I may have found the very first thing about England that I absolutely don't like. It all started September 7th. My mom was going into the kitchen to get some chocolate bannanna bread when it happened. A little, or maybe not so little, visitor came racing right up to my mom's feet! She thought it was a mouse because it was running so quickly. She screamed and jumped towards the door. However, the visitor wasn't the least bit afraid of her because it just sat there staring at us. It was then we realized that our visitor was not a mouse after all but rather the creepy, crawly, monsterous GIGANTEA!!!!!!!!!
This spider's scientific name actually is Gigantea if that tells you anything about its size. We have now seen two of them in our home! The second one I saw when I was going up the stairs to bed one night! I nearly fell down stairs upon seeing it!
This spider is a part of the Tegenaria family. It's bite is not dangerous to humans but it does penetrate the human skin. It's also the fastest spider in England! The reason we're seeing so many of them right now is because the male Gigantea spiders only come out in August and September because they are looking for a mate. The rest of the time they are hiding in basements, attics, behind cupboards, in floor boards or really any place rarely disturbed by large animals or humans.
After the second sighting of Gigantea, my dad spent an evening sealing all outside entry points into our home. Hopefully, we've seen our last sighting of this fast, monsterous looking spider so we can get back to enjoying all the other aspects of England! :-)
A little while ago I got the
chance of a lifetime to go and see William Shakespeare’s home town, Stratford Upon
Avon, take a few tours of the town, and see a few of William Shakespeare’s
plays! William Shakespeare is a very
famous play writer who lived from 1564 to 1616 in Stratford Upon Avon. Nobody knows the exact date of William Shakespeare’s
birth but they do know when he was baptized.
William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26 which is why they think he
was born April 23 because babies usually are baptized three days after they
were born.
William’s mother was Mary
Arden.William was one of eight
children.Only five of the eight
children survived until adulthood.By
the age of four or five William was enrolled at a grammar school called The
Kings New School in Stratford where he learned many of the things that helped
him become a great author.His school lasted 9 hours each day.William was taken out of The Kings New School at the age of 16 because
of his dad’s financial and social problems.Nobody really knows what happened or what William Shakespeare did between
the time when William was pulled out of school and when he became a play
writer.There are many theories but none
of them have ever been proven.What they do know is that on November 28, 1582 William Shakespeare married Anne
Hathaway.William was 18 and Anne was 26
and pregnant. They also know that one year
after they got married, they had a baby girl named Susanna and two years after
that they had twins named Judith and Hamnet.Hamnet died at age 11.
Seven years after William
Shakespeare had Judith and Hamnet, William was recognized as an actor, poet,
and play writer.His recognition
occurred when another play writer referred to him as “an upstart crow” in A
Goatsworth of Wit.A few years later
Shakespeare joined up with one of the most successful acting troupes in London,
“The Lord’s Chamberlain’s Men”.In 1599
the troupe lost the lease of the theater they performed in.Luckily, they were wealthy enough to build
their own theater across the Thames, south of London, which they called “The
Globe”.The Globe opened in July of
1599.When King James I came to the throne
in 1603, the troupe was designated by the new king as the King’s Company.
Shakespeare entertained the
people of England for another ten years until June 19, 1613, when a canon fired
from the roof of the theatre for a performance of Henry VIII set fire to the
thatch roof and burned the theater to the ground.The next spring the theatre was rebuilt in a
more modern and fairer way than before.Even though Shakespeare had invested in the rebuilding of the theatre,
he retired to the Great House of New Place in Stratford that he had purchased
in 1597, where he continued to write plays until he died in 1616 on his 52nd
birthday.
