Dover, Tate Modern, Jack the Ripper, Dinner at Philippa's, and Ceremony of the Keys

On Sunday I went to Dover, England with Curtis. Dover was about an hour and 45 minute train ride north east of London. It is located on the coast. The first thing we did when we got there was walk to the Castle. The castle was very pretty. There were a lot of kids there! They had the inside of the castle decorated with some typical mid-evil furniture and clothing. This castle was used up until after the World Wars though. Being on the coast they had to use it to protect any enemies from invading Britain. We spent most of our time just walking around and going to the top of the tower for the view. We also brought our lunch and ate it there. The sun wasn't out at first, which made it really cold, but as soon as it came out it felt great! From there we wanted to walk to the White Cliffs of Dover. It took us awhile to figure out how to walk there. We thought it would be really easy because we saw the Cliffs from the castle, but there was no pedestrian sidewalks. We ended up walking around for awhile and then going back to the castle to ask one of the workers how to get there. She told us to just walk on the side of the road. It took awhile to get there because there wasn't much room on the side of the road to walk and it was all uphill. Once we got there though it was totally worth it! It was absolutely beautiful! We mostly just walked around and enjoyed the view.








On Monday I had to meet Philippa at Tate Modern. This was the first art museum that I had been to that had modern art. I didn't really like much of it. I don't really understand modern art. One piece that we looked at was just a mirror. That was it. A plain square mirror. It doesn't seem very impressive to me. After that I was able to go home and grab a quick dinner before I had to meet our program for a Jack the Ripper walk. Jack the Ripper was a man in the 1800's who killed 5 women and was never caught. We walked to all the places that the man had killed the women and the tour guide told us all the details. It was really creepy because it was dark out and every time someone heard a random noise someone in the group jumped.

On Tuesday I had British Pop music with Rob. We talked a lot about the Sex Pistols. After that I had British Literature and I had to give a presentation on Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was an English literary author. I got a perfect score on my presentation! After that I had to go straight to Kennington where Philippa lives for dinner. Philippa was really generous to have all 30 of us over for dinner! She prepared lasagna for all of us! It was really good and a lot of us wanted the recipe, but when we asked her she said she didn't have a recipe for it and that she just made it up. She is brilliant! She also had a lot of snacks that she made and ice cream for us. From there Philippa took some of us to the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London.