Cricket, plays, and a temple trip

First off, cricket is great fun. I like it a lot more than baseball. Even though I'm pitiful at both games. We had a lot of fun in the park yesterday pretending like we knew what we were doing with a cricket bat and wickets.

Woah, I just looked out the window and it is now sunny. I could've sworn that it was adamantly raining just a minute ago. I suppose that's English weather for you.

Tea in Kensington Gardens was an interesting experience. They fed us a lot of sugar. We had some sort of herbal tea (herbal tea is apparently allowed for Mormons because it's not like green tea or black tea that's made out of tea leaves among other things...yeah, I don't really understand the distinction very well, but herbal tea is kosher, so to speak). I only had a few sips, I don't like it at all. It tasted like I was eating grass or something and adding sugar didn't help at all. So no worries about me accidentally drinking the wrong kind of tea one day, I don't like any of that stuff at all, even the herbal kind. Anyway, some of the other things they gave us were quite nice. The first thing I ate was a scone. They're kind of like what I'd call a biscuit back home, but with fruit in it. We put jam on top (some sort of strawberry jelly) and then something they said was some kind of cream I think (but it was pretty much whipped butter). Although I don't like biscuits back home, the scone was delicious. We also got to eat cucumber sandwiches, a tart, and some other chocolately cupcake looking thing. I’m also slightly confused because they call something like this tea, but they also sometimes call just a regular meal tea and…I really don’t get what tea actually means. *shrug*

The play we went to last night was Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap. As the name may suggest, it was a murder mystery. I totally guessed the killer at intermission which was awesome. It was a lot of fun, and the atmosphere fit perfectly for the story. Mousetrap is the longest running show in London and is still going strong. They made me vow at the end of the show that I would keep the secret of whodunit locked away in my heart so that the world will never know. So if you want to know who committed the terrible crimes, you’ll just have to go and witness the drama of uncovering the criminal yourself.

This morning we got to take a trip to the London temple to do baptisms. It took our coach (aka bus) about an hour to get us there. It’s a nice temple though small and simple. The temple workers were so cute. Not only were they little old ladies and funny old guys, they were also English which made it even better. We kind of overflowed the place with our 30 someodd people. There were only about 12 lockers in the changing room. So the workers were a bit overwhelmed, but happy to have us there. I really liked what the one worker told us; he said “The most important thing about being in the temple today is what you feel as you do the work for those who have passed on.” I guess I’d never really thought of it that way before. It did feel wonderful in the temple, as it always does. Very calm and peaceful. It’s the kind of peace that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else – just a feeling that everything is right and a calm assurance that God is aware of me and is taking care of me. It’s also amazing how clear everything seems to be, how easy it is to think and ponder while I’m there. I do love going to the temple. And I’m very glad I got a chance to go while in London. It was a great experience.

As for the rest of the day today, I’m thinking I’ll probably be doing homework or maybe blogging a little bit more (after all, I do still have about two incredible weeks to catch you up on). Tonight I’m hopefully going to Pygmalion, the play My Fair Lady is based off of. I’m excited for it. Tomorrow’s my last day of lectures. Then I just have finals on Monday (which is also when all the papers are due). Oh how fast days pass… Homework time!