London Calling

Greetings, O family and friends of ours!  Today Katie and I celebrated our first anniversary together.  At dinner, somebody told us the first year was supposed to be the hardest to get through.  If that's the case, we're in for a pretty easy life, because things have been great so far.  We've had some excellent adventures, with many more on the way, I'm sure.  What did we do to celebrate our anniversary, you ask?  Well, we kind of consider this whole two-month excursion to be one long anniversary trip... two birds with one stone, you know.  Anyway, thanks to all of you for being supportive of us, and thanks Katie for being the best wife ever.

This week was a lot of work and a lot of play.  Earlier on, either Monday or Tuesday, we had a chance to go visit Trinity college and see the Wren library there.  Now, first of all, Trinity is a beautiful college, and the second richest in the University next to St. John's.  The grounds are wonderful and very well kept.  It's actually nearby King's college (both of them sit just on the east of the river Cam).  They're in the middle of some renovations right now, so visiting within the college is somewhat limited.  Fortunately, the library is open for a few hours each day.  I'm not a big architectural history buff, but the library was designed by Christopher Wren, who designed the chapel at Pembroke college, where we live (his first work), and later, St. Paul's cathedral in London.  More on that later.  We had to wait outside the library for a few minutes before they let us in, and they didn't allow photography inside so you'll have to peruse the internet for your own images, but the inside was spectacular.  It was interesting for us to see the commonalities between all the Wren buildings--he seemed to like light, open spaces, so it wasn't like the typical dark wooden library at some of the other colleges, although those are great as well.  The books, though, were what stood out: we got to see a copy of the Pauline epistles from the 700's, the original handwritten manuscript of Winnie the Pooh (awesome), a speech about the implications of the atomic bomb by Bertrand Russell, and a bunch of other old stuff.  There were thousands of books in the library, and I don't think any of them were newer than 100 years old, at least in the main reading room where we were.  We also got to see a lock of Isaac Newton's hair, a few pages of his notebooks, and his walking stick!  Now, these are the types of things you could see in a museum somewhere, but what made this really special was the fact that all these people were intimately connected with Trinity College and Cambridge.  I mean, we were looking at Newton's notes, but we were also standing where he stood, right by the desk he studied at.  Very cool.  That's a feeling you get a lot here in Cambridge--the sense of history and intellectual heritage is overwhelming sometimes.

Speaking of intellectual heritage, the director of BYU's honor's program came to visit PKP (our program) last week, and we got to spend some time with him on Tuesday.  Katie and I, along with another student, walked with him across the river to a small village called Grandchester, where there is an orchard and a tea room out among the trees.  The town is sort of a local legend--it was frequented by a good portion of the great poets a while back... I'm not much of a poetry expert myself, but it was a charming little place.  Actually, it's said to contain the highest concentration of living Nobel laureates anywhere in the world.  Do I believe it?  Yup.  At any rate, Katie and I walked over with Dr. Scanlon (the BYU honors director) and had a very nice conversation.  His background was in theatre, so he was off the next day to see some shows and do some research in London.  "Research".

While Katie and I continued to wade through material for our respective supervisions, the rest of the program was busy cramming for finals for the first module of classes, which ended on Friday.  That means the program is halfway over already, which is hard for us to believe.  If we ever have the chance, we'd love to come back here.  There's just too much to learn and see for two measly months.  But we'll take what we can get.  To celebrate the end of the finals, the program held a huge costume party at a nightclub in Cambridge.  The theme was "cool britannia," so Katie dressed up as a Union Jack and I wore a shirt with George Washington... who was once British.  We decided we were the revolutionary war... or perhaps the War of American Aggression?

Yesterday we had a nice day in London.  It was my first time in the city, and I thought it was quite nice, if a little crowded.  We walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and I couldn't help but think of all the missionaries who must've stood on soapboxes there.  We sauntered on over to Porto Bello road, which is sort of a local antique haven.  I've never seen so many old suitcases, telephones, clothes, and watches in my life.  And of course there were the books.  After being in England for two months, I think I'm going to be hard pressed to find a bookstore in the US that actually impresses me.  It seems that every street corner in this country houses a few Bibles from the 1700s.  Katie and I picked up a pamphlet somewhere for a company that specializes in custom-built libraries and lusted lusted over its pages for a few moments.

We wandered around London for most of the day and saw St. Paul's cathedral that night.  Again, it was designed by Christopher Wren, who, as it turns out, wasn't half bad.  I'm sure he's glad we approve.  We arrived at the cathedral right in time for evensong, which was beautiful.  We crossed over the river and explored the Tate modern art gallery, which was amusing... if only I'd thought of gluing an octagonal piece of white paper to a wall!  I could've retired by now.  After the museum, we headed over to the Globe and saw a production of All's Well that Ends Well.  We had standing tickets so we felt very authentic.  It was the first time either of us had ever seen that play, and we thought the acting was great, but the main character (Bertram) remains a complete idiot, right to the end.  We'll have to see another version sometime.  

Well, we hope all of you are getting along alright.  We're having a splendid time over here, and it's going by much faster than we'd like.  

Oh, I almost forgot what we did today!  After church we carpooled over with a few other people from church to see the American memorial cemetery here.  It's a cemetery and memorial for Americans who died during World War II, and the only American military cemetery in the British Isles.  The land was donated by the University; there are about 3,500 graves and around 5,000 names inscribed on a large wall.  It was peaceful.

Anyway, hope you're all doing well!  We'd love to hear from you, thanks for reading,

Jordan and Katie

At the Big Party

A phone box, Big Ben, and a double-decker bus.  What more can you ask of London?

The Arch de Triumph.  Seriously.

The Peter Pan statue at Kensington

The streets were all this crowded.

Well, it was a statue of cupid.  That's all I remember.

Countdown to the olympics!

The United States Capitol is behind us.  

One of the more labor-intensive works at the modern art gallery.

Katie got us kicked out for playing on the kiddy slide. 

Inside the old Globe!

At the Memorial Cemetery this afternoon

Happy First Year!