England, Paris, and Welcome

Hello all! This is my first real blog post on my own blog. It's actually partly a response to Bron's request that I post some pictures of Paris. This is going to be a ridiculously long blog post so brace your self or stop right now. For those who don't know, we made it to England on 27th (?) of June. I've been enjoying it a lot. I actually haven't missed Provo as much as I usually do when we go to England. Maybe that's because I don't look forward to going back to Timpview High. This year I had my shortest summer ever. I got out of school the end of May and started it again two weeks later. Oh well, at least the classes are interesting now. My friend Beno and I, have been taking the college classes with the students in addition to precalculus from my mom, and a humanities class from Beno's mom. Anyways, enough of school. Two days after we got to England the first group of student got here and will be staying for two months, then the 2nd group will be arriving for 4 months. We will then come home probably for the last time (meaning that we're not coming back to England). Just in time for Christmas.
The first site that I remember going to is St. Paul's Cathedral.


This is St. Paul's in it's glory and splendor (actually, it's not a very good picture). Considered by many Christopher Wren's greatest work (he's the architect). We climbed up that huge dome which is not a small feat.

Here are some amazing pictures from the top of the dome. The first one is a double decker bus. The second is the millennium bridge with the tiny specks walking across it. Note that these picts are zoomed in quite a bit.

Canterbury:

Each week we go on day trips. On these we travel on a coach (long distance bus) to various sites around England. Our first one was to Canterbury. Canterbury is a cathedral town. It has amazing historical significance. It is where many people come on pilgrimage to the place where Thomas Becket was murdered in his own cathedral. It is where Christianity was reestablished after the Romans left England. Its also the home of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury.

During the reign of Henry VIII, many abbeys were destroyed. We went to see what's left of one of the largest. This is St. Augustine's Abbey. It was very cool to go there and see something so old like that. It was also fun to learn some of the history that's tied in with this place.

This is a nice picture of the Salt Lake Temple seen through the trees. Just kidding! This is Canterbury Cathedral.


I've tried to scale back on the pictures of stained glass just because you will be getting a ton of them in later posts. I couldn't help putting at least one in though.

And this is a memorial to Thomas Becket's martyrdom. The three swords plus the three shadows on the wall represent the six soldiers that were sent to kill Becket. Pretty lethal looking actually.

Well, maybe one more of stained glass. This is the last one. I promise.

Okay, the second day trip that we went on was a triple trip. The three sites that we went to were Glastonbury, Stourhead, and Bath.

Glastonbury:
Glastonbury is notable for myths and legends concerning Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. Back in the 11 hundreds, monks claimed to have found the graves of King Arthur and his Queen Guenevere. Naturally, this is a place to meet interesting people. Very interesting people.

Again, not much left of the original abbey. Just a few walls.

This is where the high alter would have stood back in the abbey's hay-day.

And, oh look, the big man himself (well, sort of). This is the supposed grave of King Arthur. Cool, huh?

Stourhead:

Stourhead is a big estate located in Wiltshire. It is very large and very beautiful, with its large gardens and magnificent estate house. The reason that we go there is that It is also where Mr. Darcy has his estate in the movie Pride and Prejudice. Since there isn't much to be said about the pictures, I will leave you in peace to enjoy them.

Well, I guess that I will have to forgo Bath till another post because blogger is making it ridiculously hard to move my pictures to where I want them, but keep looking for more posts because I haven't even caught up to the present date. Till then, goodbye.