Pancake Day!

Monday
This day started off with an in depth discussion of a passage from Othello in Shakespeare class. It was really interesting to just pick apart a monologue and throw different ideas around about our interpretation. (yes, I'm a nerd.) After that I had a break before my next class, so I printed off my notes for my seminar (thank goodness the school computer let me open a document created on a mac!), went to STA to pay for Paris (Pat--you owe me mulla) ;), and waited in line forever at the post office to mail off some letters. (Oh, and at STA I almost had a problem, because the wrong return tickets had been booked--not because of me!--and instead it was two sets of "to" tickets, but thankfully we got it sorted out and Patrick and I will be able to get back to London!) My seminar in my Novel class went well. I got a bit nervous and thought I sounded a kind of long winded and boring, but I think that it went well over all. Afterward, we had a Britain Today class (which we normally have on Wednesday). This class was to give us some background and prepare us for our trip to Scotland (which we leave for tomorrow!). We learned about Scotland identity and their currently evolving state of self government.

That night one of the professors took some of us out for Turkish food. (We got to sign up for different nights and different kinds of food and I chose this one.) I had grilled kofte and couscous. It was tasty enough (although not quite my cup of tea). And we all shared little bites of baklava, rice pudding, cinnamon ice cream, and chocolate cake for dessert. I was proud of myself for trying it all (except I didn't have any of the rice pudding) and being adventurous! yay for me! Then we came home and I got to see Hanna's and Bridget's awesome music video! So cute! I love it! It was a great ending to my day. :)

Tuesday
Today I got up early to talk to Patrick (and show him Hanna's awesome music video). I went in for my one (one-hour) class. It was short and sweet. :) Afterwards I was soooo tired. When I was on the tube, I could hardly stay awake. So I kind of fell on my bed and took a nap as soon as I got home. But then I went on a run when I woke up! That was nice. It's always difficult for me to work in exercising when I'm traveling (I'm better when I have a regular routine), so it was quite an accomplishment. The biggest event of the day, however, was that after dinner we celebrated... Pancake Day! They were tasty. Usually they have them with sugar and lemon here, but that's not really an option for me, so I spread Nutella on mine and wrapped it up into a delicious roll of goodness. yummm.

Ros creating a yummy pancake!

My Nutella pancake in mid roll. mmmmm.

markets are fun

Saturday
We went to Camden Town. It was intense. And extensive. There was so much stuff there and we walked around so much, but we didn't even see all of it! I want to go back. And buy stuff... :) I stayed up way to late working on my Seminar notes for my Novel class (so I could email them to my professor for her to look at). It was worth it though, 'cause she said she liked them. yay! :)

Sunday
I slept in after being up late working on those Seminar notes. And then I wrote some postcards home. I was pretty lazy. But I did walk to the store and I got these two chocolate bars with really funny labels. I like them.

Anyway, the cool upcoming news is that we're going to Scotland with our program on Wednesday! I'm so excited! XD

Bar #1: This is always good to have on hand. :) (The first line says: For immediate relief of: Chocolate Cravings, Lovesickness, Exam Pressure, Mild Anxiety and Extreme Hunger.)

Bar #2: I like this one. (It says: "Chocolate makes it all bearable") Very appropriate.

sometimes an apple pie is necessary...

and, if that's not around, an apple and cinnamon tart (with vanilla ice cream) will do! :)

Today was a very full day (especially considering I slept in past 9am and didn't leave the house until a little before 12pm). I visited STA travel (again). I now have my Italy, Ireland, and Paris trips all planned out. YAY! I just need to go pay for the Paris trip this weekend and then I'm done! After that I went to the Carphone Warehouse at Tottenham Court Road to top off my cell phone. Then I walked to Trafalgar Square via Leicester Square. (I stopped in at some used book stores along the way.) On my way, I saw this cool pub (actually I had seen it before, but this time I had my camera out). Guess what its name was... The Bear & Staff. yes. I now have a pub. and staff. :) I thought it was funny. Anyway, the sun was out today (hooray!) and Trafalgar Square was full of people. It was lovely. If it had been a bit warmer, I would have just sat on the steps and people watched. I went into the National Gallery for a bit and browsed a few rooms. I especially liked a room that had three paintings by Joseph Mallord William Turner and two by Claude. They were pretty landscapes and my favorites were the ones filled with mist and ruins and rippling seas.

