Phil D'Amico -- The Borough Market

This past Friday, after receiving a guided tour of the Tate Britain Art Museum, the group took a quick ferry ride up the Thames River from the Westminster area of London to Southwark. The plan was to go to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to see a production of Macbeth, however the play did not begin until the evening. Therefore the group decided to split up, explore the area, and grab a bite to eat, as it was around lunch time. Walking along the Thames with my companions Jeremy and Brian, we past several pubs. However, we all agreed that we had grown tired of the repetitive pub food. Instead, we continued deeper into the area to explore for more options. Consulting my handy London map I discovered there was a market (the Borough Market) nearby, so we decided to check it out. We entered the market, adjacent to the London Bridge Station, and what we saw was an incredible plethora of lunch options. The market consisted of dozens of kiosks run by traders offering a truly amazing variety of foods. There was fresh produce, bakery, sandwiches, sausage, meats, cheeses, meat pies, beers, wines, chocolates, and pastries. There was ethnic food galore, including Italian, Greek, German, as well as Indian cuisine. There was even several stands that were selling various exotic meats such as ostrich and kangaroo. It was truly an amazing sight to behold. The combination of aromas coming from the stands was fantastic, the best of which came from one of the Indian kiosks where there was gigantic vat of curry simmering. It was nearly impossible to make a decision of what to eat. After several walks through we decided on one of the German kiosks. All three of us ordered bratwursts with sauerkraut. Delicious. Other than the taste of the food the best things about this market though was that everything was fairly cheap (relative to everything else in London). The combination of taste and affordability created a feeding frenzy, and we went back for seconds. This time Jeremy and Brian tried a wild boar sandwich which they praised. I on the other hand opted to try out some of the bakery. Continuing the German theme, I bought an apple strudel the size of a brick. It was heavenly. All in all I must say the food that we ate at Borough Market was the best food I've had on the entire trip.

Cynthia Martin

We are almost reaching the end of out wonderful trip to England...This trip was as much fun as educational for me.

Everything started in Bath which is a very nice place which is a place which is neither totally city looking nor completely wild place. One of my favorite places we visited, was at Stourhead Garden. Stourhead is a 2650 acres of 18th century landscape garden, historic parkland, farmland and ancient woodland. It is a beautiful garden following a symmetrical and regular shape. This beauty makes the garden seem unreal and gives this mental image of the perfect garden that everyone would like to have in their backyard. In addition, even though a lot of people were walking around, it remains a very peaceful and quiet place where one can easily meditate or find a time for loneliness.

After 5 days in Bath, we headed to Oxford where it was a completely different environment, it was more like a town college. We have been able to visit the country home of William Morris, author of News from Nowhere and poet, craftsman and socialist. The house contains a collection of the possession and works of Morris and his associates, including furniture, textiles, carpets and ceramics. We could not take pictures inside of the house but I could tell you that it was a simple but very nice house, you could really have this warm feeling of being at home once inside. Moreover, there were a lot of curtains, cushion covers who were embroidered by Jane and May Morris, wife and daughter of William Morris and designed by William Morris himself. His design was mostly inspired from flowers, stream and meadow since we could observe the pale colors he would used such as pale green or blue background. That really gave the heaven-like feeling since I could imagine heaven to be filled with flowers of bright colors.

Finally, after 4 days in Oxford, we are in London, the big city of England. It is definitely a different surrounding, especially the architecture of certain buildings which is more modern. On the first day itself, Madhu, Sara, Molly, Maria and I went to see Big Ben and tower bridge at night and it was such a spectacular view. It was pretty awesome, I have seen these sites before but it was always during the day and I can assure you that it is worth going both during the day and at night as well. Moreover we have been visiting the St Paul's Cathedral from which we could have a panoramic view of England after walking about 300 stairs to the top of the dome. Also we visited the Tower of London where I have been able to see the crown jewels which was amazing and just make us dream about having one of these one day. :)

Soya Hirano -- Holland Park, Thursday May 6th

Despite being an English major, I love inspirational pictures more than words. I may not fully or rhetorically reason why I post these pictures, but bear with my writing and pictures, please. (Alas, uploading more than two pictures on this blog is technically time-consuming and difficult to organize.)

