Flute, fish, ancient knick-knacks and, naturally, a giant pink brassiere

So-Yun and Ko-Yu playing duets in our kitchen (where the acoustics are not too bad) 

 We've had another full week in Elmsted/Hastingleigh/London.  After our usual Monday class, we took the train up to London on Tuesday to attend William Bennett's masterclass at the Royal Academy.  I was surprised by how many of the students at the Academy were actually Americans!

 The class lasted all day long, and at lunch time we went to a great cafe with Soonmi, a student at RAM and a former student of Trevor's, and her boyfriend Felix (also a former student of Trevor's).  We shared giant sandwiches and pastries, and swapped stories about the Flute Studio.  I've also concluded London creates a very pleasant case of sensory-overload to contrast with our typically quiet, focused existence in the country.  

 On Wednesday we took a short jaunt to Hythe on the coast of the Channel.  Our purpose was a visit to Griggs of Hythe, a fish-shop that is basically ON the sea itself - at least no more than a few yards away!

Adrian gets a fishy lesson

Sure looks better than the stuff at Safeway!

Jhen-Wei and Jenny take in the view just outside the front door

Company vehicles parked out back

 After the field-trip Wednesday we were hungry, and as it was my night to cook, I whipped up some enchiladas for the three of us.  Owing to So-Yun's rather touching devotion to chicken, and because she asked very nicely, this lifer-veggie made a batch of chicken enchiladas along with the vegetarian variety.

A carnivore's rapture.  

 I think I managed not to screw them up - although it is the first time I've cooked chicken since Katie, Charity, Laurie and I made a "Farewell Dinner" in the dorm kitchen for ourselves and our families.  (As I was the only one who'd ever done much cooking before, I was nominated and immediately named "chief of the chicken breasts.")

 On Friday, Adrian, Jenny and I went back to London for the afternoon/evening - they to shop for flutes/headjoints at Just Flutes, a great shop in Croyden (whose name should be enough to tell you what they're up to) and I to play with Bonnie Jean!

 We started by heading to the British Museum, and on our way through Russell Square, I recognized the hotel that the Evergreen Philharmonic and entourage stayed at in 2003 on our England tour - de ja vu!

Still as ugly as it was in 2003!

 The British Museum is MASSIVE and AMAZING - total nerd's paradise.  Well, except for all the hyper school-kids out for half-term running around, and their frazzled parents trying to catch up to them, having long since given up maintaining the educational nature of the family excursion.

The Foyer

Greek queuing (line for the filafil truck, presumably)

Ancient depiction of the fate of students who don't practice enough

Aphrodite

And again from a different angle. . .
Public Service Announcement:
Fellow lady sufferers of deficient junk in the trunk:  Flat is beautiful - Aphrodite certainly made it work.

Mummy.  For real, complete with X-ray.  (I had to fight a three-year old kid for this prime spot in front of the case, too)

Slightly less well-preserved individual.  But bearing no grudge, he was kind enough to wave and smile for his close-up.

Ancient Egyptian bling

Georgian bling

This ship is actually a clock - on the hour, the little men in the crow's nest ring bells, the sailors parade around the deck, and the guns actually fire.  One can only presume this was a great, subtle way to get rid of unwelcome dinner guests.  

[Please create your own caption here]

 After the museum, we grabbed some tasty pub grub, then footed across the Thames to the National Theater, where Bonnie's dressing for the brand new play The Veil.  On our way across the bridge, we noticed something slightly out of the ordinary:

Yes, yes your eyes do not deceive you, that is in fact a giant, hot pink bra on the side of a building.  I don't know what it's advertising, but I'm pretty sure  Google.co.uk was overwhelmed last night with searches for "Massive Pink Tits, London."

Since Bonnie is very busy and important around the National, she managed to sneak me into the director's box for the show.  First I got to meet her lovely co-workers in wardrobe, who tolerated my intrusion on their pre-show "Strictly Come Dancing" viewing time (UK predecessor to "Dancing with the Stars").