In his lifetime, William Shakespeare’s
wrote 37 plays. Even if you've never read any of Shakespeare's plays, you've definitely used words or phrases that he created. Some of these words include: watchdog, eyeball, puking, skim milk, aligator, bump, zany, rant, gloomy, gossip, caked, buzzer, critic, outbreak, hurried, and so on. Some familiar phrases are: all's well that ends well, break the ice, dead as a doornail, a dish fit for the gods, elbow room, faint hearted, for goodness' sake, knock knock! Who's their?, and so on. Shakespeare invented these words and phrases for his play when he could not find descriptive words good enough to get the the point across to the audience. In his lifetime, Shakespeare invented over 1700 words and phrases that we commonly use today.
So far I have seen three of Shakespeare's plays!The plays I saw were all very
well done and fun to watch!I can’t decide
which one is my favorite because they all had something different that I
liked!In A Comedy of Errors, the cast had set it in modern time and it was
very funny!Much Ado About Nothing was also set in modern time but they were
interactive with the crowd, which made it very fun!The final play I saw I actually got to see in
The Globe Theater while standing up because that’s what people who were
watching the play did when William Shakespeare was alive.This play was called As you Like it.I liked this
play because It was very funny and the actors were great because there were a
couple of times when really loud air plans would go by and the actors would
stop everything and look up at the sky at the exact same time because in
Shakespeare’s time they didn’t have air planes.They also did this with pigeons because they would keep landing on the
stage so the actors would scare the pigeons off by jumping next to them or
sometimes even calling them names.
This is a picture of me in The Globe Theater. As you can see there are lot's of people standing on the ground getting ready to watch the play.
As this plaque says, this is the birthplace of William Shakespeare.
This is William Shakespeare's grave. William Shakespeare wanted to be buried under the church because in William Shakespeare's time, people would sometimes dig up graves to get any valuables that might have been buried with the person.
Bath is a city just west of London. It is a very popular city for tourists because of the well known Roman Baths. The reason the Roman Baths are so popular is because they are heated by an underground spring that is 115 degrees Fahrenheit which, as you have probably guessed, makes the water very warm. This was also important because heated water didn't come in until the late 18th century.
Another reason for the bath's popularity is that the water was said to have healing powers. When we visited the Roman Baths they had a fountain set up where you could drink the water and"get healed". The water was warm, tasted like metal, and I don't feel any different so I wouldn't drink it again.
Oddly enough the Romans weren't the first people to find the baths. The first shrine was built by the Celts and was dedicated to the goddess Sulis whom the Romans associated with their goddess Minerva. In 836 BC the British King Bladud discovered the springs and built the first baths. After that the Romans invaded and they believed that some of their gods, such as Minerva, had given them the hot baths and it's healing powers. The photos below of the baths represent the roman time period since they were the last ones to use the baths.
After the Romans left to go to war, as I talked about in my Hadrian's Wall post, the baths were forgotten about and covered up by silt until they were rediscovered in the late 18th century.
This is a picture of the Roman Baths.
This is a picture of my sisters and I touching the water which I guess we weren't supposed to do because the girl in the black pants and blue shirt on the far right in the picture is coming over to tell us that they don't "recommend" we touch the water. Keep in mind she never really told us not to. ;)
Hadrian's Wall was built on the orders of emperor Hadrian. Emperor Hadrian(emperor of the Roman empire) was born 76 AD and died 138 AD. Hadrian's Wall was built, beginning in AD 122, to keep Roman Britain safe from hostile attacks from the Picts. The Picts where the predominant people in northern Scotland. Hadrian's Wall was the northernmost boundary of the Roman empire until early in the fifth century when the Atnonine Wall was built.
Hadrian's Wall stretched from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. The wall was 73 miles long, 8 to 10 feet wide, and 15 feet high. In addition to the wall, the Romans built a system of small forts called milecastles which held up to 60 men at each fort. Sixteen larger forts, holding from 500 to 1000 troops, also were built inside the wall, with large gates on the north face.
Housesteads is the most complete Roman fort in Britain and one of the best preserved Roman forts anywhere. The fort was occupied by Roman soldiers for about 300 years and changed quite a bit over the centuries. Housesteads Roman fort was like a little town for the soldiers.
