The class was alright. I'm not sure how I feel about the professor...he seemed to be similar to the other British people I've met in that you can tell the States aren't his favorite place in the world. It was interesting though because he explained to us about how Parliament works (the House of Commons, members of Parliament, political parties and Prime Minister) and talked to us about the political views of different newspapers and tabloids in London. I think I'll get a good sense of England and its political issues from this class. For next week we each have to find an article in one of the major newspapers that we strongly agree with, as well as writing down our feelings about different subjects like immigration and health care.
It got quite cold last night, I was hot during the day and freezing when I walked back to Queen Mary from the Mile End tube stop. You know how everyone says London is expensive? London isn't that terribly expensive, transportation is expensive. I've spent so much money on the tube. I'm not even joking it's absolutely insane. Peak hours are 7-9:30 am and 4-7pm and the tube costs like 2.10 pounds during those times. During off peak hours it costs one pound eighty. I guess that doesn't sound that bad, but it really is because usually you have to transfer and everything...also I live in zone 2 and all of the touristy things and central London are in zone 1, so that's more expensive. The good thing is is that I got a student discount card because of my Villanova service, which gives me 30% off of travel. None of my friends have the card because you have to be in England for at least six months to get the student card. The bad thing is living in Mile End I have to travel a lot farther and more often than the other kids from Villanova (mainly because they live a lot closer to everything, they're all in zone 1) so it's still expensive.
The Curve, where I have my dinner meal plan, didn't have anything appetizing for dinner last night so all I ate was two pieces of toast, a banana and yogurt. After dinner/class I tried to figure out my plans to go to Italy and then I went to Draper's to hang out with Anna and Kate. I also said bye to Erin's friend, Tara, that was visiting for the weekend and left to go home today.
I had two classes today, Literatures in Time and Poetry. Today was our last class on Beowulf for Lit and I'm happy about that. Beowulf isn't that bad, but I've read it before and it's kind of boring in my opinion. They did show us some clips of the movie though and now I want to see it. I really like the seminar for that class but it's also kind of weird because sometimes I feel like I'm in a freshman English class. I think that's because Lit is a level 4 class, which is first year for the UK, so comparable to freshman in the US. That's the only class I feel like that for though, and it counts toward my English major so I'm not really complaining.
Poetry is an interesting class. I'm a little lost in the lecture, I'm not sure how you can effectively lecture about poetry. I'm happy I'm taking the class though because the seminar leader is really interesting and he tells us random stuff that's really interesting. For example we're writing an essay for next week on the poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Wallace Stevens, which by the way is really confusing to me right now, and our seminar leader told us that one time Wallace Stevens punched Ernest Hemingway in the face and Stevens broke his hand. There are some authors you just don't mess with, Hemingway is one of them.
In any case, I'm glad I'm in that class because I have trouble analyzing poems and such and if I want to write poetry I should be able to understand it. Hopefully this class helps me do that.
I had a fantastic lunch today. Sammie and I walked down the street to the Indian place that we ate dinner at the other night. They had three pound lunches! I got a chicken tikka roll with chips and it was so good. I ordered it extra spicy so that made it even better. I don't know what I've been eating my whole life, but in my book Indian food is almost as good as Italian food. I'm so happy that my friends here made me eat it last week. Did I mention it was only three pounds? Also that they gave us complimentary drinks? Because it
was awesome and so good.
Today I booked my flights to Rome and Venice! I'm going during reading week, November 9 :) We're going to Rome for two and a half days and to Venice for a day. It wasn't too too expensive, about $160. I guess that's expensive but I mean come on, I'm going to Italy...how awesome is that.
Okay these are random things that I forgot to mention in other posts so they don't make sense chronologically or anything, sorry if you're confused reading this but I just want to remember what I did last week.
Sunday when I got back from Wales all of my friends and I decided to go to Fabric. Fabric is a pretty famous club in London, actually off the Farringdon tube stop so pretty close. The area was really pretty, I would totally go back there again. Fabric was alright, maybe because it was a Sunday that it wasn't that great. It was pretty crowded, the dance floor was full. We got there around 11:30 and stayed til about 2am. I didn't like the music at all though, I think it's a European thing. It was 100% techno music and there were zero words. I personally love to dance, normally to music I know, so Tara and I were looking for some rap music or something, but our hopes were in vain. All we got was mad techno beats the whole night.
That was just like when we were at the club in Wales Saturday night and they played a little bit of music with words (Lady Gaga and some Jason Derulo) but the song that everyone went nuts over was this: (Please just listen til you get to the one minute mark, it's ridiculous)
Anyway, who knows what the obsession with that kind of music is. Fabric was alright though, I expected better but I had fun.
Thursday night (October 7) I went to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to see Henry IV part 2. I researched the play and read the spark notes to Henry IV parts 1 and 2 so that I would know what was going on. We walked across the Millennium Bridge to get to the Globe Theatre and that was absolutely beautiful because we got to see the city from the bridge. Canary Wharf was on the skyline and it looked a lot like Pittsburgh. We got to the Globe about 5 minutes late but it was fine because we had standing room tickets (we were 'groundlings,' people in the seats were 'Elizabeathans'). The standing room area was right in front of the stage so we were almost eye to eye with the actors.
Unfortunately, even though I researched the play I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Neither did Kate, Anna or Sammie, the girls I went with. It's hard enough to figure out what's going on in a Shakespeare play let alone trying to decipher what the actors were saying in thick British accents. Even though I was confused, there were funny parts and I'm glad I got to experience it. The theatre was a lot smaller than I imagined and very circular. The roof was totally open, which is why the plays only run until early October. All in all it was really neat, but we left early because we were confused, our feet hurt and we'd only paid five pounds each for our tickets.
Anyway, time for me to go and do homework or something, maybe skype Caitlin if she's on.
M
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