Hampton Court !

Hey Hey! Today was AWESOME. We had our first field trip to Hampton Court Palace (that's me above). It's an old palace with lots of history (Henry VIII built it to demonstrate his love to Anne Boleyn right before he chopped off her head, apparently the ghost of Jane Seymour roams the halls at night). It was a busy day, after doing the audio guide for a bit, two lovely actors showed up in Period dress and guided us through Henry's halls and chambers, which were fascinating (unfortunately, there was no photography allowed in the palace so that was a no-go), but to the right are the people in period dress: It was also really neat because today they had a demonstration of cooking in the Tudor Kitchens (yes, there are 55 rooms just to these kitchens). And below is a picture of that (again the chefs were all dressed up in period costume using period items, and so on). So that was neat. Not to mention the INCREDIBLE gardens surrounding the palace and just the HISTORY. Ooh there's also this hedge maze which is world famous and took a good 20-30 minutes to get through. Finally, I went for Evensong in the Hampton Court Palace Chapel where Edward (Henry's son) was baptized, where Henry married Catherine Howard, along with many other royal things having happened there. The choir was breathtakingly beautiful, they just ripped your heart apart. Then we got Back and St. Peter's College, the one we're affiliated to, had a welcome BBQ for us complete with free drinks, roast turkey, sausages, hamburgers, shrimp, brie, strawberries and cream, etc... etc... etc.... Afterwards we went to Pembroke where a bunch of high school students are staying (most american) for a summer programme and watched trainspotting. I felt kind of bad for some of the others since I think the weirdness of the sex and drugs and violence and stuff was a bit much, but hey, what can you do? After that we took a walk around Oxford for a bit. This city really is awesome, there's so much to see and discover and explore. Tomorrow's my first Dante Class, and I've already begun reading some of it in Italian, so that's really quite fun, we'll see how it goes.... Slowly, ever so slowly, I think i'm starting to get used to this.