The British Library

This week the students went on trips and I had the privilege of attending with the year 10 class on their trip to the British library. The class was split and one group went in the morning and one in the afternoon. I went with both groups and mainly stayed with the head teacher. In the morning we walked the first group of students over The British Library. It is spectacular, nothing like a library that I am familiar with. It had huge ceilings and was all clean and modern. I didn’t even see any books. The only books I saw were in “The King’s Library.” This consisted of five floors enclosed in glass walls filled with books, tons of them. These are the books the King George III collected during his reign. Apparently, it was a status booster to own a massive library filled with the most expensive and beautiful books. And that’s exactly what he did. One cannot go into this portion of the library, as you need special permission. But you could look in the exhibit and see all the books. There were tons of golden colored spines with ornate decorations. Such a site to see! We then split them up into two smaller groups and each went with their own tour guides. The students are preparing for their creative writing controlled coursework for next year, so we went to see the “Writing Britain.” This exhibit featured manuscripts and old editions of books written by British authors. The exhibit is divided up into geographical categories that describe the literary work in some way.

To begin, we looked at the different categories and looked at key words that described them. The students then chose a word from the list of key words. This word was theirs and they had to go around the exhibit and find pieces that fit with their word. After doing this we all came back together and wrote sentences with new key words that they found in the descriptions of the manuscripts. We then made a poem with our sentences. It was interesting.

While the students were doing their assignment, I was able to walk around the exhibit, and it actually had some pretty interesting things! I saw some first editions of classic books such as Jekyll and Hyde as well as Jane Eyre. I also saw a draft of Pygmalion with George Bernard Shaw’s notes written on it. The best thing was the first handwritten draft of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, written by J.K. Rowling!! So cool. It was so casual, just the story written on some notebook paper.

After our first group departed, I stayed behind with the head teacher and we had lunch at the library café. She’s super nice! There were a ton of people there, with their own packed lunches, doing research or work on computers. I learned that in order to get to the books you have to register for the reading rooms and then you can go in and read a book. I don’t think you can take one out, which is kinda weird. I also learned that it is law that The British Library owns a copy of every book published in Britain. That’s a lot of books! The majority are kept underground. Fun fact: If you ride the tube near King’s Cross, you are actually riding between the warehouses where books are stored.

 Teacher and I had lovely conversations at lunch. We talked some about the differences between the school systems and I learned that my school is private. I also learned that the students are quite wealthy. Some of the parents are famous, politicians, or very wealthy. We then walked to see the Beatles collection where the library had pieces from the Beatles, as you may have guessed. I saw the first write up of "Hard Day’s Night", which John Lennon wrote on the back of a birthday card. There were a few more pieces as well, which were fascinating. I also saw Handel’s "Messiah" that was handwritten and the Magna Carta. It was all quite amazing to see. Soon, the second group arrived, and had some of the students I knew a bit better, and we began the program all over again. I won’t go back over it. At the end, one of our lovely boys felt the need to touch a painting and set off the alarm, so that was great. We all walked back to school and that was basically the end of the school day. I was glad for a different schedule.

 I am always so exhausted after the work day, but the class was scheduled to see The Lion King. Despite my exhaustion, I am not going to pass up seeing a play, though I didn’t have a choice. I was not going to be any less excited for this because I was tired. We had lovely seats in the balcony and just as I thought, the play was spectacular. I have seen The Lion King in Atlanta a while ago, but it was just as if I had seen it for the first time. Fantastic. The costume designed is a genius. Seriously. I love it. And I really love the songs that were added, that weren’t from the movie. The new ones were some of the best that were in the show.

 That was basically my day! It’s crazy to think we only have two weeks left! I have too much to do!

Week Four: Day Two: Internship 9