Everyone, meet Hunter.

There will soon be a post about our lovely bank holiday weekend. BUT FIRST, I wanted to make a special post about my new hero.

We spent the day exploring the Dover Castle, which was pretty, dope. But I'll get to that in the next post.

While we were there, we saw this little boy there with his mum. He had on a bomber jacket, aviation goggles, carried around an automatic rifle toy, and a toy airplane that I leanred through observation,  he affectionately called, Sheila. He was truly inspiring.

His name is Hunter.

FIRST, he inspired me to laugh. His mother was in front of us in line to get ice cream, he busted through the line by way of pushing through everyone in the line to reach her as though it was a life or death emergency to choose his ice cream flavor, his outfit was AWESOME, and he had no shame.

SECOND, he inspired me to get a double scoop ice cream cone because his looked so delicious.

THIRD, we were waiting in line to go through the wartime tunnels, and it was about a 50 minute wait. Hunter, party of two, were in front of us again.  Instead of  being a typical 7-9 year old and whining about the wait, texting on his phone, or doing drugs, Hunter walked away to play, by himself.

I watched him shoot at strangers, yell things about security coming, roll around on the ground to take cover from enemy fire, take a break a few times to scratch his butt cheek, and tell his mum to "piss off" once (she shut that down pretty fast though), for about 45  minutes.

When we FINALLY got inside, I was lucky enough to be in his tour group. The tour was about England during WWII, and Hunter had on a jacket that had an American flag, and I heard his mum say something about the wrong country, and then all I heard was Hunter yell "AT LEAST I'M NOT GERMAN!"

They shuffled us into a room where we got to hear the actual broadcast of the Prime Minister announcing to the English people that they were at war with Germany. While the broadcast was playing Hunter was getting really into it, they announced that public places like cinemas would be closed until further notice, Hunter was disgruntled. They announced that school would be closed until further notice, and Hunter cheered loudly. I wasn't convinced that he didn't time travel from 1939.

When we got to the projection videos about the war he even shot at the German planes that soared by on the screen. He was serious.

At some point during the tour, we got separated from Hunter. It wasn't until I heard a little fat girl complaining about how boring the exhibit was that I realized I had taken him for granted. He inspired me to find a sense of wonderment in the little things, and have an imagination again. I want my kids to be like Hunter, (except for the telling me to piss off part) I want them to be interested in history, and be able to entertain themselves for an hour without technology. I want them to be fearless and play pretend war and scratch their butts like no one is watching. I want them to go outside and get dirty, and wear a costume out in public if they feel like it. Then it dawned on me, that not only did I want this for my future children, I want it for myself now. I am constantly working on having a childlike faith, and Hunter was a really great example of that for me.

I am really glad I got to be around this small person with big personality today. Not only was he inspiring, but he was also really entertaining. Unfortunately, I will probably never see him again, but I hope he never loses what I saw today.

monkey nuts. and other shenanigans..

Typically the week days are filled with monotony and Taylor working and me thinking seriously about showering and/or blogging. But in the evenings we usually find ourselves meandering into various shenanigans, like going to the cinema, or the grocery store. Before I get into this, let me give you a little background.

ME: Thinks plays are lame. Thinks symphonies are boring. HATES HATES HATES musicals. I guess you could say, I am a typical 23 year old teenager.

TAYLOR: Thinks plays are cool, especially Shakespeare. Thinks symphonies are entertaining. Doesn't really mind musicals. Reads textbooks for leisure. Nerd.

So last week, Taylor begged me to go with him to some Shakespeare play. And I was like, FINE. The play was Antony and Cleopatra. So we go and it's outside on a rooftop amphitheater, which I admit is kinda cool. It was rainy and I was hungry. And I was surprising not as miserable as I thought I would be considering all circumstances. So I was sitting there, completely content in my poncho when the music started and all of these people came out yelling wearing masks and dancing, and I was like, am I at a The Sound of Animals Fighting concert? Then this guy (Antony) stands up and I notice he's wearing high heels. So the entire time first 20 minutes of the play, I am like, "WHAT'S WITH THE HIGH HEELS?" That's all I could focus on. It just didn't seem relevant to the play. It still doesn't. And the guy was dancing in them. I can't even dance in heels. I was confused and impressed. Anyway, it started raining really hard and the play was stopped mid scene to relocate inside. LONG story short, the play ended up being pretty good. But the end seemed to drag on forever. Nobody tell Shakespeare I critiqued his play. Here's a promo video I found:





Antony and Cleopatra Trailer from Creation Theatre on Vimeo.




In other news, so far we have created a ritual of traveling around the country on the weekends.

WEEKEND 1: Oxford
WEEKEND 2: London
WEEKEND 3: BATH
WEEKEND 4: Cardiff, Wales

Going to Wales was completely spontaneous and we left at about 5:45 PM on Saturday.

"Let's go get dinner in another country!"

What I like most, surprisingly, are the car rides. I think it's really great to spend time with my husband in the car. We always find something to talk and laugh about. We agree on lots of music, so there's never much of a fuss about that. Taylor tells me to look at how cool the sky is about 100 times. I yell something unintelligible in my southern accent and he laughs. It's fun. But I've always felt that way about riding in the car with him.

