Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore...

So do our minutes hasten to their end.

That's a little Shakespeare for you (Sonnet 60, to be exact.) It feels like a fitting quote to the final hours of our study of theatre in London.

It's pretty late, and we have to be early in order to get to the airport for our flight back home. It was a great final day, and I'll craft a final blog entry and post it sometime tomorrow.

We will see you all at 1:03pm at Terminal E at Logan International. If I don't see you, please check out with Carl or Nancy and have a wonderful Spring Break.

Again, I promise a final post... just need a little rest before the journey back.

See you all tomorrow!

There may be hope after all...

A couple of years ago we ran a Winterim trip to Italy, and our first stop on that journey was the small town of Assisi and the Basilica of San Francesco... Saint Francis, as he may be better known. On that tour we learned that before Saint Francis was called by Jesus to "save my church" (in so many words), Francis was a rabble-rousing juvenile delinquent. His dad was a wealthy fabric merchant, and on one occasion, Francis stole and sold his dad's best stock in order to carouse with his buddies. In fact, when something went missing in Assisi or trouble was afoot, the locals often remarked that it must have just been Francis and friends again. After Francis's literal "come to Jesus moment", he changed the way the Catholic Church functioned in the Middle Ages; the focus became less about how one achieved glory in heaven and more about serving one's fellow man on earth. In this edition of Winterim, we traveled today to the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the hometown of another teenager who made some ineffective life choices and turned out pretty OK.

There is just a ton of stuff scholars don't know about Shakespeare, but we do have some pretty salacious details about his marriage to Anne Hathaway. To make an incredibly long story short, Shakespeare married a woman nine years his senior (he was eighteen; she was twenty-seven) which was scandalous in it own regard, but Shakespeare's first daughter was born a few months short of nine, if you catch the drift. Shakespeare did not yet have a home of his own, so Anne, William, and baby Judith moved back into Shakespeare's parents house. The family often visited the Hathaway family farm outside of Stratford, but basically Shakespeare was an unemployed teenager living in his parents' basement (OK, probably not, but it fits the modern archetype) with his family. There's about six or seven years of Shakespeare's life for which we don't have much historical record; many scholars believe that he abandoned his family during that time, but the prevailing thought in Stratford is that he just worked around town making money to support his young family. So, if two of the most influential figures in the Western world could overcome some tricky teenage years, anyone can.

In the late 1800's, England (under the pressure of such writers as Charles Dickens and T.S. Eliot) created an organization with the goal of preserving the personal history of arguably its most well-known native son. Stratford is a lovely English country town, unique in the presence of many old buildings ranging back almost 450 years in age. The town was able to keep those buildings around through the establishment of the Shakespeare Charitable Trust, and your students had the opportunity to walk on the same floorboards and paving stones at the Hathaway Cottage and Shakespeare's original home that he trod centuries ago. In addition to visiting those locations, we all had the opportunity to visit his grave at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. After our tour (led by another gifted Blue Badge guide, Alan), students had free time in the town center before heading back to London for our dinner of Indian food and our last show of the week, The Phantom of the Opera.

Tomorrow we get our second dose of Shakespeare with a visit to the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre and a lecture from one of their docents. We haven't quite decided what we are doing with our last free afternoon; the students have fallen in love with the city and have many ideas, and Nancy, Carl, and I will do our best to honor as many of them as we can.

Have a great Friday!

Too tired to come up with anything clever

So the only way to get this blog done is on the train rides back to Ealing although my thumbs don't quite work this late in the evening. This was another remarkably fulfilling day. We started with a much-appreciated, relatively later wake-up time and headed out by tube to DanceWorks off of Oxford Street (more on the street later.) The students had a ninety-minute dancing/acting/singing workshop learning the song "Masquerade" from Phantom of the Opera; the number is arguably the biggest production of the show, and the workshop instructors did a fantastic job getting all of the students involved and providing context for the show we will see tomorrow night. After the workshop, students had some free time on Oxford Street (think 5th Avenue or Boylston St. but much longer), and many of them visited the until-recently lesser known signature department store in Greater London. 

If you've ever walked into a department store and been assaulted by salespeople with the latest celebrity perfume (Eau de Gaga, for example... one of the students purchased this today ... I'm not naming names), you have Harry Gordon Selfridge to thank/blame. In many ways, he revolutionized "brick and mortar" retail sales with upfront presentation of goods and a focus on customer service; in fact there is some debate that he invented the practice of personal shoppers. He was an American-born self-made businessman who moved to London in order to start his own department store in direct competition with the evil empire of the British retail world: Harrod's. His franchise is the eponymous Selfridges, and the flagship Selfridges is right across from the dance studio. Masterpiece Theater has recently put out a series on "Mr. Selfridge" that just started its second season. 

After lunch, we navigated our way to the borough of Kensington and the impressive array of free museums originally established by Queen Victoria; she wasn't always perfect (look up the Gross Indecenies Act), but she did create some neat public exhibitions of art, science, and nature. Students had a couple of hours to explore one (or more) of three museums: The Victoria and Albert Museum of Decorative Arts, The National Museum of Natural History, and/or The National Science Museum. Some students even took the ten-minute walk to check out Selfridge's main competitor, Harrod's (or Horrid's as Pepe called it.). 