Play was great, suspenseful/ghostly story about screwed-up Anglo-Irish early-Victorian family, suicide, starvation, and the terrified daughter who hears voices and screaming (sounds lovely, I know, but really, enjoyable theater!)  

It's way too much fun to sit in the director's box (back of the theater by the sound booth, with a great view of everything).  I felt very powerful, like at any moment I could start waving my arms, take one of the microphones on the desk and yell "Cut, cut, cut, what do you people think you're doing up there?!"  However, also saw some disturbing instances of PDA in the audience at intermission, as well as some discreet butt scratching and nose-picking, so the box does have its detractions.

Portion of London skyline across Thames

 Play ended with just enough time to meet Jenny and Adrian for the last train back to Ashford.  They'd both had a very successful afternoon at Just Flutes, and had many pretty things to show me on the train home.

More later, must get back to practice!
Love,
K

A proper English autumn (with lots of food pictures)

Because it's been a ridiculously gorgeous autumn around here, and because the Boxalls took pity on our glazed, post-practice expressions, last Saturday afternoon we loaded up the Boxall vehicles and went to the Perry Court Farm Apple Fayre (that's "Fair" to you folks playing at home).  What was there to see?

APPLES!

APPLE PIES!

LARGE SLICES OF YUMMY CAKE!

FRESH VEG!

AND WHATEVER THOSE THINGS ARE!  (Pears?  I've forgotten now)

And just as if to take our minds as far away from fluting as possible, we were also treated to several demonstrations of plowing techniques throughout the ages.  There were a few primitive tractors, and a bunch of noisy, smelly machines that didn't appear to be accomplishing much besides belching black smoke in the air (and giving the guys standing around drinking beer something to do).  My favorite method, however, starred these guys:

who pulled the plow behind them, stepping in sync, while the poor guy behind had to muscle the plow straight down the track and manage the reins at the same time.  It looked exhausting, but the horses were very pretty. Am glad modern life allows me to simply jog as a form of exercise.

After admiring the apples and apple pies and large slices of cake and veg and pears(?) and horses, we stopped at the picturesque village of Chilham (above). Chilham features its own castle (which we couldn't enter because it's privately owned - by a guy who lands his helicopter on the roof, apparently) and a very impressive church (below).

After Chilham, we stopped at a farm down the road that has pens of donkeys, ducks, geese, and rheas (funny looking bird that's like an emu).  They also make their own apple cider, of which we had a taste a bought a few cartons to take home with us (yum).

Thank you Boxalls for a great afternoon's distraction!

On Wednesday, the six of us decided to have a potluck dinner at our Dairy.  Since the only things to do around here on non-class days are practice and eat, we like to make eating as entertaining as possible!

Adrian and So Yun (and half of Jenny? - sorry girl!) dish up dinner in our kitchen

I'm pleased to report that each of us is an enthusiastic (and not untalented) cook, so we had a table full of very tasty items.

My plate: Jenny's salad, my butternut squash soup, roasted veg by So Yun, and Adrian's mushroom and zucchini risotto.  Bread from Wye Bakery above, and there was some lovely chicken by Ko-Yu as well, but for obvious reasons, that didn't end up on my plate.

More later, much love to everybody!
Kristin

Life in Hastingleigh

As life gets increasingly busy around here, and because it's easier to snap and share a few pictures in passing than to yack on and on at length as I usually do (even this explanation is taking an eternity), here are some pictures I've taken over the last week or so of our "goings on" here in Hastingleigh and environs:

Coming into Hastingleigh from Elmsted (rather proud of this one - anyone know a calendar company interested in publishing pictures of "Picturesque English Villages in Autumn"?)

My room.  Mother, please notice both flute out of case and full music stand, which indicate I am indeed practicing, not just goofing off in Europe.

The Studio

Another one for the calendar - the saints who own Wye Bakery.  Lovely people, LOVELY bread.

Canterbury Cathedral

From the other side

Canterbury outpost of the Evil Empire.  The coffee here tastes EXACTLY the same as it does at home (burnt), and yes, I'm ashamed that I acquired this knowledge - but I hadn't had a latte of any kind in two weeks, and the sound of steaming milk was just too much!