Later, I met up with Anne and we window shopped (although we did actually get some scarfs that were on sale and some cute cards). For dinner we met Bethany and her roommate, Aubrey, in Harrow (which is the area were everyone but us lives). We went to O'neills. Finally, I've been there! It is a really neat chain. An Irish pub with pretty cheap prices--how much cooler can you get? I got fish and chips, which were good, but for some reason didn't really agree with my stomach (so I think I'll stay away from fish for a while). For dessert, Anne and I shared an apple and cinnamon tart with vanilla ice cream (hence my blog title). It was very tasty. We also had a bite of Bethany and Aubrey's chocolate cake, which was delicious, too.

And now I'm eating some grapes. I love grapes.

This is my pub. ;)

A fountain in Trafalgar Square. (I'm a bit obsessed with sunlight right now.)

Dancing is like dreaming with your feet!

~ Constanze (This quote would also have been appropriate considering the play we saw: "Dancing is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire." ~ Author Unknown)

I only had one class today. It was Shakespeare and we discussed last night's play. It was a good discussion. Most people were more favorable to it than I was. Afterward, I basically hung out in the student lounge. I read Jane Eyre. And talk a lot with people. I talked with this girl who goes to Patrick's school about their theatre (and the Much Ado production that I had seen). There were lots of people going in and out and it was fun to just listen and talk about...stuff...

Eventually, I left with a small group to run an errand and then we made our way to the theatre for the production we saw tonight. There was this nice pub underneath the theatre so we had dinner there. I had a sir loin and mushroom sandwich on brown bread with chips. mmmmm. Then we got some snacks and headed upstairs to the theatre.

It was an interesting play (titled: Unbroken). The theatre was really small (a black box theatre!). And the stage was very shallow (with a screen between it and the audience). There were two actors who played three characters each. It was a play of brief sexual encounters, which were danced out (interpretively) for us to see. It was very intriguing and I was a bit mesmerized. It was also really short--only 50 minutes long! This means we were able to come home early! I am very tired, so I was happy about that development. :)

M.O.A.I. doth sway my life...

thus says Malvolio, who was surprisingly fun and innovative in the play we saw tonight. But I'm skipping ahead. ;)

Tuesday
This day was not very exciting. Just classes and reading. I had a headache all day though, which made it special. :P

Wednesday
Today (our looongest day of the week) went well. Our first class, Theatre, was more engaging than last week. We talked about some theatre history (the pageant plays!), did a read through of the script we had read for homework, and discussed the play we saw last week (Private Lives). Then we had our Britain Today course. We mostly talked about the Stuart line of monarchs, focusing on James I and Charles I. Then, to give more life to the description, we visited the Banquet House, where Charles I was in fact executed. You can do that in London. "Oh! You're studying that in history? Well, lets just go visit the site were it actually happened hundreds of years ago and then it will be so much more exciting and real!" ;) It's pretty cool.

Then a few of us wandered around the West End to find a place to eat. We found a little Italian restaurant, which was tasty (but a bit too expensive in my opinion). I had Bruschetta and Spaghetti. They took a long time to serve us, but it was okay because we made it to the theatre in plenty of time to see... Twelfth Night! It was a good show. Unfortunately, I'm ashamed to admit that I started to fall asleep. It wasn't because I was bored! (although I have seen and been involved with Twelfth Night a lot.) I was just really tired. And our seats were kind of uncomfortable. We had no leg room. And we were up really high with a rail in front of us that we had to peer around. It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't very comfortable. I felt that overall it was a good show, but that some of the actors didn't take a lot of risks. Malvolio (played by Derek Jacobi, who has been in many things including Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet as Claudius) was the most interesting portrayal to me. He was pretty hammy and looked like he was enjoying being goofy. It was hilarious to see Sir Andrew and Sir Toby together, because Sir Andrew was a giant (very tall!) and Sir Toby was rather small. It was pretty funny. Oh, and Viola was played by Victoria Hamilton (who--for you BBC Pride & Prejudice fans--was Mrs. Forster in said production). :)

A nice bonus to the night was that we got out of the play at 10pm, which meant getting home around 11pm (which is around when Othello got out last week!). Yay for getting home before midnight!

This is a picture I took of the ceiling of the Banquet House.

This is a picture I took (on a different day) outside the theater we went to tonight.

weekdays go by fast!