After our time in Kensington, we traveled over to Southwark (starting place of the Canterbury Tales, all you 9th grade parents) and spent some time in Borough Market, a lovely collection of locally sourced artisanal food stalls. As the stalls were closing for the day, a fruit and vegetable vendor offered the students free samples of various exotic produce. Students were especially impressed by a small orange fruit called a physalis; the only way to describe the taste and texture is that a cherry tomato invited a mandarin orange out for a lovely dinner before making little tomato orange babies (it's late and we have to wake up early again.) Not far from Borough Market was Fuller's Ale and Pie House and our traditional fish and chips dinner. We rounded out another day with a polished West End performance; this time it was Wicked, and Gavin came through with tremendous seats at the half-price rate.

Tomorrow we board a bus at 8:00am to make the two-and-a-half hour journey to Stratford-upon-Avon and spend the day learning about William Shakespeare.

Have a great Thursday!!

Didn't really think we could do it all, but we did...

Well it was quite a busy first "official" day for the trip. After a refreshing night's sleep, everyone was reenergized to explore London in earnest. In order to get to know the city a little better, we were fortunate enough to have a wonderfully talented Blue Badge guide to teach us about not only the major landmarks and histories of the city but also some of the lesser known stories and hidden places of London. In fact, Pepe Martinez ( in his own words, "the most British of names") knew his target audience quite well and blended the beautifully sublime (Kensington Gardens) to the mildly annoying (Simon Cowell's house.) Pepe asked engaging questions, and some of your progeny handled them nicely. Antonia von Litschgi correctly identified the London Blitz as the third time the city was destroyed (Queen Bodicea and the London Fire being the other two.) Pepe then dropped us off at the Tower of London where we all had some lunch and the explored one of the most historically significant sites in London. 

The Tower of London has been the location of a permanent settlement since the time of the Ancient Romans, and your students had a chance to walk through 1700 years of history. We started with the Crown Jewels, and sophomore Liam Johansson showed a little bit of applied learning and critical thinking by asking why so many resources would be used to make a jewel-encrusted solid gold punch bowl while thousands of people were dying of the plague (his words, not mine.) A bunch of other students then joined in a conversation around income inequality and social responsibility, and teachers' hearts fluttered with pride. 

After the Tower of London, we navigated the Tube (on our own... at rush hour) to Victoria Station for some free time shopping before a dinner of Japanese noodles and chocolate cake. You might not think the two would go together, but Winterim asks all of us to step outside our comfort zone a little bit. The dinner served as a lovely prelude to our first theatre evening. 

The 39 Steps is a West End theatrical adaptation of an Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation of a British spy novel. It doesn't get much more English than that. And if it sounds crazy, the production lives up to its convoluted premise. It is a high-energy, quickly-paced laugh-out-loud comedy that uses clever theatricality to simultaneously honor and mock old spy stories. I cannot accurately put to words the frantic mood of the play; I'll leave that to your offspring to share how great the show was. 

Tomorrow will be another equally full day. We start with an acting workshop, will have some free time in the afternoon (Nancy, Carl and I haven't quite decided what we are doing yet... museums probably), and fish and chips and Wicked to round out hump day. 

Have a great Wednesday!!

By the pricking of my thumb, something...

If you know the next word in that quote, you know the name of our "walk-up" theatre ticket choice. Our tour director has an "in" at the central ticket booking agency and was able to get us 21 half-price stall seats (quite fancy after all) to see Wicked. So starting tomorrow (Tuesday) night, we will have three straight nights of West End theatre performances.

As far as the rest of Monday is concerned, the students had some great opportunities to acclimate themselves to the London Underground and passed all tests with flying colors. We took the Tube to Farringdon for a lovely Italian dinner and then made our way back to the hotel where no one is stirring (except the blogger) after a 35 hour day.

Tomorrow we will have a morning tour of London, visiting Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, St. Paul's etc. and then hopefully get to the Tower of London in the afternoon before our evening performance of The 39 Steps.

I'll keep you posted... literally, I guess.

Have a good night...

Cannot promise any more posts today

Well, we made it to Central London and had the chance to explore Covent Garden on our own for lunch. Students had about an hour to find something to eat and shop in one of London's iconic marketplaces. We don't need to connect back with the rest of the group until later, so we walked over to the National Gallery. The students are enjoying some peaceful moments with art after a rather hectic 24 hours.  I guess this is their first encounter with what art can provide an urban landscape: quiet reflection and a chance to recharge with a little beauty. 

I don't know if I'll post again today (Monday) as we are all hitting the wall pretty hard. There will be more updates tomorrow as we officially tour the city with a Blue Badge guide. 

Cheers. L

Safe and sound in London.

Hello all

After a relatively uneventful journey, we are sitting now in a private coach that will take us to the hotel to drop off our luggage. We are waiting for the group from Texas and as soon as they get here we will be off. Our tour director is a lovely gentleman, and I know we will be in good hands.  

We will be in touch and have a great morning. 

On the airplane!!!

Everyone is on board and we are good to go! Thanks again for getting everyone to the airport on time. Check your email. I sent out an inaccurate phone number last time. The phone number from the packet is correct but I just sent a new email. 

Talk to you all from London. 

Paul