Monday I went to the Courtauld Museum for Art History. This is where many of the Impressionist paintings are displayed. I saw many of Monet's painting there along with Renoir, Manet, and Degas. Impressionism started after the invention of photography. Painters were no longer needed to slave over portraits of people and try to make them look as realistic as possible. Painters now had more freedom to paint. Here are some of the painting I saw:
On Tuesday I had British Pop Music with Rob. We mostly talked about Led Zeppelin and Progressive Rock (but Rob hates ProgRock). From there I met Nora for Brit Lit at the Imperial War Museum. She showed us around the World War I area and took us to the trenches. I cannot believe that war was like that only a hundred years ago. Over 3 million British men died. It was very sad to walk through the museum knowing that most men were just thrown out onto the battle field and had absolutely no chance of living. The trenches were cool to learn about. The exhibit actually smelt like the trenches though- rioting bodies and yearn. It was gross! I had to plug my nose when I went through. Unfortunately, that is what those men lived in for months at a time. Nora told me an interesting fact though. She said that in no man's land men from Germany and Britain would wave a white flag and then go out and play football with each other sometimes. Nora only kept us for about an hour, which was really nice because we had to make our way to Uptown Park to see West Ham take on South Hampton. This game was an intense one! Both teams are at the top of their league and are big rivals. The crowd was a lot louder at this stadium than at the Everton game, which surprised me. It was a very fun game. A played on West Ham's team ended up getting a red card about 15 minutes into the game so they were down one player. They ended up holding on and the game ended in a draw 1-1. Here is a video that I took at the game when the West Ham fans were singing their song at the game!
Today we took our day trip to Rochester. Rochester is where Charles Dickens lived for most of his life. England is celebrating Charles Dickens 200th Birthday this year so it was an appropriate time to visit! Nearly every pub and stores name has something to do with Dickens or his writings. Most of the pubs he actually went to when he was alive too! When we first got to Rochester from the train we visited a museum that was called the 7 Poor Travelers. This helped inspire one Dickens novels. We also got a visit from a "Crier" who is the person who shouts things out in the town. Today they only do it for tradition, but the man said that when the Queen passes away he will have to go around the town crying "The Queen is dead, long live the King". It was very interesting. From there we went to Rochester Castle, which was built by the Normans. It was so cool! The view from top was amazing! It is kinda hard for me to describe, but here are a bunch of pictures!
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