Nothing really new today. Classes went by quickly and satisfactorily. I went to the store again on the way home.

The only real thing of notice is that I'm still having problems with my Internet. It's causing me real grief. If I cussed, I would be doing it right now. So just use your imaginations. :P

I HATE technology!

whew. Glad to get that off my chest. As you can probably guess I've had some trouble. But I'll start my narrative further back at the beginning of the weekend.

Saturday
On this morning, I got up rather early for a weekend. I opened my mom's Valentine's Day card/present to me and Patrick's letter. It was so nice to have mail that morning! And I got a surprise when I went downstairs for breakfast, because Patrick's present had come in the mail. yay! :) It was a nice start to the day.

I had gotten up early (not because I couldn't wait any longer to open my mail, but) because I had an appointment with STA travel to finish planning my Italy trip. I did that (it's done and paid for!) and Bethany (who is accompanying me) was there as well to show her passport and pay her half. Afterward, I went with her to Camden Town where we had lunch and looked in on a few shops. But it wasn't really striking me as a good place to look for boots (which I still haven't found. grr.), so I headed off to Covent Garden. Once I got there, I quickly aborted my plan and decided to go home, because...everyone in London seemed to be shopping! On Valentine's Day! sheesh! You would think that (if you had your partner with you) you would want to do something romantic. But no. People just want to shop. :P So I decided to leave the fray and go back to outer London--where it is sane--to wait out Valentine's Day.

I rested, did homework, and then Anne and I went out for dinner and a movie. Ros was heading out at the same time so she gave us a ride into town. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the restaurant we wanted (O'Niells), so we headed down to the theatre to see if there would be a good place to eat there. We ended up in this "cafe" by a bowling alley in the same building as the theatre. (We thought it was pretty cool that there is a bowling alley so close.) It was fine, except our hamburgers (or cheeseburger in Anne's case) were the toughest things I have had in a long time. bleh. It was so bad that it was funny. oh well. Then we went to the theatre to see He's Just Not That Into You. We were pretty early so we got some ice cream. (They had 31 Flavors in the Theater! although it didn't have 31 flavors...) I got two scoops of my favorite (Gold Medal Ribbon) as a Valentine's Day treat to myself. The movie was pretty good. It was very funny and cute and not completely cliche (but it was a romantic comedy, so, ya know). It was a bit like Love Actually, in that it had all sorts of different plots with characters that were somewhat connected. I really liked Gennifer Goodwin's and Justin Long's plot. And Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck (although not my favorite actors) were pretty sweet. The audience was really fun. We were very vocal. Everyone laughed and booed and gasped and it was quite rowdy sometimes. I really enjoyed it. We got the bus back (although we had some trouble finding our second station), which was nice--less walking in the cold! Oh! And I got to talk to Patrick on iChat, which was a nice Valentine's present, too. :)

Sunday
I finally got to sleep in! YAY! I slept in until 10am. woohoo! I spent the morning eating breakfast and finishing "volume the first" of Jane Eyre. I'm really enjoying re-reading it. To break up the day a bit, I decided to walk to the grocery store. I got a bit lost (I've never been to the one close to home before), but I didn't mind. It was nice to be out, just walking, not really caring about the time. I did finally get there (and on my way I found that restaurant that we had wanted to go to the night before! argh!). It was very big and I stocked up on a few things. Then I walked home (via a road that goes by our tube station, which will be handy to know about). I did homework and then got to iChat with mom and my sibs. :) That was fun, but dad wasn't home from basketball yet. :( I had some soup for dinner and Ros let me have some challah bread with it (yum! yum!). Then it was off to do more homework and chatting with people. I read my article for my novel seminar. It was pretty interesting, but I'll have to re-read it and take more notes, before I can completely absorb it.

Then. it. happened. My stupid computer wouldn't let me get on the Internet. I had service (full bars), but it kept saying I had no IP address or, eventually, that I had a self-assigned one and that it couldn't connect to the Internet. I have still not figured out WHY it happened and I am really freaked out that it might happen again. I sort of have it fixed for now, I guess. It's really annoying, because it's my only way to contact people back home. I was pretty upset. I stayed up until almost 2am dealing with it. Luckily, Anne let me get on her computer and Tom Dickson gave me some tech support while I tried to puzzle it out. grrr. I'm just glad that night is over with.

Life is a bath. All paddle about in its great pool.

