A little something from England.

Hey guys. Sailboats on the ocean. I think that one day I will go on a nice long sail from one country to another. London is awesome. I am loving this place more and more. School is... well, a lot of stuff that I don't think I would normally study, but I am liking it for the most part. Some of the Professors are like read masters and they assign a lot of reading reading reading stuff that makes me fall asleep withing 30 seconds, but Oh well. It is disciplining me.
Well, this week we are going to the home of Shakespeare, Stratford on Avon. Can you feel how excited I am. No it will be great. We are going to see "The Tempest" and see stuff around there. Then on Friday, we are going to Kew Gardens. Some sweet garden somewhere. I will send some pictures later.
The ward I am going to here, Wandsworth Common is awesome. It is a kind of smaller ward, like a lot of the ones I was in in Japan. It makes you see how far the church has come, but also how far there is to go. The stake Presidency spoke today. A great lineup. An African man, A black British man, and the stake president is Japanese. An awesome little guy. He works at the embassy here. Came here with his family, speaks mediocre english, and they called him to be a stake president. Humble man. Talked about the importance of doing the small stuff. Faith in an action word. Act.
Love this place. Love you all. Send any suggestions.
check out the pictures below 

Brighton

Here we are at the Taj Mahal... of England. In Brighton, King George IV decided that he wanted a beach pallace there that looked like the Taj Mahal on the outside, and was Chinese on the inside, so that is what happened. Beautiful change up from the rest of the architecture there.
This is me, Mike, Erika, and Jessica at the end of the pier there in Brighton. Went out on the pier, had some fish and chips, saw the British guy that looked like dad. It was awesome.
















Swimming in the English Channel. It was really cold, but it was totally worth it. The water was actually surprising clean and blue. The whole beach consisted of very small rocks. little like 1 inch in diameter rocks all over the place. It was actually quite comfortable.








Beautiful. Here's an old pier there that apparently fell over, but it made for a good picture. We had a good dinner at the sunset there on those tables at the bottom of the picture. 

Thames Festival

Not a day goes by without some awesome happenings in this city. Things here are awesome. Classes are great, a lot of stuff that I have never thought of, or would have thought of without these classes. Oh and by the way. The Opera sucks. We went to it the other night, and it as probably the worst experience of my life. I think that is what Hell is like. Sorry to be blunt, but it wasn't very good. Bless the hearts of those who like it, or pretend to like it.
Sweet Fireworks on the Thames, we climbed up on top of a statue to watch. Me and Chris, Jessica, Ashley and Kristi.

Pretty sweet pics of the fireworks eh?

 

St. Paul's

This place makes a lot of other beautiful places look, well... mediocre at best. You aren't allowed to take pictures in there, so these were taken very conspicuosly from just outside of my pocket. But they turned out pretty good.


Wow. There are 30 million pieces of glass included in the mosaics all over the ceiling.

The lighting in there was absolutely amazing. Hopefully you can see some of it. This is on top, up the 600 or so steps. Left is Ross, Spencer's cousin and I swear they are just twins separated at birth. Then Ashley and Erika, two really excited spunky girls that are always up for something.






Light! The builders of Gothic cathedrals didn't quite figure that out. But they did on this one. 

 

London!!

Well, I figure you all ought to be able to better see these incredible places I am seeing and experiences I am having. So I started this in order to post pictures and keep you posted on the goings on in London. Here's the first lot of pictures. Plenty more to come.

More views in the beauty gardens.












Here's the guys in the program, from left to right. Kent -from Oregon, Mike, you all know Mike, Ross - he is Spencer Brown's cousin, and they are so alike you wouldn't believe it, me, and Chris - from San Diego. One other guy Andy, from Philly isn't in the picture. You might recognize this place we are standing from Pride and Prejudice that came out recently. This is where they are standing in the rain when the girl gets mad at Darci.











Salisbury Cathedral, holy crykee that place was huge.











Views w/in the cathedral.

 

September 13

Salisbury Cathedral - spire reaches up 400 feet, the tallest in all of Europe. Built in the 1200's. Wow that's pretty old.














The British Countryside, on the way to Stouhead Gardens.


Stourhead Garden. Unlike any garden I've seen. It wasn't just flowers it was a huge estate that was all hand landscaped, (including digging this big old pond out of the ground), special buildings built, even full grown trees brought in from all over the world to add the to garden. This sucker was built 300 years ago. Professors were saying that the idea of gardens nowadays came from these types of European gardens, only on a smaller scale.


Another view of the Garden. 

The coolest man in England.