Matt Stevens

I know this sounds cliché, but SURPRIZE – I'm suffering from culture shock. Yes, it is an English-speaking country; yes, I'm here with UCLA students; yes, this is a tiny baby step compared to what some other UCLA students are off doing. But in my first four frenetic, disorienting, days, I've been lost more times than I can remember, I've made more mistakes than I can count, and I learned more than I can record here.

The interesting part is all my mistakes have been so subtle and perhaps the best way to show that is through my dining experience. Take, for example, the French restaurant we went to yesterday. We went for dessert to a café and things started fine. Immediately, however, it was evident that there was language barrier. I asked for "decaf coffee" and the waitress repeated "decaf" unsure of what I meant. When I said instead "decaffeinated coffee," which was the exact title printed on the menu, she understood. Similar things happened around the table.

While I was sitting alone in the lounge of our hotel in London late at night, the hotel's evening concierge came into the room and asked a simple question about my laptop. An hour later, we were still talking. By that point I had learned that my new friend was originally from Nigeria and had moved to London 10 years ago due to violence in the area. His father died in passage and he one day hoped to be able to move to America — not because of liberty or rights or anything like that, but for the simple reason that it is cheaper than central London.

As I began to pack up — it was after 2 a.m. by this point — my friend asked ever so politely if I needed to go to bed, or if I would mind staying and discussing politics with him. I of course jumped at the opportunity, and as soon as I gave him the green light, he talked for more than a half hour without stopping. As he had throughout the conversation, he spoke slowly and deliberately, choosing words carefully, and struggling to overcome the language barrier. Yet he spoke with striking rationality about the tenure of former President Bush and President Obama. He knew more about post-9/11 politics than I do, and he passionately spoke about the pressure placed on Africans like himself to vote for Obama simply because he is black.

Read on: More than tourism; this is actually meeting people.

Other bloggers have already mentioned Michael Fentiman (here and here), but he warrants multiple posts.

Michael is the assistant director of the RSC's production of As You Like It, which we saw Saturday before exiting Stratford. To put the performance in perspective, I'm told secondhand that Professor Post called it one of the best productions of As You Like It he has seen in the last 25 years. High praise, and deserved.

It's no surprise then that Michael was dynamic and profound when he came to speak with us. The journalist in me took down some of his nuggets of wisdom: "We don't really know that we're talking about — we just try to discover it," and "Actors are like children. We play."

But what really stuck me was Michael's description of a production of Romeo and Juliet he did. Taking a major risk, Michael decided to stage Shakespeare's classic love story using only a dozen professional actors alongside more than 60 gang members off the streets of London.

Read on...

As I get ready to leave London and end this fabulous four weeks, I figure it's time for some fun.

It took me a while, and it was painstakingly difficult, but I compiled a top-10 list of the highlights of the trip. I considered not ranking the highlights because it's so difficult. It seemed as though each night in my journal I would write: "This was the best fill-in-the-blank I've ever seen/eaten/experienced/learned about." I did end up ranking them, because, well, it's more fun for you to read that way. But in the end, this is my list, and someone else may totally disagree.

Here goes. A top 10 in three parts:

10. Pret A Manger
I may start occasionally flying to New York on weekends, because that is the only place in the states that this godsend of a sandwich shop exists. It's relatively cheap at £3 (about $5) per sandwich, and it makes the best sandwiches, wraps and chips I have ever tasted. There are more Prets in London than Starbucks in Seattle, and for good reason. I've tried six different sandwiches, from roasted duck to classic BLT, and nothing, I mean nothing beats them.

9. The Globe Theatre
The acting there may have been sadly subpar, but the physical space itself lived up to all my expectations. The hard wooden benches, thrust stage, giant space for groundlings and open air send you right back to the 17^th century and make you a special part of each production.

8. The RSC's As You Like It
It's truly wonderful to sit in lecture in the afternoon, discussing critical elements of a play, and then, later that night, see actors who are fully conscious of all the subtle details you discussed hours earlier. This production was magical, hysterical, and full of life. I left the theatre that night in a better, happier state of mind than I entered with, humming the closing music as I strolled along.

Click here for part II

As I get ready to leave London, I felt compelled to create a top-10 list of the highlights of the trip. It was incredibly difficult to choose the best moments, when there were so many. Regardless, here's part two of three (click through to see the full list so far): 

7. The British Museum
I seriously doubt that there is another place in the world with a larger array of historical artifacts from more places around the world. The sheer size of the British Museum is overwhelming, not to mention that you are stuck by the Rosetta Stone as soon as you walk through the door. From Egyptian mummies, to pieces of the Greek Parthenon, to Japanese Samurai armor, I would challenge anyone to find a more impressive museum anywhere in the world.

6. Shakespeare's House
Yes, I'm biased as an English major, but standing on the same 50 foot piece of cobblestone the Bard himself stood on is a surreal experience. Once you've stood on that ground, seen the First Folio, and climbed up the rickety stairs to the room where Billy himself was born, none of the other historical houses in Stratford-upon-Avon can compare.

5. Standing atop the white cliffs of Dover
The Eiffel Tower is supposed to give you a wonderful view of Paris. Up at Dover Castle, the view from atop the famous white cliffs gives you a picturesque, almost sublime look at England that makes the famous tower in France look like a stack of sticks. Of all the absolutely amazing and beautiful things I've seen on this trip, the image of the English Channel with the English countryside to its left is the one that resonates in my head. It's something every visitor to this country must take time to see.

Click through to see parts I and II together, or click here for the complete list.

4. The special presenters
Let's not forget about the actual learning taking place in class. In these four weeks, I had the privilege of seeing several members of the RSC and other theatrical geniuses speak about their craft. In a nutshell, they opened up an entirely new way for me to think about these texts: as plays meant to be performed, not books meant to be read. We spent a half-hour talking about how to voice the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, we asked actress Kate Stephens how she interprets Rosalind, and we have had a popular writer blow up our conceptions about reading Shakespeare, and replace them with thoughts about how to speak it.

3. The Palace of Versailles
Bigger, grander, more beautiful than anything imaginable. It's impossible to describe its majesty, but let's leave it simply at this: Versailles' horse stable is bigger than the whole of Buckingham Palace.

2. Learning through conversation
Even more important that the wonderful classroom knowledge I have gained, has been the cultural knowledge I will leave with. Much of this has come through simple experience, but the best has come from talking with random people. The hotel concierge from Nigeria, a British couple celebrating their 10th anniversary at the Dirty Duck after an RSC performance, and an Australian woman, with a son my age, taking six weeks off to travel the world are only a taste of the sorts of curious and pleasant people I've encountered. All of them helped me further realize my place — and my country's place — in this large world. It's probably the most important thing I could have gotten out of this trip.