Changing of the Guard and National Gallery

I promised to write more about the Ragged School Museum, but I do not think I am going to have time. You will just have to look for yourselves (http://www.raggedschoolmuseum.org.uk/) and Thomas Barnardo (http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_history.htm) on your own.  He is really an interesting person and the charity he founded is still in existence.  I am going to use him the next time I teach Shaw's Major Barbara.  I knew a little about him, but I learned a lot more on this trip.

I have too many things I also need to be doing.  I am trying to fit in prep for the semester (I need to populate the course sites for my classes) and catch up on my lessons for my TEFL certificate.  I also have two presentations to give the week I get back (who thought that was a good idea?), so I am starting get a bit worried. The next time it is my turn, I will do course prep for both fall AND spring in the summer before, and I will NOT (listen to me Patricia Lynne) say I will do anything right when I get back.  In the evenings, I will blog and relax.

Yesterday, was a great day despite the rain in the  morning during the Changing of the Guard.  We took the Original Tour bus to Buckingham Palace and then walked to the barracks so we could see the Guard actually come out.  I am glad we did because there ended up being a crowd in front of the palace. Kristy and Rachel ran across the street, so they may have more close up pictures on their blogs. Here are mine:

This is Calyn, looking fabulous outside of Buckingham Palace.

Here is the group in front of the barracks.  That's me in the middle in the blue raincoat! I love this raincoat--it's huge, but that means I can wear it over everything, so it protects me, my bag, and my camera from the rain. I can fit a complete backpack under this thing and still zip it up.  I may look like a crazy person, but I'm dry. Also, my students already think I am crazy.

Here they come!

 . . .and there they go!

And there we go!

One final rainy picture of Buckingham Palace.  Yup, I'm one of those people that cannot have too many pictures of palaces.

This was the only official outing of the day. Some students went back to the apartments because they were soaked (because they had no rain gear!Note to self: show pics of rainsoaked students at future pre-trip meetings)) and some of the groups got on different bus routes for the on/of bus.  I got on the red line to ride to Trafalgar Square.  On the way, we not only passed one of the houses that Wilkie Collins lived in but also his birth place.

Wilkie Collins (http://www.wilkie-collins.info/) is most famous for The Woman in White, one of if not the best selling novel of the Victorian period, and for The Moonstone, which many believe to be the first full length detective-mystery novel in English.  I teach The Woman in White when I teach the junior-level 19th-century British Novel course, and generally it is a student favorite as well. Everyone loves the second female lead, Marion Halcombe, and Count Fosco, one of the best villains in print.  

The group I was with got off the bus in Trafalgar Square and the sun came out.  I wish now (now that I am warm and fed and dry) that I had walked around more to take a picture of the front of the square and Nelson's Column (http://www.historyanswers.co.uk/inventions/five-facts-about-nelsons-column/) and the lions (http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/trafalgar_square_lions.html), but instead I just took some pictures from in front of the National Gallery and then went to eat lunch!

We had lunch at the cafe in the National Gallery.  We did not go to the fancy restaurant but the cafe inside--literally we got a map and found the cafeteria without as much as a glance at the art.  Eating in London can be expensive and very expensive.  However, I also learned that eating in museum cafeterias is not only fun but really economical.  I got a huge bowl of beef stew and fresh bread (they were slicing it when I was in line) for £6.95. 

Not only are the major museums free, but they have great cafeterias.  The other inexpensive places to eat are the cafeterias in the big department stores. 

One of the tasks for the day was to figure out how long it would take to walk from Trafalgar Square to where we live in Russel Square because we are trying to decide whether or not the students will want to walk that far. Next week, we will be going to the British Museum and then to the National Portrait Gallery, so we were trying to see if it would be worth it to walk to a tube stop or just walk it. 

I don't think we have decided this yet; however, the walk did serve a great purpose. I did not know where the Cambridge Theater is located, and this is where a group of us are going to see Matilda next week. On our walk back, I was joking about how on the tour bus, we had passed so many theaters but not the theater we needed to find, when low and behold look what we walked passed!

My group came home early. I needed to get rest and to get some work done, but a group of them were going off to have high tea at the Savoy!  I can't wait to hear that story.