The Canterbury Tales

Dear Grace,

Where oh where to begin my tales? So this week on Thursday a group of us went to the home of John Wesley - the creator of the Methodist faith. I don't have much to say about the trip except that after reading 80 pages or so about John Wesley's life, I feel like the laziest person who ever dared to call herself religious in the history of the world!

The religion class that required me to visit this place has been so interesting, because the professor has been teaching us world history that has truly opened my eyes. For the first time in my life I have seen how everything came together to pave the way for the gospel to be restored on the earth. Methodism has a lot of similarities to Mormonism, and it's amazing to see how John Wesley's work in spreading the Methodist faith helped prepare the world for the true and restored gospel.

Anyway, I took this next picture for my daddy: one of our tour guides decided to give all of us girls a tour of the men's toilets! He pointed out the name of the manufacturer - I kid you not, I am not making this up - the dude's name was Crapper. His name then became an alternative for the word "toilet," as well as the word "poo" (crap). What a way to be remembered, eh?

So after the tour we all headed home, and were accompanied by an unexpected guest on the Tube! He kept randomly flying around our heads and the whole time all I could think was "Please don't poop on me!"

So anyway, a group of us decided that we were going to get up early the next morning to go stand in line to try and get tickets for Coriolanus (which is sold out, so you have to wait in line for standing tickets). I must emphasize (for my mother's sake) that I absolutely adore Tom Hiddleston, and so far he is the only man on the planet that I have gotten up at 6:00 a.m. for (okay Mom, you were right, I will get up early for a boy :P)

But I digress. So in the middle of the night I wake up to this clinking sort of sound - the kind of sound you'd get when dropping a coin onto a pile of coins, or from stacking coins into a column. That's what it sounded like to me, anyway. For a minute I thought Betsy was doing something like counting her money for some reason, so I rolled over loudly to hint that she was disturbing my slumber, but I noticed that she was still in bed. After a second I whispered, "Betsy, is that you?"

"No."

"What is that?"

"I don't know!"

I wasn't particularly alarmed by this at first, because this place is so old and creaky that any number of things could be falling apart and making that noise. However, I have to admit that I seriously wondered for a minute if our flat might be haunted or something. It would account for the noise and the fact that our room is always freezing anyway. So then I whispered, "Should I turn on the light?"

"Yeah."

So I flicked on my lamp and we could see that there weren't any serial killers in our bedroom, but the noise was coming from the bathroom. So, I attempted to tip-toe over to the bathroom (unsuccessfully of course, because the floor creaks and groans like a dying whale), and stopped at the door when I realized where the sound was coming from. It was the stupid PestContro thingy plugged into our wall! I have no idea what purpose it serves, but it has something to do with electrical shockwaves or something. What I'd like to know is if it just needed to have its batteries changed, or if it was secretly fighting ninja rats or something in the walls.

We were able to sleep after that with the comfort of knowing there weren't any serial killers sharpening knives in the bathroom (which was what Betsy thought the noise sounded like). Every time it clinked after that, I liked to imagine that it was working like a shock collar on any unwanted rodents that might be attempting to lay siege to our flat.

Well, an hour later we crawled out of bed and groggily bundled up to go wait in line for tickets. Halfway to the Tube station, Betsy asked me, "Do you have your oyster card?" And to my dismay, no, I did not in fact have my oyster card! I ended up having to buy a Tube pass, and since I was so tired I mistakenly paid 9 pounds for a day pass instead of 4 pounds for tickets to and from the theater. As if things couldn't get any worse, when we got to the theater, there were already the maximum amount of people in line for the number of tickets offered.

Standing outside of the Donmar Warehouse with 

my overpriced Tube pass and no ticket for Coriolanus :'(

Fortunately I was with cleverer people than myself, and they happened to remember that across the street, Matilda the musical was playing, and they were selling 5 pound student tickets at 10:00 a.m. 

So, we waited in front of that theater for a few hours and got tickets for Matilda. I honestly have to say that it took me about five minutes to figure out that Miss Trudgbull was played by a guy! And what's more funny is that he/she was my favorite character! I walked around for the rest of the night spitting his catchphrase ("Maggots!") at my friends (after letting them know it was a term of endearment for going to the show together, of course).

Well, after that, our next adventure began yesterday at Bodium Castle! I was thinking, "Oh cool, a castle," until one of our professors told us that it was featured in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the Lancelot scene, and then I was like "OMG! THAT CASTLE!?!"

I wanted to get a video of me reenacting the French taunt scene from one of the turrets, but my camera had problems and didn't take the video, and then we were out of time. Fortunately I can use the phrase, "Oh well, I'll get it at the next castle we visit!"

Something that puzzled me about the architecture of this castle was the doorways and the stairs. For one thing, I know that people were smaller back in the day and all, so my head just barely clears the doorways. What puzzles me is,

Why did these people build such freaking tall steps when they were so short?!? Seriously, our tallest men had trouble climbing up these bad boys!

After only about a half hour at the castle, we hopped onto the bus and rode on over to the famous town of Canterbury. Once again we didn't have much time until our tour of the famous Canterbury Cathedral, so we kind of just hung out in the square until we were to go in for our tour.

While we were waiting, there was a guy there playing his guitar and singing. A few of the girls suddenly noted with alarm that his fingers were bleeding. Apparently he didn't have a pick, and it was so cold that the finger he was strumming with had started to bleed. So, instead of dropping some change for him I popped into the giftshop we were standing in front of and bought the dude a Union Jack guitar pick instead. Then I turned into jell-o filled with butterflies when he thanked me in his adorable accent and started singing Skinny Love for us.

I couldn't believe our luck when we finally got into the cathedral and discovered that the choir was there rehearsing for their performance of the Messiah, which was taking place that evening. If I had to imagine what a heavenly choir sounded like, it would be exactly this. I really think that Handel's music was always meant to be sung in great halls like this. There's no sound like it in all the world.

After our tour not much else exciting happened except that I got an adorable clock for half-price in one of the gift shops because it was broken (which I can easily fix), and we got stuck in traffic for an extra couple of hours trying to get back into London.

I'm nervous today because I was called to give a talk in sacrament meeting next month in my ward. I really hope I'll do an okay job! We'll see how that one plays out. Stay tuned...