~Seneca, 1st century AD. I could have also done : "I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath..." which is from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. She would have been very fitting to quote after a trip to Bath. :)

Today was a long day. Again. I got up at 6:30am--actually I woke up at 6am and did not really get back to sleep before the alarm went off. (ugh.) Nicole and I (Anne didn't come 'cause she's sick) :( got to Paddington Station in time and our group caught the 9am train to Bath Spa. It was a pretty quick train ride--only an hour and a half. Once we got there we started seeing things right away. (We also started shivering right away because it was COLD.) Bath Abbey is very impressive and interesting to look at. Its inner design draws from nature, which is really cool. After that, and before we continued our tour, we all scattered to have lunch. I had packed a lunch, but I went with some other girls and sat for a bit. (Beth and I shared a hot chocolate with very tasty whipped cream. mmmmm.) Then we met with everyone to get back to touring. Our big group split into two smaller groups and I went with the one that visited the Roman Baths first. We had an audio tour. The place was SO interesting. There's so much history and clues left to what it would have been like to be there back then. I could see how it was thought to be a mystical place of healing--it looked magical. Oh! And one of the best parts was that... the SUN came out! Yay! It exists and it's warm! :) After we finished with that, Martin took us on a tour and explained the Georgian part of the town of Bath. We saw lots of very cool (and impressive) architectural accomplishments from the time period and Martin explained their significance as we went.

After that, the official part of the day was over (it was about 4pm by then) and we spent about an hour just walking around and viewing Bath's shops. At one point we heard an accordion player play (and sing) a Beatles' song--and this time I remember what it was! (Michelle) I was happy. :) Then Beth, Jessica, and I had a very nice (and relatively cheap!) dinner at The Huntsmen. (I had a hamburger with chips.) Then we got some ice cream and made our way back to the train station. It's a good thing Bath is so small, because it was dark and cold again by then and it would not have been nice to wander about for too long. I fell asleep for some of the ride back and I was very thankful that our tube ride home wasn't too long. (Although some guys speaking another language--maybe Russian?--took Nicole and my pictures on the tube. :P Nicole thought they might have been drunk.) Anyway, now I'm home and tired, so good night!

(P.S. Collapsible bicycles are very cool. And useful looking, too.)

This is a view of one of the Roman Baths (with the Abbey in the background).

This is me in awe of the Baths. (Can you see the steam rising from this one?)

This is the night that either makes me or fordoes me quite...

not really. I just like that quote from Othello. :)

So here's what's been going on the past few days...

Tuesday
In the morning, I went to STA Travel and spent a lot of time working out plans for traveling. I got all these possible times and dates, but I couldn't set anything in stone because I needed to check with people first (travel buddies, hosts, etc). Then I went to school to eat my lunch and I found people making Valentine's Day cards (in the lounge) for everyone in our program, which was cute, so I helped them for a bit. Then I went to my only class of the day (my Novel class). Our prof is SO funny. And nice. She has a very silly sense of humor. As a part of the course, we all have to do seminars (where we research an article or subject about one of our books and then present to the class and lead discussion). Bethany and I are doing the first two (on Jane Eyre). I haven't read my article yet, but I'll let you know how it goes. Afterward, while I was waiting for Anne to get out of class, I shared an English Milky Way with another student. It was a very weird experience. :) They're called Milky Ways, but they're more like caramel-ish tasting Three Musketeer bars. Very strange.

Once everyone was done with class, a small group of us headed over to the area of the theater (we always do this to make sure we can find it), where we were to see a performance of Private Lives. We heard a soprano saxophone when we were taking the tube--not quite as good as the real thing, but close enough. I was happy. We ended up getting dinner at a Chinese restaurant close to the theater. I had sweet & sour pork with white rice. It was very tasty, but it cost extra to have the white rice (which I thought was stupid) so it ended up costing a bit more than I would have liked. :P The real catastrophe was once we got to the theater...I realized I had lost/forgot my ticket! I was SO mad at myself. It was so unlike me and I was going to be so upset if I couldn't see the play--especially because it was for a class. And the professor who was coming to the show (who could possibly help me out) was late (I later found out it was tube trouble--a common problem here). Fortunately, she arrived just in time and was able to produce a list that enabled the ticket people to print me another one. YAY! The play was really good. It was very dated, but not in a bad way. There were lots cocktails, silk evening gowns, cigarettes (:P), dawlings, misogynistic comments, etc. It was a little window into the lives of four people for a brief period of time. I thoroughly enjoyed it. As always on play nights, the ride home was long and I was very tired. My eyes hurt from having to stay open. On our walk home, Anne noted that the sky was very blue (not a normal black or grey). It was and really pretty and clear. We could actually see the moon and stars. It was a nice ending to the day.

