A Very London Weekend

Hi Everybody! Sorry we haven’t updated this in a while. Kimberly’s just swept through our computer’s hard drive and marshalled all of the digital photos, so we might finally get around to posting some pics from our previous few trips (we know we owe some). In the meantime, thought I’d let you know about last weekend—we did a bunch of stuff that seemed like ‘only in London’ type things.
Friday night I picked up Shawn from the bus near the school; she’d been gone all week for ‘School Journey’, a residential trip that most of the sixth-years go on together with the headmaster and their teacher. They went rock-climbing, canoeing, had a disco, fished for crabs, and had a whole lot of fun, it sounds like.
Saturday we went to the Islam Expo at the beautifully situated Alexandra Court Palace. I have to admit, we wouldn’t have gone if we’d had to get there by public transport; it’s almost an hour trip by car and would have been even longer by Tube-bus combo. And we got the tickets for free too, because our friend is interning at the Petrie Museum and was helping a calligrapher run a demonstration booth there as well. But it would have been worth it even if we’d had to pay and travel, because it was quite a show. The palace is huge, and it overlooks almost all of London from above Hampstead Heath. There’s a 30-foot stained glass window at one end of the exhibition hall, and a fair sized organ at the other end. In between were a few dozen booths showcasing everything from charities based in Islamic countries to traditional Islamic arts to tourist booths for Syria and some of its stable neighbors (well, Iran too). The arts booths were hands-on; the kids got to do pattern-making with egg tempera paints using some of the geometric reflection techniques that dominate Islamic art, and participated in a theatre workshop, and have their names written in Arabic by our friend’s calligraphy artist. We had a picnic lunch out on the sloping lawn overlooking the city. (The kids found a tree to climb, which is probably the part they’ll remember…) After watching a show by the theatre people, having hands decorated with henna (the art is called Mehndi in Arabic) and browsing through the mini-marketplace, we went to the ‘Fun Zone’ to let the kids play outside. The rides were nothing special (these kids have been to Legoland and Paris Disneyland already this summer, so fairground portable rides aren’t going to impress them too much) so we let them play at the free playground out back. Headed back to London, and stopped to pick up fish’n’chips on the way home. Kimberly and I sat with our food in front of the World Cup consolation final, and watched Germany run over Portugal, 3-1.
Sunday (our first week in ages without religious school!) we had groceries being delivered around noon. Nothing glamorous, but it is part of our London experience…Kim sits at the computer and browses the Asda (read Wal-Mart) site and later on somebody drives up to our house with crates of food. Sure beats carrying it home, when you don’t own a car. After that, we had to all get cleaned up, because we had (cheap) tickets for the opera! The Marriage of Figaro, playing at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. This was a special sponsored performance that sold its tickets through schools and other institutions, so we got in for ₤5 each. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about opera; I admitted to Kim later, my mental image was Wagner—large women singing in a language I don’t understand while people die onstage. So this was delightful—funny, excellent orchestral music of course, sung in Italian (which I enjoy listening to even though my comprehension is minute) and subtitled in English. Samantha had trouble following the story, but Shawn, Kimberly and I all had a great time. The ice creams at Intermission were yummy (mmm, Stem Ginger) but it was scheduled to run a little late—given that the final of the World Cup was starting at 7. We’ve been following it very closely, which is part entertainment and part cultural assimilation, since it’s one of the only universal topics in London besides the weather. The final was a good game (though the extra time was a bit repetitious) and Italy beat France on penalties (5 penalty shots awarded to each team after 120 minutes of football, for those of you not up on the format).
I know you can watch the World Cup from anywhere, and they have opera in a whole bunch of cities these days…but it just seemed like a unique combination of diversions that filled our weekend, and I wanted to share it.