The end of Roman Britain came in the early fifth century AD. The Roman empire was under attack in many places, including Hadrian's Wall. When Barbarian tribes invaded German land in 406 AD a self-declared emperor in Britain, Constantine III, withdrew the field army from Britain to fight in Germany but some troops remained. The field army never returned and Rome abandoned Britain. This was effectively the end of over 300 years of Roman rule.
This is a picture of my dad and me standing on Hadrian's Wall near Housesteads Roman fort.
This is a picture of Housesteads fort at Hadrian's Wall or rather the footprint of the fort because as you can see there isn't much left of it now.
My second 2012 Olympic experience was the Men's Marathon. I was too short to see the runners very well but fortunately I could see their heads. I saw them go by twice. The first time I saw them go by there were three runners that were right next to each other way ahead of the rest. The first one was from Uganda and the other two were from Kenya. The second time I saw them come around I was very surprised because of how spread out they were! The first guy I saw go by was going so fast he was running right next to the motorcycle! He was from Uganda and ended up winning. The other two runners I saw go by the the first time from Kenya got second and third. It was very cool!
This is a picture of my sisters and me at the Marathon. Now you can see why I couldn't see very well.
This is one of the Kenyan runners about two miles from the finish.
I just got back from the USA vs Canada soccer match!!!!!!! It was awesome!!!!!!! We had great seats where we could see the field and players perfectly!!!!! My favorite player was Rapinoe because she was very good at getting the ball away from the other team, corner kicks and throw-ins! I also like her personality! You don't want to make her mad because if you do it usually ends up in her scoring a goal. She scored two of the USA goals in the game I saw! I also love her hair!!!!! The USA won 4 to 3 in the last 30 seconds of overtime!!!!! It was so exciting!!!!! If you ever get the chance to go see the women's USA Olympic soccer team play, take it, you won't regret it.
This is a picture of my sisters and I at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester, England a couple hours before the game started.
This is a picture of the teams singing the national anthems.
This is a picture of Hope Solo singing the national anthem on the big screen.
This is a picture of Rapinoe about to make a corner kick.
This is a picture of the US team trying to block the goal from a corner kick.
This is a picture of some very excited fans on the big screen after the USA won.
Edinburgh is the historic and cultural capital of Scotland. It was once a powerhouse kind of how London is now. It is now a modern city in Scotland.
The Edinburgh castle is very large and takes hours to get through. It is visited annually by about 1 million people. Edinburgh Castle was the home (and regular refuge) of Scottish Kings. The Royal apartments include a tiny room in which Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to the boy who was to become King James IV of Scotland and James 1 of England upon the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603.
This is a guy who gave us a presentation on kilts. He told us how to put them on and wear them. He also told us all about haggis. He said that haggis were creatures who have four legs but two are longer than the others. That way when they were on a hill they would be even. He told us how to catch haggis too. He said to make a loud noise so that the haggis would turn around making them uneven with the hill and fall over right into a net. Now if you believe that you'll believe anything. Haggis is really sheep heart, liver, and lungs. That sounds really gross to me.
After the castle we took a bus tour and our tour guide was very funny. He told us a lot of crazy things like in the 1600s at 10pm every night people who lived in the higher homes would open their windows and shout,"gardyloo" which meant they were going to dump the slop bucket out. If you hear "gardyloo" don't look up just run. He also told us where the saying "hangers on" came from. When they used to do hangings it was a very slow death so some times the people who were getting hanged would pay kids to hang on to their legs while they were being hanged so that they would die faster.
This is Holyrood Palace. As a part of the agreement for Scotland joining The United Kingdom the king or queen has to stay here 6 consecutive days a year or the agreement is broken.
After I went to Holyrood Palace I climbed Arther's seat. Arther's seat is a very tall mountain and very fun to climb. Unfortunately we took the wrong way up which made it quite a bit harder to climb but luckily we made it.