The studio invades Whist Night at the village hall.  Look at these hardened card sharks.

Jhen Wei in the kitchen making sure she didn't miss any of the edibles during the tea, cake and sandwiches interval

Action Whist!  Actually, I jerked mid-photo since someone snuck up behind me and poked my sides to get back at me for the kitchen pic. . .

Jenny, on the eve of being named WHIST GRAND CHAMPION SUPREME

So Yun and Jhen Wei at the "flirt" table.  Everyone knows the real reason to go to Whist Night is the cute babes.

 

Bob goes to Chinatown

As I think everyone can agree, it would be a great failure to spend any length of time in an English village and not visit the pub.  So (dutifully) on Friday after class, we headed to ours (note: these two events, class and pub attendence, have no direct correlation. . . yet, anyway.)

Adrian, me, and Jenny 

 And across the table: So Yun, Ko-Yu, and Jhen Wei (sorry about the flash, girls!  My photography is still decidedly amatuer)

We had some very tasty cider, which is something I haven't tried much at home, but here seems to be something of a specialty - very tasty stuff!  The pub is called "Froggies" because it's run by a Frenchman, who together with most of his staff stopped us on our way out to welcome us to the village and ask where everyone was from/etc (it's pretty obvious who the new flute students are every year here - everyone else has been around for ages!).

On Saturday the Boxalls, WHO ARE VERY LOVELY PEOPLE (thanks for the warning, Sue!), came to our house to teach us whist, an English card game (those of you who've read any Austen/obsessively watched Pride and Prejudice will recognize the name).  Fortunately for me, it turns out whist is a lot like hearts, but with a revolving trump and old-fashioned gender roles.  Since we were short on men, I volunteered to be "Bob" for the game - and the nickname seems to be sticking. . . !!

Once a month, there's a "whist night" at the village hall, and as new transplants, we are expected to put in a few appearances (the Lutherans in my readership will be very familiar with this scenario).  Our whist debut is this Friday - wish us luck!

Sunday brought us a lovely garden party at Trevor and Dot's for the village to come formally meet the six of us.  As I hoped, lots of tweed.  We had Bucks Fizz (mimosa in a bottle, how could that be bad?) and a preponderance of nibblies.  Everyone was very kind.  The unofficial purpose of the party was to clue us in to who it's alright to accept lifts from while walking in the village.  Sue also informed us on the sly that there's a village member for every character in Vicar of Dibley - and now I am determined to match everyone up!

After the party concluded, we went back up to London for the afternoon/evening to hear Jacques Zoon's recital at the Royal Academy of Music.

Exhibit A:  Royal Academy of Music 

The recital was in their beautiful Duke's Hall, which actually looks like a duke's hall, and probably was named for an actual duke as well!  J.Z. played the Bach A major on a wooden flute he made himself (for you flutist-types, it's made from a German baroque bore and minimal silver mechanism to make it a bit easier to play), a sonatine by the Dutch composer Geraedts (really wonderful, lesser known piece), and an arrangement of the Brahms Violin Sonata no. 2, op 100 that Zoon did himself.  The Brahms was my favorite - he pulled off both the arrangement and the performance really well, so well you didn't miss the violin at all.

After the recital we were starving (the morning's nibblies were by that time a distant memory) and headed to "The Crispy Duck" in Chinatown for a feast of epic proportions.  It. Was. AMAZING.

A stuffed Jenny and Adrian outside paradise

 How do I describe this meal?  I can't.  It was too freaking wonderful.  Fresh seafood, steamed vegtables in a divine broth, perfectly cooked rice, crispy noodles to die for - I'm salivating just thinking of it (at 10:00am).  We all ate so much it was hard to move normally afterwards - but SOOO worth it.  

Our Taiwanese contigent smiling at the entrance to Chinatown

I think this group talks about food almost as much as we talk about the flute.  I have found my people.

Then back to work on Monday.

Love to everybody!

Kristin