Hello everyone! Welcome to the 4th day of my trip to Oxford with the Westminster choir. This trip will be 9 days in total, and therefore likely 9 parts in total.

6 years ago yesterday, I joined Steem and posted some of my first articles. If you are interested in reading about my journey, here's my post from last year. In that post, I explain my story and the history of Steem for those interested. I will make a similar post for year 6 when I get home.

Let's get into day 4:

Spending my 6 year Steemiversary in England

Waking up and Breakfast

Just like every other day, I went for breakfast upon waking up yesterday. I was less sluggish than the day prior. I went for breakfast, and got eggs, bacon, sausage, and a hash brown as with the other days. I tried to sit by myself because I wanted to write the article and not be rude to people, but a group of people invited me to sit with them when I tried to sit by myself so I sat with them. I am grateful that they included me. But I told them I had to write the article and didn't really involve myself much in their conversation. I had similar situations occur in high school when I would sit by myself at lunch. People see someone sitting by themself and feel obligated to sit down with them or invite them over, but I liked doing work sometimes and therefore didn't always want to sit with other people. We should all be grateful when we are surrounded by people who make an effort to do that none-the-less. It is a very kind thing to do.

After breakfast, I showered and tried to finish writing the article. I sat in the common room working.

Going to the library

I knew at 10:35am we had to meet with our group to go into the library at 10:45am. But what I didn't realize was that we had to meet the group outside of the library at 10:35am (some other people made this mistake too). When I realized this, I put the library into the gps, and it was a 20 minute walk. So I alternated between sprinting, jogging, and walking all the way following the gps and made it by 10:44am. However, the second challenge was finding the building. I was running around in this big courtyard area asking officials where the Westminster group was. I think I actually wound up entering the tour with a group by accident at one point looking for my group and then left. Not before taking the photo for the thumbnail xD. Finally, I showed a security guard the message, and he was like "that building is over there."It was accross a street. If there is one thing I would bet on killing me in this country, it would be getting hit by a car because I look the wrong way stepping onto the street. That almost happened yesterday. Luckily I looked both ways and had enough time to jump back when I saw the car.

The Library

I got to the library at 10:50am and went to the place we were supposed to meet. I asked the desk lady where my group was, but she didn't know. So I went over to buy a water bottle because of my run. Then I opened it and took a sip. It was at this point that I realized the Europeans like to drink sparkling water for some reason. I almost choked. When the lady at the desk saw me she said "you're not having the best of days." Whoever it was that invented sparkling water should have made it a different color.

I had to wait to go in with the next group from my school at 11:45am. We were taken into a large conference room, and shown historic artifacts that must be wirth millions of dollars. In this area, we saw chant notation from the 13th or 14th centuries. This paper only survived because it was recycled and used as the binding for a book. We also saw part books from the Renaissance, and some other pieces from the Baroque/Renaissance. We also saw a page of the autograph copy of this piece by Henry Purcell. The piece also had a correction added by Purcell on a seperate piece of paper, and on the back of that paper, Purcell had copied a section of a piece by Monteverdi. After that, we saw the score Handel conducted the Messiah from at its premiere and throughout his life. That was really cool! We also saw Mendelssohn's autograph score for the oratorio Elijah as well as a book of Mendelssohn's art. Lastly we saw the autograph sketch for Ralph Vaughn Williams' Sancta civitas, and we saw the autograph score for Elgar's The Kingdom (given to the library by his daughter in 1970). I wish I could share pictures, but we aren't allowed to share any of the pictures we took on social media.

Shopping

After we finished at the library, I started walking back, but stopped at a board game shop to look at the chess sets. They were cool but expensive. Instead I got cards with pictures of Cathedrals on them.

Lunch

I then stopped for sushi on my way home. I got a pretty good deal, but I'll be honest that I like Rider's sushi more than the sushi I had yesterday.

Girls Choir

From 2pm to 5pm, a girls choir from Christ Church cathedral sang for us. It wasn't really a concert, but rather an observed rehearsal/sight reading session. They were very good at sight reading for their age considering their oldest members were 9. There is not much else to say about this session than that.

Conductor Session

At 5:30pm, it was time for the conducting time again where the conductors get to experiment with their conducting and receive advice from the directors of the program. The conductors hsve definitely improved, and are doing a lot more interesting things. My group was in the chapel again. I'd like to acknowledge our accompanist for accompanying us on a keyboard. That takes skill, and I could hardly tell the difference. During one of the sings, my windows tablet just restarted in order to update. That made me mad because I was literally using it for the music. Luckily, the guy next to me had an extra copy.

Dinner

For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant. I got a Hawaiian pizza. The service was rather slow, but the food was worth it.

Chant Service

When we got back, I sat in the common room reading Sherlock Holmes. The accompanist was practicing one of the pieces. I have recently realized that I can tune stuff out while I read. That's cool, but this music wasn't the kind of music you need to tune out to read. It was soothing and helped me read.

At 8:30pm, we did the chant service for the last time in the chapel. It's a very bizarre but cool experience singing chant. I can see how Western music arose out of chant. We had hardly any mistakes, and made it all the way through the piece. I did not stand at one point in the service because my beliefs did not permit me to. I don't think it mattered all that much.

Going Out

Last night we went to a place called the mad hatter. It was themed on Alice in the Wonderland. We had to solve a riddle to get in "What gets bigger the more you take away?" I almost instantly said "debt" then slapped myself in the face. Then I tried to redeem myself by saying "emptiness", but thatvwas wrong too. Our accompanist got the answer. It was "a hole".

This bar looked like what the bar would look like to someone on hallucinogens. I once again got a coke since the bar didn't have a shirley temple. We all played cards. Starting with Go fish. Then moving to bs. Then moving to black jack, and finally playing Egyptian Rat Screw. For the record, I lost every game. Most of them I probably lost by a mile. But by the end we were all having such a fun time. Egyptian rat screw is always a frustrating game for me because my reflexes suck.

Finishing A Study in Scarlett

When I got home, it was 1am. I decided to try to finish A Study in Scarlett and succeeded. Let me just say that it is pure genius. Never have I read such an eloquent story, and it completely blows every other version of Sherlock Holmes I've seen out of the water. The show was pretty good, and the movies are alright, but nothing is like Conan Doyle's sophisticated and witty yet apprehensible style of writing, and plot development. To think that a lot of the techniques modern police now use comes from these stories is astounding. I would highly recommend a Study in Scarlett to anyone interested in that kind of thing. I will begin The Sign of the Four tonight.

My one friend walked in while I was reading and said "Are you reading Sherlock Holmes because you're in the UK?" When I said "Yes." His reaction was basically "Oh Chris. Only you would do that." My big curiosity is what the British think when they see me reading it.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this! I will see you in the next article which might be slightly later than usual because I will be traveling fairly early tomorrow. Feel free to guess where. I will give a hint: it is an enigma.