I missed to go to York, which was an optional bus trip, but visited by chance Holland Park - originally owned by Lord Holland - in the late afternoon after a relaxing morning without time pressure. The park was about a 5-minute walk north-northwesternward from London Lodge Hotel in Kensington, at which our study abroad group stayed. Founded in the 1870s (I think), the buildings of Holland House, a couple of which are shown in the pictures above (you will see the same fountain from two different angles), took only a little space in the park. Rather, the park consists mainly of different gardens and lawns for sport or amusement. I had good hours of watching trees (lol) and birds like peacocks. The peacock on the left did not allow me to near him closer than 3 or 4 feet; yet, I made it! Here's the picture of me and him. A bunch of male and female peacocks were wandering around without confinement, avoiding humans. The males looked beautiful, but their ugly and sort of glottal cry surprised me.

I was tricked: The man on the right is not real. It's a statue, Walking Man (1998) by Sean Henry. I thought that the statue's location surrounded by the trees is unique.

Here I attach some pictures of a Japanese garden, Kyoto Garden, founded by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry and The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on 17 September 1991. I found this garden in the middle of the park. I hope you have noticed the picture of a reflection of the tree below in the Kyoto Garden is upside-down. :} The stone garden lantern and a small column stone with a square concave on the top for water are typical items of Japanese gardens (see the picture on the left). The picture may have more Japanese signifiers, but I don't know very well about Japanese gardening, even though I'm Japanese.

The statue below is Boy with Bear Cubs by John Macllen Swan (I don't know what year he carved it). I took four pictures of the statue because I'm crazy about perspectives. To my limited knowledge about statuary and kinesics, Swan's expression of the boy and bear cubs' motions is animated and impressive. You could also see a cub's hard palate and tongs separately.

This is merely my personal trip apart from the study abroad program, but the dusk sky was my favorite scene. The picture was taken from the passage alongside the Sports Field of Holland Park. I had to darken my camera's picture's brightness to vivify the sky's color more than the leaves in the frontdrop of the picture.

My interpretation of the scene may or may not be relevant to our class discussion about Addison's essay on our vision, imagination, and understanding. I was imagining a central point amidst the leaves and clouds. The sky and clouds are pictorial like a fanciful painting maybe because I dropped my camera's exposure so much, or/and because the shapes of the clouds were too fuzzy to be vivid. Clouds are not altogether under the same sunlight, since some of them are gray in the shadow, and some aren't.

Changing exposure at dusk could show you two points of views, as you see below the two comparison pictures of the same tennis court in the park. In a way, our eyes are able to see both terrestial and celestial views; however, my camera apparently can't but see the scene with certain brightness, offering different impressions of it.

At the end of my stroll, I took two pictures of a cherry tree. The fallen patals of the tree over the ground were restful and peaceful as well as melancholic. Some of them were still beautiful.

Matthew Shick

April 23rd is finally here! It seemed like it took forever to get here, but now that it is here I am very excited to see England. The first place we stayed at was Bath. There I had my first encounter with oh so famous fish and chips and English beer. I enjoyed the fish and chips, but I cant see my self eating them all the time because of how much grease is used to make them. As for the beer, it is served differently then back home. The beer is served at room temperature which at first I did not particularly like, but after awhile I enjoyed it very much. After leaving Bath we have moved on to Oxford, which is totally different than Bath in my opinion. Oxford is more of a college town which means the prices are much lower than e prices in Bath. Also I would say Oxford is more urbanized than Bath. After we leave Oxford we head to London for the rest of our trip. I have been anxiously waiting to see London because I think it will be the best part of the trip. Two reasons I cant wait to go to London is because there will be so much to do and see. One thing I hope I get to see while I am in London is a football game.