Wednesday
This day was (and will always be) a looooong class day. We have two three-hour classes right in a row. It started off having to stand in front of the AHA building in the cold for a while (the person who had to unlock it had bus trouble). Our first class was theatre. Our prof is really nice--he's older and he has a lovely voice, is very big and tall, and wears a pink scarf. Unfortunately, this class period was rather boring. It was mostly introductory/history stuff and he read a lot (from notes and quotes, not from a play), which--despite his nice voice--was not very engaging. I hope that class gets better. It probably will. After that we had a one hour lunch break, so I wolfed down some food and rushed over to STA to tell them to go ahead on booking things for the trip to Italy (before prices went up). Then I rushed back to AHA just in time for our Britain Today class. It was an alright class. We visited two churches. First, a Protestant one and then a Catholic one (the only "old" catholic church in England). (By "old," I mean old in English standards, which means, like, the 13th century.) We did some cool contrast and compare. And talked about the similar situations that both groups faced during the Reformation period. The last part we spent back in the class room, which was fine except that it was rather hot so some people got drowsy.

After that, we took a loooong bus ride to Hackney to see Othello. It was a longer ride than we anticipated and at one point people started worrying that we were going the wrong direction, but a nice man informed us were weren't (so our minds were appeased). I had a Subway sandwich for dinner once we finally got there. We were there pretty early, but in this case it wasn't very nice because we had to wait in the cold outside the theatre (just like at the beginning of the day). We waited a really long time. The play was very good. I've never seen Othello before and I really enjoyed it. Again (like AMND), you'll have to talk to me in person to get all the details and my opinions. We learned at intermission that we were seeing 3 understudies, including...Iago! (that's right, someone had to step into one of Shakespeare's greatest characters--with more lines than Hamlet!--at the last minute. pretty intimidating.) He was very good for an understudy (originally he would have played Cassio), although he did stutter a few lines (not noticeable to the average theatre goer), but he really was too young and handsome and likable to play a proper Iago. I liked him though. The other very interesting thing to learn at intermission was that Desdemona (who I really liked) was being played by the actress who plays Tonks in the Harry Potter movies! Crazy, eh? She was so good. Her death scene brought tears to my eyes and made the entire audience unsettled. It was a great show, but so loooong. And it started late (we learned today that it was because they had to finish the run of the play with the understudies, which means they had, like, a five minute turn around! amazing!), so we didn't get out until after 11pm. Our trip home wasn't super long, but it seemed long because it was so late. We had to take an overground train (which took forever to come!) to the underground, and then finally make the walk home. Needless to say, we were all very tired and sad that Thursday is our earliest class day...

Thursday
Today we got up early to go to Shakespeare class (that's right. the reason we were up so late is also the reason we had to get up so early. :P). Our class was fine. We just talked about the performance. Afterward, I went to the stationery store to get a folder and then went home (it was sunny!) to get a shower and do some homework reading. I read all afternoon. I'm well into Jane Eyre now (which I've read before, but it's been a long time) and I also read the next play for our Theatre class (The Second Shepherd's Pageant). I read downstairs by the fire, which was nice a toasty. I started to fall asleep at one point... Ros fed us well and we figured out our route to Paddington (yes, like the bear!) Station tomorrow (we're going to Bath!). Anne isn't feeling well so she went to bed early and I just finished making us some sandwiches for tomorrow. And now I need to finish this ridiculously long blog, so that I can go to bed. I'm not even going to do much editing. We need to get up at 6:30am tomorrow. bleh. But it's going to be a cool trip to a really cool place! So I'm excited.

This is the outside of the Protestant Church.

The Schedule (dun, dun, dun, dun...)