ANYWAY, so we drive over the bridge into Wales, and I start to notice a strange language and I am like, "What? They speak another language here?" Which in itself just makes me cringe at how stupid it sounds. But Taylor informed me that they speak Welsh, in Wales. Good to know.

So we're driving around for what seems like forever, following signs to Cardiff Bay, not really knowing what Cardiff Bay will hold but when we get there we see lights and hear music, and we even see a carousel. So Taylor immediately names this place PARTY CENTRAL, obviously.

We went and had burgers for dinner, my first time eating beef since we've been here. Then had ice cream. And then some how Taylor talked me into riding the merry-go-round. So we did that. Stopped at the grocery store. And then we went home, like no big deal. We just went to Wales for a couple of hours. Since our stay was so short, we didn't get very many pictures. Except with our phones. So here's some pictures I tried to make look decent.

                                                     
homeless looking girl.

                                              
This is too obscene to talk about.

                                             
I was pretty amused about this ketchup bottle.

 

 

                                              
Typical Taylor face at dinner.

                                          
Lay off me I'm eating ice cream.

                                                       
MONKEY NUTZ!!

                                                 

Aquae Sulis.

This weekend, we went to Bath. Apparently a lot of people go there for the Jane Austen realm of things. But, I've never really been all that into Jane Austen stuff, so when I heard that there was some Roman stuff going on up there, we were like, yes. Let's do that. Remember how we love old stuff? Well we were about to see the oldest stuff we've ever seen, we're talking like 2000 years old stuff. That is pretty dope, I think. Anyway, nothing really happened on our day trip, other than what you will see in the pictures. OH, except that this one lady showed up to the museum with her bathing suit thinking she could swim in the bath. and I was like WHAT it is lined with 2000 year old lead [can anybody say, death wish?] and it hasn't been covered so it's all algaed out and nasty, YOU CRAZY.
Oh and on the way there we got in a fight about the map and the directions. Which seems pretty cliche, right? Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

For those of you who don't much about the city of Bath, click here.

If you want to know more about the actual BATH in Bath, click here.

Cause I'm not very good at writing things that are supposed to be educational.

a city view. it's pretty gorgeous.

the inside of the bath museum

this is an observation deck they built around 1890 when they opened the Bath House to the public

me learnin some stuff.

this is the hot spring that fed the water into all the other baths in the bath house

learnin stuff about this model of the early bath house

Some of the ruins of the Temple

The of head of the Sulis Minerva statue that was once inside the temple

More of the hot spring

kickin it by the great bath.

Some gardens or whatever.

we went to London.

This past weekend we went to London. 

London is a pretty cool city. I don't want to marry it or anything like that. But I would like hang out with it as friends now and then.The city of London was romanticized via countless Disney movies and Austin Powers movies that I watched countless times so I had pretty high expectations that were not met per se, but it was still fun, and there is a lot of history there. We both enjoy history, and we like to find the oldest buildings possible. If we see a building that was built in like, 1901, we're like "LAME!"  But yeah so it was cool and stuff, but I am glad we live in the quiet beautiful countryside.


Anyway, before I let the pictures do all the work of telling you about our trip. I just wanted to talk about body odor. On Saturday, literally every time were were around a crowd of people, there was a B.O. smell. There wasn't any particular person that was always around us. But it was always THERE. I got so frustrated with it that at one point during our visit to Madame Tussauds wax museum I very obviously sniffed my own armpit (no pretending to stretch while turning your head into your armpit) just to make sure that it wasn't me and loudly declared "IT IS NOT ME!" and then proceeded to sniff Taylor's armpits because he was just as much a suspect as I. But we were both in the clear as we had deodorized ourselves before leaving the hotel in the morning. It then became clear to me that it was just a LOT of people had HORRIBLE B.O., and everyone was always lifting their arms for whatever reason, and releasing their personal stench. I started to wonder so many things, WHY? Is there no deodorant available? Was there a surge of smelly french or german tourists? Was I being punished for something? What there some kind of strike going on between the deodorant companies and the people of London? I went into a local "Boots" pharmacy and beauty store to see, and there was deodorant available at a reasonable price. Why there were so many smelly people? I may never know. But it got worse. The worst, most traumatic event during our trip was when we were on the tube (subway train for those of you who are not as culturally advanced) and it was really crowded so I was holding onto Taylor when a man stepped next to us and grabbed the bar and his OPEN SMELLY ARMPIT WAS RIGHT IN MY FACE!!  and I had to bury my face in Taylor's chest and try to suffocate myself to get away from the perpetual B.O.. After we got off I told him about it and he of course, was not in the line of stench since he is tall and he thought I was just trying to be cute. Yeah right.


Anyway, we took a 2 hour open top bus tour around the city. But our camera died so they are from our phones, but they still turned out okay. So here are some pictures from that.

                                                                 Didcot Railway Station - departure

 

Paddington Station - arrival

                                                     HEY KIDS! Look there's Big Ben!

BIG BEN, PARLIAMENT.

Looks real.

fat me and phat John Wayne.

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm