Hello NIU! Today has been a very chill day – with activities, with the weather and with the dessert. I went to class in the morning like the good student I am and afterward sadly had to confine myself to my dorm room for a couple hours to finish a paper. Luckily it was the perfect day for this, since the weather was cloudy and grey. 

I was able to escape long enough to visit an ice cream shop across the street from the dorm. The interesting thing about this chain is that each shop has a different name, but they collectively go by G&D. Each shop has two names; the first is always George and the second is anything that starts with a D and it varies by location. The shop I went to is called George & Delila’s. The most difficult decision was which ice cream to get, but I couldn’t go wrong with the house special, Oxford Blue! It was a delicious blueberry, exactly the treat I needed after all my work today! 

It was a sweet end to a long day. Stay tuned to hear about my adventures in London tomorrow!

Hey everyone! Today was an awesome day; I went to London for the first time! We arrived around noon and picnicked across the street from the majestic St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is supposed to have the best view of London, but since we were going to a matinee, I was unable to go to the top. (Oh well, I guess that means I have to go back to London!) The cathedral was surrounded by restaurants and stores on all sides, so much so that it appeared to be in the middle of a mall. It was a wonderful place to hang out, especially for business people on their lunch breaks. 

After exploring a bit, we went to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to watch a performance of “Henry IV, Part I.” As soon as I stepped into the building, I was in awe. It is incredible for me to think that I was standing somewhere where Shakespeare stood and where his plays were performed hundreds of years ago. The play itself was wonderful! The actors were tremendous and really brought the play to life. The best part of their performance was audience interaction, something we don’t really have at home. When you see a play in downtown Chicago at the Cadillac Palace, the most expensive seats are the front rows. If you manage to get those seats, the actors are close to you, but they stay far back enough on stage that you can see them but can’t touch them. It was entirely different here. The cheapest “seats” are actually standing on the floor, literally touching the stage. You are inches away from actors and in some cases they even touch you (or take your drink if you happened to be close enough to Falstaff at any point) during the performance. I have never seen any theater like it and the performance was genuinely one of a kind.

As Shakespeare once said, all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. I am certainly grateful that I was able to play on the London side of the stage today!