Spotted: Hedwing

YES, it's true my friends. I found Hedwing from Harry Potter!! HP lives!!
Here's a pic of me and hedwing hanging out on the grounds of hogwarts.



Ok, so believe it or not, that's sadly not the real hedwing.
however, we did find this cute "falconner" who let us fly the owl:)
christina came up with the clever nickname, "bird whisperer" for him.
ha!



Being typical, silly american girls, all twenty of us attempted to flirt with him amidst owl-flying.
(apparently it worked because he wanted us to add him on fb!)


Let me tell you how we encountered mr. falconner and his owl.


We went to Warwick (pronounced war-ik) castle yesterday to start off our sixth day trip. It was a mix between disneyland and a typical, old english castle.





There were people dressed up in costumes with interactive activities and everything. We had to go to the toilets (as always) and ended up finding the beautiful owl on display! Just as we were about to head off, mr. falconner came out and started feeding the owl. We chit chatted for a few minutes, and to our surprise....

he asked if we wanted to fly them!
and of course we said yes.
He put a huge glove on my hand, threw some dead chicken on it, and the owl flew down from the tree onto my arm. We were instantly friends!
Dr. Howe found us while we were flying the owl, and she was so excited. She said that it was a must to see an owl while in London.



The rest of the day was pretty top-notch as well.
first, we went to Anne Hathaway's (shakespeare's wife) cottage. We saw what would have been a beautiful garden if it were june. Sadly, it was mostly just dead plants...but! a few plants were starting to emerge. We toured the tiny cottage while very dramatic guides (hoping to make it as actors) gave us some interesting information. Did you know that shakespeare was married at 18??? He had to get permission by his parents to marry so young. Anne was 26 when she got pregnant and then they were married. Our tour guide also threw in some obvious sexual jokes/facts to add to the whole experience.





We then went to Shakespeare's house, Stratford-Upon-Avon. There were people dressed up in costumes there as well, and it was very touristy. Then we saw where he died, and we walked to the cathedral that he's buried at.
By the time we were done with all of our scheduled sites, we still had three hours to kill until King Leare was supposed to start. We walked around the little town and went to Poundland to get candy and caffeine for the play (most of us only had 4 hours of sleep, and we heard the play was almost four hours long).
Then we found a really old pub, and I ate dinner there with macy, kallyn, sarah, shar, and margaret. We still had loads of time after finishing our fish and chips, so we got bread pudding and chatted the evening away. We asked funny questions and then everyone had to go around and answer.


our fish were so so huge! apparently they liked each other too

King Leare was an amazing production. It was the first tragedy I had ever seen by shakespeare, and I was really impressed. It was really moving, and I will probably remember that experience for the rest of my life. I'm so grateful that I get to learn about different subjects and see things that I would normally never see on my own. Then we got back on the coach, drove for a few hours, and got home at one...just in time to get a few hours of sleep before early morning class!




ah, what a fun day full of memories