Frodo lives! And so do we.

We have arrived. The trip was relatively uneventful, which is exactly what we'd hoped. The British airways attendants were courteous and even tried to joke with us a bit, which went over like a lead balloon; we had trouble deciphering the joke through the thick Scottish brogue. (Mrs. McGarvey has nothing on our flight attendant!) And here we are, in the lush, COOL (60 degrees) city on the Thames!

Since we were near the front of the plane, we were the first group off and first in line for customs. Sean Saleh sailed through with his Irish passport, but then had to wait while the rest of us were casually waved through by a gentle matron who simply said, "School group? Ok," and barely glanced at the passports. Robin Eden had kindly set up a coach (aka bus) to meet us at the airport, and we made it to the hotel by 3 p.m.

Everyone took a break to get cash and food, and we met again at 6:10 to catch the Underground from Queensway station to Holborn, from where we walked to Drury Lane Theater. We stumbled into the theater just in time to take our third-row seats and giggle at the antics of the Hobbits dancing about the stage. They were catching "fireflies" and grazing our heads with their long nets. Very cute, and so was the jig with which they began the musical.

Lord of the Rings can be nothing but a spectacle, and it was. The light and set directors deserve medals, as they took us through so many set changes that I started to get dizzy. (This was also because the set often turned on stage to indicate the length of the characters' journey.) Galadriel stole the show (for me) with the Most Extravagant Entrace Ever: She and her elf minions floated down from the tree tops, doing acrobatics and singing at the tops of their lungs. Gold sparkled everywhere, and more than once we were showered with the falling leaves of autumn.

All this splendor, however, failed to keep the majority of us awake for the entire three-hour event. Yours truly had some eyelid issues. There was a moment at which I glanced up and down our row to see more shut eyes than open ones. So we all plan on sleeping well tonight!