Well, I know you have all been anxiously awaiting this moment and here it is... my finalized class schedule! w00t! :P

Britain Today (Wednesday 2-5pm)
Shakespeare the Dramatist (Monday 10-11:30am, Thursday 9:30-11am)
Theatre: Audience and Society (Wednesday 10-1pm)
19th and 20th Century British Novel (Monday 3-5pm, Tuesday 1-2pm)

Woohoo! Britain Today is the required class that everyone takes, the theatre classes I have always planned on taking (how could one not study Shakespeare while in London?!), and the Novel class is the one I was iffy on. Even though I really enjoy reading, I don't want to spend all my time doing that while I'm here. However, I really liked the professor and her first class, so I was convinced to take it. I hope I don't regret it... I like all the subjects--I just hope I don't get bogged down by a ton of school work like I do when I'm at PLU. I will have a lot of reading to do, but I can get some of it done on the tube or in nice little cafes (like I did yesterday).

What a rainy, rainy day it was today! My feet are wet! :P I am SO sad that (after I put the forethought into actually bringing them!) my rain boots have a crack in them. Today I wore my brown Lands' End shoes that dad helped me find last year, which are nice but not waterproof at all. My socks were SOAKED by the end of the day. I hope I find (affordable) boots soon. Really soon.

Three thoughts for today: (sometimes I have many thoughts) :)

• The milk here tastes sweeter than ours. I don't know why. Maybe that's why I'm eating more cereal here... it's probably also because I've been eating smaller lunches, so I need sustenance until then! But, since I've never put sugar on my cereal, it is funny to have my cereal taste a little sweet.
• I don't know why, but I find it quite amusing that the sinks here have one tap for cold water and one for warm. In some places this means that you can only have ice cold water and (after it warms up) scalding hot water. But some sinks (like in our bathroom) have more medium temperatures. :)
• Oh, and it is okay here to jump the curb when you park. At least, I've seen a lot of cars parked that way. I guess it's because the streets are so narrow. It would be mad to try to fit four whole car widths into one street--sometimes it's hard enough to fit one or two!

So, I have now had my first day of classes. And we have two plays this week. Tomorrow we see a play called Private Lives and the next day we see Othello. I'm so excited! Now we're really off! ;)

P.S. I almost forgot to mention my Triumph for the day. I finally got to a post office! Yay!

Platform 9 and 3/4

Today was a late start again, but that's fine. I went to a Carphone Warehouse and got a Talk Mobile sim card. Yay! I have a phone and can contact people! Then I went to an Italian cafe to sit and read. I ordered Italian hot chocolate, which is more like warm pudding. Really! It was SO thick. It was definitely an experience. I don't think I'll order one again unless I can share it or at least have some milk along with it. I was pretty caffeinated after I finished it. Anyways, it was nice to just sit there and read for a while.

Then I met up with Bethany and her roommate (Aubrey) at the Leicester Square station and then Anne and Nicole at the National Gallery, but then we ended up going different ways. Bethany, Aubrey, and I went to Kings Cross and found... Platform 9 and 3/4! It was pretty exciting. We took pictures. Then we went to a pub for dinner (I can't remember the name! grrr). It was very nice. I had a chicken and bacon sandwich with chips. The man at the counter, who took our orders, was nice and joked with me when I went back up to order some apple pie to share for dessert. Afterwards I basically just came home, although I added a bit of excitement by almost forgetting my umbrella on the train. I remembered just in time to go back for it, but had to go up one station too far and then come back again. oh well.

Thought for the day: It is very confusing to have cars parked both ways on the sides of the street all over the place. As if it isn't hard enough to figure out which way the traffic is coming from! sheesh!

This is me and Bethany going through the barrier!

shopping :P

We went shopping along Oxford Street today. I don't really like shopping, unless I find what I want. I didn't find any boots or get to a post office. argh! But I did get groceries and I managed to get my phone unlocked (I think!). I just need to get a sim card for it tomorrow.

It wasn't a very exciting day, but that's fine. We're staying in tonight (watching a movie called Once) and I'm going to start figuring out any plans I want to make outside of our program.

More little things to mention

• When we went to the cafe last night, Anne got some hot chocolate. They brought her the HUGEST "cup" I have ever seen--by my standards it was a bowl with a handle--but it was nice for me 'cause she shared with me. :)
• I am having lots of difficulty getting my cell phone to work, because we should have had it "unlocked" in the States, but neither Dad or I knew anything about that. It's annoying, because I know I asked people in this program about the process and none of them told me about that part. grrrrr! I'm mad.
• Oh, and on a similarly sad note, my rain boots have a hole in them. :( Or a crack, really. So now I have to go buy boots. I hope I can find some cool ones for cheap.
• Also, on top of hearing music from Dave, we can hear someone (I think Ros said it was a younger boy) playing piano from next door. There's lots of music going on... :)
  

And we're off!

