The Globe Theatre, Tate Modern, Jeremy Bentham, and Les Mis

Tuesday was a pretty crazy day.  We started out with another "group excursion", this time to The Globe Theatre.  We didn't see a play (that's for another week), but we did have a tour and stuff.  The theatre is built basically as close as possible to the original Globe Theatre where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed, and it actually was only rebuilt in 1997 I think.  Now they perform plays mostly by Shakespeare, and a lot like they were performed back then with Elizabethan costumes and no electricity, etc.  Here are a few pictures (I stole one off the web...) and I'm excited to actually see a play here in a few weeks.

Some friends and I headed to lunch in the area right after and then spent some time in the Tate Modern Art museum. It is HUGE!!! So, from my previous experience, I'm not that big of a fan of modern art, but I figured I needed to give it another try, especially with such a cool-looking museum. Verdict: I still don't really appreciate modern art, but it was definitely fun anyway. There was some just really really weird stuff. Hmph.

After the museum, Jackie, Stephen, and I decided to tackle another one of our assigned "walks". This one, called the "Scholar" walk, took us through some cool parts of London yet again. We stopped by the University College of London and took a glimpse at Jeremy Bentham's "body". Seriously, this man was crazy or something. Jeremy Bentham is known for Utilitarianism, and he decided that he wanted his body to be preserved and stored out in the open. His head kind of rotted away and so they put a fake head on and put the original head down by his feet, and there are some stories that his head was removed because some kids were trying to steal it to play soccer with or something?? I'm not sure exactly, but it was pretty weird. You couldn't actually see any of the body because it was clothed, but yah. Gross. But kind of fascinating at the same time.

We also saw the area where Charles Dickens used to live (although I don't know which building exactly):

And the British Library, which contains the Magna Carta and some original writings and manuscripts of famous authors like Charles Dickens (we didn't have time to go in (we will another time hopefully), but we did have time to sit down on this humungous cardboard furniture and look at a statue (of I don't know who but I think someone told me Newton, but he's holding a compass (geometry- not navigational compass):



We raced home afterwards to try to do some homework before dinner, and then raced to the Opera House to try to make it into the Opera that night, but unfortunately it didn't happen. So instead, I went to Les Mis (and for only 15 pounds!). I'm really glad I went even though I've seen it before because for some reason, seeing it at the beginning of high school I mostly only focused on Eponine and her unrequited love. This time, Jean Valjean was the hero like he's supposed to be, the cast was incredible, and now I really want to read the book.