London Study Tour

Top of the evening to you all!! So I literally 'just' got back from London via extenssive plane, bus, boat, and taxi traveling and am dead tired but wanted to get a post up before the hate mail starts up again because I haven't been posting enough...=)

So we left for london last thursday morning and we got to take a small plane where you have to walk up stairs to the plane instead of a terminal...it was awesome!!! We got to london and settled ourselves in in a cozy little hostel but the bathrooms were quite dirty so I guess it wasn't that cozy. That night music had free so me and some friends traveled about the area, checking it out. Everyone got a travel card that allowed us to travel for free on all busses and subways for the duration of our stay, without it i would be so dead right now. While checking out the town we ended up at the famous Kings Cross Station (Harry Potter) and did a little photo op with Platform 9 3/4...I think I almost got on...lol. When we finally got back to the hotel (we kinda got lost), we were met by loud noise and scantily clad people. Turns out that the basement of our hostel is a dance club and pub and drinks were 2 for 1 for anyone staying there!!! Naturally we partied and then slept.

Other things we did... we went to an indian music concert luncheon, that was cute but the teachers got bored so we had to leave early;
We went to a folk music festival, that was cool, we were on the docks alongside the River Thames and there was a bunch of circussy acts going on;
We went to a jazz club featuring Robert Morris and followed by a hip-hop battle, that was neat, the group that opened played florida funk music and in the middle of their bit the saxophonist reached into his pocket for a cigarette but it was empty and so a guy at my school offered them his and the three instrumentalists took some and lit up on stage, playing these complicated liks with a cigarette in one hand...it was cool;
We attended a balinese gamalan session and learned how to perform a peice, that was fun, a gamelan is a set of percusion instruments that are perfectly tuned (or should i say untuned) to one another to created a humming in the air, so much that if one peice breaks u need to replace the entire set;
We went to mass at St. Johns cathedral and got to witness an amazing choir and organist;
We visit the London Centre of Contemporary Music where we learned about the different roles music plays in a society;
We went to an indian restaraunt, that was neat because it was in londons china town but for indians not chinese. They used to not be allowed to serve beer at these places so it is encouraged to bring your own into the restaraunt and they will bring u a glass and open your cans and bottles and pour em into the glass....its just weird but cool!
We went to a master class on french music at Londons Royal Academy of Music, that was really cool. I basically fell in love with that school and plan on studying there some time in my life, maybe for my masters;
We saw the musical, "Cabaret", that was awesome. It was very well done but was kinda interesting the fact that the background chorus dancers were nude a lot of the time...it did add to the dirty germany dance club atmossphere though;
We went a London Philharmonic Orchestra Shostacovich consert accompanied by a silent film. That was my fav, they played an old russian silent film on a huge screen in the background and the orchestra played the music to it. I loved it, i tried getting backstage to get an autograph from the principal bassoonist afterwards but he left right away :( ;
We did lots of shopping as well, Oxford street is all shops and the Camden market is full of little kiosks and such with random things real cheap, that was so fun, i got some christmas presents at camden;
A cool shop I found was called Howarths. This was a cute little series of shops in an old, antique part of london. The first shop was a clarinet shop, the second was a saxophone shop, and the third was a bassoon and oboe shop. I had never seen anything like it before, on the bassoon side the walls were lined with bassoon music, bassoon cds, bassoon supplys, even bassoons and bassoon parts. They sold reeds there and if i had my bassoon i could have brought it in to test out the reeds otherwise i was allowed to soak em and blow on em to see if they are anything like i want. It was awesome!! My bassoon case had boken before london so i got a new one here...it was a little spendy but cheaper than i had seen online and this case is a light weight backpack that is still quite strong and protective.....who needs food, right?
Other than those stuff, i pretty much ate, slept or partyed. They told us that london wasnt as big of a party place as norway but even the norwegians were getting tired of partying by the end of our stay.
Lol, it was fun.

I now have 4 days to reccuperate and rest before school starts again...41 days before I come home for christmas!!