Day 7 - London's Poet and Sherlock

~London~
Early this morning, we had a meeting with a poet called Jacob Sam-La Rose. It might seem like his middle name is ‘Sam-La’, but actually, ‘Sam-La Rose’ is his surname, so we were told. We had to walk a very long distance and it started raining when we were reaching our destination. Jacob started off by introducing himself and then he read a few great poems that he wrote. The first one he read to us was about a girl he had a crush on when he was younger. After the poem, everyone gave a soft “ aww...” and he called us a good audience :D After that we had an activity about emotions. We had to choose from a list of emotions and answered questions using our five senses to describe our chosen emotions. We had to read our answers out loud and somehow it already seemed like a poem. He mentioned that our answers were like a rough draft of a poem. Our teachers were very impressed by some of our answers. Also, because of his huge charisma, the way he read our answers made them seem even more profound. Then we played a game. He read us a poem entitled “Jigsaw” which was about his father. We were split into five groups,

1. The Raging Kitties

2. The Spartans

3. Merrily-On-High

4. Miss Tnee’s Fan Club

5. Toss Toss (inspired by the play “Wicked” we watched last night)

And we had our own buzzer:

1. Meow

2. AH-OO!!!!

3. Ding Dong

4. Miss Tnee!

5. Toss Toss

The game was carried out like a game show where we snatched to answer questions about the poem. The dark horse, The Spartans, WON! Then we had another game, where we had to write out names of people important to us. We narrowed the list down to one, and had to choose a specific object that reminded us of them. We had to give as many details as possible. When he read out some of our answers, we were surprised and very touched by what some of us had written. We really enjoyed our time there and took a group photo with him before he rushed off to another workshop. (Busy, busy man.)

We took the tube to Liverpool Street to eat lunch followed by some 'free and easy'. The constant announcements of the approaching trains made us feel the rush of the English people’s lives. We went shopping at an open area where people from all over the world sold things. It was sort of like a Singaporean flea market but much more up market. We met many Asians there and it felt very good to speak Chinese to them because of this, we were given special discounts! Heh heh. Then we took a tube to Baker Street for a Sherlock Holmes walk where we met out guide, Janet. Although it was drizzling, we continued the walk to various spots where the stories were set. Janet told many highlights and interesting parts of the stories and it was very entertaining. We also went to a museum to see a painting his “ancestor” painted in the story. All of us were amazed how the author made the story really realistic by using things in our lives.

We ended our walk at Oxford Circus then we took the tube to St. Pauls for dinner at Pizza Express. They had a revolving door and it was so COOL! Dinner was good as we had 3 different types of pizzas with cool names. We kept ordering more pizzas as we loved it very much!! We walked back to the hotel in a slight drizzle, had debrief and went back to our rooms to try to finish our homework. (We are such good students.)

WE REALLY DON’T WANT TO LEAVE LONDON.

Done by 3 of us who really rock, Reporters of Day 7 of UK Trip:

Janice Lee, Kathy Lim and Natalie Sim.