Saturday was glorious. I actually kinda had a schedule which was nice. We had a program meeting at 9:30 AM which forced me to get up and at em early! The meeting was a bit unnecessarily long. One of the RLSs (Resident Life Supervisors) came to talk to us this morning about rules and regulations. She spent way too much time worrying about drugs and alcohol. We were just all sitting there quietly listening to her tell us to not play drinking games or let our drinking get out of hand. A glass of wine at dinner is ok but not drinking games. I just wanted to stop her and say "listen, we have an honor code...we are all Mormon....there shouldn't be a problem". Heck, I don't even know what drinking games are. So we sat through a bit of "first day rules" kinds of stuff and advice from our tour/ history guide Brother Wimmer. The meeting took until almost 11!!!
Well, Scott and I were pretty anxious about getting out and about! We wanted to check out portabello road on a Saturday. When we were there last we must have been told about four or five times that Saturday is the day to be on Portabello road. These people spoke truth! It was so much more exciting to be there on a saturday afternoon! There were so many more things to see including fresh produce! I got some yummy fresh things like carrots and avocados. I even splurged to get myself 100g of freshly cut german style salami. OMG, it was so worth the almost 3 pounds I spent on it.. Logan came along with Scott and me. Any time you say shopping to Logan, he is all over it. We bought ourselves fake glasses. Oh so silly but so attractive. I've never seen anything like this. There were second hand clothes on sale at what I consider normal retail prices. What the heck...used boots for 60 pounds?! I don't think so. I saw these really neat lace up shoes at one booth. They looked sort of pioneerish and they cost like 85 pounds. I picked them up and the man who owned the little cart/station thing gave me the price. I said "I would never pay that much for shoes that were this worn" thinking I could start using some bargaining skills. Shot down. He said, "put them down then". Good freaking luck making a sell with ridiculous prices! Well eventually we got bored of all of this shopping and headed back to our flats for dinner.
I used the foods I purchased for dinner. Delicious. Scott and I dressed for our concert at St. Martin in the Fields. Scott and I almost bought tickets for a concert there when we were on our own. We were excited to hear that we would be attending a concert there as our first one for the study abroad program! Fan jolly tastic! Scott and I had some time before the concert and we decided to walk from our apartments, down by the mall and Buckingham Palace, and on to Trafalgar Square. It took us a while and my feet KILLED. I got rid of my comfy black shoes because the soles split which left me with open toed and painful ones. I suppose that gives me a good excuse to purchase a new pair while I'm here. If only clothing was decently priced around here!!! Anyway, we really did have a lovely walk. Alone time seems rare for us now so our walk gave us time to just chat and enjoy together time. The mall we walked through was the best mall I have seen in my life! This is the name for the road and sidewalks leading to Buckingham Palace. There are trees and grass and all the loveliness of the art of landscaping on either side of the road. It was simply beautiful. Scott and I contemplated the difficulty of scaling the wall and evading the royal security to enter palace grounds unnoticed. We schemed and plotted which was rather entertaining. I felt odd being outside the palace just standing at the gates staring at someone's home. It felt awkward knowing that someone actually lives inside. We realized that we only had a few minutes before we needed to be at the concert so we took like two pictures and pressed on so as to not be late for to the concert. We arrived just in time and took our seats just on the side of the orchestra.
It was a wonderful setting. This beautiful church, candle light, and pretty wonderful performers. We were delighted to hear works by well known composers, Handel, Mozart, and and Purcell, as a sort of "warm up" concert to prepare our ears and our spirits for future performances with perhaps lesser known but equally exquisite music. I was delighted to hear one of the coronation anthems, "Zadok the Priest" by Handel. I'd heard this piece before but never studied it in great length. It left me wondering why we didn't sing this in our past year of performing British music at BYU! What a quintessentially British piece! It really feels royal and ceremonial to just listen to it. Next we listened to a Gloria by Handel followed by the final scenes of Dido and Aeneas by Purcell. During the second half of the concert we heard Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus" and finally Mozart's "Requiem". All of the ensemble members are volunteer and each of the soloists were trained at the Royal College of Music. This left me thinking that performing at St. Martin in the Fields is quite a big gig. I was blown away by the soprano soloist. She floated so effortlessly through the music though I preferred the performance quality in the mezzo-soprano. I was delighted to hear the baritone perform quite solidly but disappointed by the visibly poor technique of the tenor. His sound was nice to me but it was so difficult to watch his body tense up as he reached for the notes higher in his register. I loved "With Drooping Wings" from Dido and Aeneas. I had never realized how beautiful and moving this piece was until hearing it live! Naturally, I really enjoyed "Requiem" because I've sang it myself. I really respect the kind of stamina it takes to sing this piece. It's quite intense which is fitting because Mozart wrote it in an intense way. He was essentially on his death bed when writing it and you can just feel the intensity of the journey he was taking personally as he wrote the piece. I absolutely love Dies Irae and the Sanctus portions. This music really came alive for me tonight. It was really fulfilling to hear it performed live and it is a rare treat for me to be sitting on the other side of the stage. What a treasure.
After the concert was over, everyone decided to take the bus back to HPG (slang for where we live, Hyde Park Gate) which was lame because my week pass had not expired yet and it doesn't include bus fares. We got into the tube station and I realized I forgot my pass (called an Oyster card...who knows why?) Well, we had a few options: walking, paying for individual fares, or...dun dun dun dun, sneaking onto the tube without my pass which was a very risky proposition. I wound up sneaking on...more details on this later! I was relieved when we finally got back to and out of our station! fhew that I didn't get caught...the fine is something like 60 pounds! Twas a good day indeed.
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