Thursday:
Thursday's dreadfully exciting morning started off wonderfully, with us getting to our tube station in time to hear that the line was canceled until a ways South of us. (Oh, and it was raining.) So, we had to trek up a hill to a bus stop, wait a long time for the 125 (which someone told us to take), only to get on that bus to find out that it would only take us up one more stop! Then we got on an 82 bus, which--thankfully--could get us near the tube station that was working, but--unfortunately--stopped at every street along the way! Argh! We arrived at the Centre very late to our Shakespeare class. We didn't miss all of it though, which was good. Our Shakespeare teacher, Jean, is hilarious. She is very theatrical with a straightforward, earthy sense of humor. I'm excited to have discussions in her class. On Monday we'll discuss our experience of A Midsummer Night's Dream (which I'll get to later!) and then start discussing the text of Othello (which I'm in the middle of reading right now).

After class, I went with a few girls to the Tate Modern, which is a museum with modern art that was built in an old power station. There were pieces from a lot of random, as well as famous, artists (for instance, we saw two Picasso's and a Dali). However, my absolute favorite exhibit was called Thirty Pieces of Silver by Cornelia Parker. oh. my. gosh. It is amazing. It isn't a painting. It's a little more like a sculpture…but it isn't. I can't really describe it here, but here is how she made it. First, she collected thousands of silver objects (cups, plates, candlesticks, a tuba, etc) from second-hand stores. Then she laid them all out in the street and arranged for a steamroller to run over them all. And what she did with all of them is hang them with some kind of wire from these grids (that are hung in the museum). But even though there are thousands of separate pieces they are arranged into thirty circles. So each of those circles is on it's own grid and is made up of smaller silver objects. They look like they're floating or on water or something. I was mesmerized by it and looking at the shadows they cast on the ground was fascinating, too. As I said, I can't really do it justice--nothing can except seeing it in person--but anyone who wants to get a better idea of it can just Google the title and artist. It's pretty amazing.

After that, we went back to the Centre. While I waited for the last class to finish, I just hung out, read, got online, and bought a notebook for class. Once everyone was done for the day, Anne and I went to the Art Store we had gone to on Tuesday (where I bought a different notebook for another class). I was very upset to find out that some stores (particularly small independents) will not accept American credit cards, because they don't have a chip in them with a pin or something (that Europe cards have). So, I'm going to have to pay with cash more than I thought, but oh well. :P Then we headed off to the West End and dinner. The most amazing thing happened on our journey. Okay, so in the tube stations there will often times be random musicians playing for money. So, on our travels that evening we came across one who was playing the saxophone. I love the saxophone. And not only was he playing the saxophone, but he was playing a Beatles song, too! It was the best thing ever! And then--as if that wasn't enough--when we got to the West End, there was another man playing guitar (I love listening to guitar, too!) and he was also playing a Beatles song! I was SO happy. It was wonderful. For dinner, Anne and I found this nice little rotisserie cafe. They had really good potatoes and served pretty big portions. (I'm not sure why everyone says we Americans are such a super-size culture, because--when it comes to food--it seems to be the same if not more so here...) After dinner we made our way to the Theatre!

We saw A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Novello performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Our first play!!! It was great. I really enjoyed it. It was an interesting, artsy interpretation, with some aspects that I appreciated more than others. I can't even begin to go into detail here, but I wrote down some interesting bits so I'll remember if anyone wants to talk about it with me later. I did really like Demetrius, Flute (Thisby), Hippolyta, Theseus, Titania... Suffice it to say I was very pleased with my first London theatre experience and I can't wait for the next one! We got out really late from the theatre and had to go all the way home on the tube (it's at least an hour trip I believe). I was SO tired. It was a very full day.


Friday:
This morning we were very sad to see it was snowing. But it didn't snow for long and we got to school without too much difficulty. (Although we were crammed on a tube at one point. I mean crammed. It was filled to capacity--or past capacity--and at some stops people wanted to get on, but couldn't.) Class was nice (we won't usually have it on Friday, but because of the cancellations earlier this week, we had to make up). I LOVE Martin (our Britain Today professor). He is a lovely, older (father-ish) English man (he looks very intellectual). And he has such a nice soft-spoken voice and he talks about history, architecture, politics, etc in such an interesting and conversational way. I love to listen to him. He lectured for about an hour or so and then we headed off to the British Museum! The British Museum is HUGE (of course) and we only glimpsed a small section of it (Rooms 50, 49, 41). But that's fine because it's really close to our school, so we can just stop by whenever we want (yay for London's free museums!!!) and take it a little bit at a time. I'm really excited for that.

