Missionary Experience!!!

I had a missionary experience today!! Super awesome- I'll get to it in a bit though.
Just to clarify (sorry for the confusion, Wend), no we aren't singing together as a group and giving concerts. When I said "we have a concert" it meant we were attending one. The only time I know of when we will be singing all together is this Sunday in one of the wards in Oxford! Haha, we're singing two songs- an arrangement of I Stand All Amazed and I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say (different words to the If you could Hie to Kolob tune). I forget the actual name of that tune/hymn. Anyway, I hope that's clear now!
So today started out with class again. For the first part we were split into 7 different groups to learn the music we'll be singin with the Oxford choirs for their evensong service. The 7 groups will each go to a different college in Oxford and sing with the choir. I guess they didn't really want all of us to go to the same one- we'd triple the size of the choir haha. As far as the different colleges go, my understanding is that each college is like a different department in Oxford, like depending on what they're studying? Maybe? The people in a college live together and share the same dining hall. Each college has its own cool name- when Sister Hall was reading off the names telling us which ones we'd be going to she said she felt like she was in Hogwarts. :) So yeah, learning the music. My group is all one on a part except for the Soprano. We're singing with the Corpus Christi college (ok so that name isn't very Hogwarts-y, but most of them are!), and we'll be singing Palestrina's Exultate Deo, a Magnificat by Stanford, O Sing Joyfully by Adrian Batten, and them some other versicles/responses/Lord's Prayer something? We haven't completely mastered them yet. ;)
After that we spent forever comparing William Byrd's "Mass for 5 Voices" with Palestrina's "Pope Marcellus Mass." I really need to go to bed really soon so I'm not going to go into great detail, but it was a really neat discussion about the effectiveness of the music due to the harmonies each used. They were very different but it was neat to analyze it. HOwever, it made me feel extremely inadequate. I'm really not very good at all this stuff but I really enjoy listening to everyone else's super profound thoughts! ;)
Oh I almost forgot! My roommate Emilie gave the devotional before class and I just loved it. She said that the Lord doesn't expect immediate perfection, but He does expect immediate progress. I just loved that because we really do always need to be progressing. It made me think of Conference. When we hear Conference talks and we know that it applies directly to us and that there is a change we need to make, the Lord expects us to start working on making ourselves better IMMEDIATELY. Of course we can't perfect it right away, but we need to start working/progressing immediately. I thought it was a great message.
After class I came home and made a very English meal. Ok so maybe I just had the normal pb&j. Then a few of us went to check out the Victoria & Albert Museum, which we had heard so much about. Its like right next to Hyde Park Chapel- cool, huh! Anyway... maybe I'm just a stick in the mud, or maybe I'm just an uneducated fool, but I realized today that I'm really not a huge fan of museums. Some of the stuff is really cool, but I feel like there is just so much junk in there! There is a lot of reeeealy ooooold stuff, but most of it doesn't have a huge amount of significance to me! I absolutely LOVE looking at paintings and architectural stuff, and sculptures as well, but when it comes to some chest that some person touched once and its only in there because its 1500 years old, I get a little annoyed. Maybe I'm just dumb. Anyway, the paintings were really cool to see. Once again, I realized I gained so much knowledge from my Civ class! I recognized so many paintings/artists and sculptures as well. My favorite part was this huge room/exhibit they had with a bunch of Raphael's works. It had 5 or 6 HUGE paintings from the Sistine Chapel. Well they weren't the real ones, the were like the last draft before the finished product, but it was SO COOL. THey were massive!! Seeing those biblical scenes so beautifully painted and so huge was a really spiritual experience for me. I sat down on a bench and just stared at them. I wish I could've stayed all day! It was incredible. It made me want to go to the Sistine Chapel!! Maybe next time I come to Europe... ;)
Oh, the real problem I had with the museum is that there was a bunch of fake stuff! I don't want to see some plaster cast copy, I want the real meat and potatoes! Take this one for example... NOT REAL. It was so ridiculous, I had to take a picture haha.

Ok after that we came home, had dinner, changed, and headed off to the most amazing concert of my life. The TALLIS SCHOLARS. Holy cow, talk about world renowned!!! These people are INCREDIBLE! Take Emily Workman, multiply her awesomeness by 10 (yeah, I didn't think it was possible either), and BOOM! The end result is 10 INCREDIBLE singers who's whole body and soul is completely popped open, have a level of freedom I didn't know was possible, and whose voices are just 100% pure core and resonance which NEVER ceases. It was amazing. They sing Renaissance music so we heard the Pope Marcellus Mass which we studied today, along with more works by Palestrina, Gabrieli, Croce, Phinot, and Festa. I've never heard ANYTHING so precisely in tune (the whole entire time) and so piercing to the soul. Its amazing what intonation can do to the soul. Let's face it, out of tune singing just doesn't build the testimony the same way. ;) I wish I could go into more detail, but I reeeeally need to go to bed. I was supposed to be in bed like 30 minutes ago (about after the 3rd line I wrote). I didn't take many pictures today but here I am with Johnnie in Cadogan Hall, where the concert was. Maybe I'll throw in Cadogan Hall as well.


And here's a better view of the stage. At intermission.

AFter the concert we hit up McDonald's! :) I've been all for the London experience, but we decided to get a quick/cheap treat. So we got McFlurries! They have different toppings here, so I guess that was our London experience. ;)
Anyway, I MUST go to bed! Adios! :)