playing. It was fun to watch this movie in England, where the legend took place! I actually found a few connections to what I've experienced in my travels. There are parts of the movie that take place in places we have visited and there are people we've studied about in culture class. It was neat. BYU Singers performed a song called "When Allen-a-Dale Went a Hunting" which is all about Robin Hood and his buddies. Look at my learning experience coming full circle!
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