Unfortunately, The Phantom of the Opera is NOT Here

If I'd been smart, though, I would have been where he is right now! Ah, well. Of the musicals we were offered, Phantom was the only one I could say I'd seen within the last two years, if at all. Les Miserables is another of my favorites, and as I've only seen it once, when I was very young, I couldn't resist the offer of discounted tickets to see it in London. In addition, I'll be seeing both Wicked and The Lion King while I'm here, so I think my broadway plate is full. (We got amazing group rates. I think the Wicked ticket was only 15 pounds!) We started classes today, and this will occupy most of my mornings for the rest of the next three weeks. We don't even get Saturdays off! But three weeks isn't a lot of time to cram six credits into, so I understand. We have class (and church!) in the Hyde Park Chapel/Visitor's Center. It's a beautiful building built into the middle of one of the busiest pedestrian roads in the world. Exhibition Road was hit hard during one of the air raids during World War II, and the church was able to find land to build one of its London buildings because of this. This made me think of the Provo Tabernacle burning down and the church turning it into a temple. It was rededicated this last week after undergoing extensive reservations to convert part of the building into a Visitor's Center for investigators. I spent some time today talking with the sister missionaries who are stationed there, most of them fairly new into the mission field. Classes did not go smoothly! My first class is at 9:00 in the morning (Varieties of English), but there is supposed to be one at 8:00 for the girls in another class. Unfortunately, the rooms we needed were locked and we had to improvise. They spent so much time trying to find a room that the 8:00 class didn't get to meet and my 9:00 class had only five minutes of instruction time. I have another class at 10:00 with the other director (History of English). I am grateful to have all of my classes in a block. This makes time for doing other things like exploring and riding the subway! We went and bought our oyster cards after class and now I have unlimited access to almost all of London through the subway and all of it on the buses. I just have to tap my card on a scanner and it lets me in! We then set out on an adventure: seeing if we could correctly navigate the subway system without getting lost. I am pleased to tell you that we made it to our destination, but it was by the skin of our teeth and a lot of luck! As opposed to DC, where you have seven or eight different subway lines, each with one final destination at each end, the various lines here in London splinter off to several different destinations. So you could be on the right line but the wrong train. The train we got onto splintered into five different destinations (and the map that I had gotten at the airport didn't make that clear!) so we did a little train hopping and searching for platforms. But all ended up well, and I think I've got it down now! Have I mentioned that I love subways? Navigating through them today was as much fun as touring the castles in Ireland and Wales! Our object in figuring out the subways (besides the fun of it and the necessity of learning it) was the tracking down of a most elusive target: the TARDIS. (That's Time And Relative Demensions In Space, for anyone out of the loop. :) ) As there wasn't enough time at the end of all our errands and chores to do much sightseeing, we decided to get this one out of the way so that we would be able to spend our longer days at some of the more famous sights (Westminster Abbey, anyone?) And we were successful! Right outside of the Earl's Gate Station, there's a big blue police box that the government put there in the 1990s in an effort to bring them back into use as a security device. That plan apparently fell through, but they left the box there for poor saps like me to take pictures with. A mother was passing with her little girl while we were there, and I saw her do a double take and stop right in front of it. She knelt down next to her daughter and said "Look! There's the TARDIS!" It was so cute! Anyway, photo with the TARDIS? Check! I'll rather shamefully admit that I didn't want to leave it, but we had to in order to get Alexis to Phantom in time. Tomorrow is a rather special day for us. Buckingham Palace is usually only open to visitors in August and September, but because of the Olympics it's opening early and we're touring it tomorrow! Of course, this means that I'll be sitting in class all afternoon, but I'm willing to do that. Maybe after class I'll go visit Baker's Street. Or maybe I'll do some homework. That's probably the better idea. On that note, to bed! II wish you all safe travels and sweet dreams. :)