After that (and lunch, which I packed), we were off to the Thames! (We walked and took a bus for a short ways.) We all took a boat along the Thames. There is such an amazing collection of architecture here. I saw the Globe! Yay! We got off at the Tower of London and spent the rest of our time there. However, by the time we got there, we only had about an hour to spend looking around, so we did not get to see even close to everything. (I did see a lot of crown jewels!) I definitely want to go back. It was AMAZING! So beautiful, impressive, and scary all at the same time! Basically, I went in the White Tower, the Waterloo Barracks (plus Jewel House, I think), and then we walked the wall from the Salt Tower to the Martin Tower (I believe). However, we didn't get to go in the Bloody Tower or the Wakefield Tower (i.e. the torture tower), which we really wanted to see. :( So, obviously, I really want to go back. I need more time to see the other towers and to just look around. The whole thing is amazing. It's surreal to be in it--it's like you are transported to another time. (London's like that in general, but especially there.)

After that, we were free to go off on our own. I went with Anne, Alice, and Bethany to meet a PLU friend of Anne's and Alice's (who I know, too), Stevie. She's already been in London for a semester and she took us to Sirena Cafe, where we ate Italian food. (I had a huge, tasty chicken caesar salad.) Then we went to a cafe for a while (Cafe 88, I think it was called). After that Bethany and I headed home, but--since we live in totally different areas--we split up at the tube station. I was very proud that I made it back all by myself and didn't get lost or confused at all. yay! It was fine--I read Othello on the tube. And when I got back Ros gave me some "cake," but it looked and tasted more like apple pie. It was quite yummy. I talked with her and Sarah a bit (about clothes, shopping, credit card theft, etc), before coming up here to write this loooong report. whew!

late night musings...

Some small things I haven't mentioned yet...

• On our first night, Ros gave us hot water bottles which stayed warm all through the night! It was pretty neat. and cozy.
• Our homestay dad (Dave) is really funny. He's a musician, so we hear lots of music when we're around (especially when we were snowed in). He makes lots of silly jokes or comments and he and Ros banter together all the time (it's really funny). Oh, and he loves their cats. :)
• I got in trouble for asking where the trash can was--apparently it's only a rubbish bin (nothing else!).
• Their daughter Sarah (who lives at home and is 21) works at an agency for actors. One of their clients is Robert Pattinson (Edward from Twilight and Cedric Diggory from HP 4), which is kinda cool.
• Our homestay location is different from most of the others. We're pretty much straight North from the Center and most of the others are Northwest.

Well, I need to go to bed, so that's it for now!

Orientation

We had orientation today. Finally! It went pretty well, I think. We're a pretty big group of 34 students. There weren't any problems today (everyone was really chatty) and I'm hoping that it will be a nice, friendly group throughout the entire program. We did a lot of talking about technicalities of the program, schedules & field trips, ways to stay safe, etc. It got a little boring, but I guess it's necessary. A lot of people were late because the Metropolitan line was not working properly. Ours was fine (so far we've taken the Northern line from Woodside Park and then transferred at Tottenham Court Road to the Central line, which we take to Holborn). Oh! And we got our Oyster cards! That means we don't have to pay for the tube tickets anymore--we just swipe these cards and we're in! YAY!

After talking for a while and handing out stuff (we got to hear from the theatre teacher--yay!), Martin gave us a tour of the streets surrounding our school. It was very helpful. I had no idea how many useful stores and cafes were nearby. But we did stand out like sore thumbs as a bunch of tourists (we were a big group of college-age studens clustering around one man who was pointing stuff out to us). :P

After we were done, a communication professor from PLU (Ed Inch), who has been in London and will be leaving soon, took us PLU students out to a pub. And it was there that I...got my first Fish & Chips!!! Woohoo! After that Anne, my friend Bethany, and Beth's roommate Aubrey did some shopping. I got a highlighter (I still need to get a notebook or something--I wish I had brought one from home! grr.) and we got some groceries to make lunches and some snacks. It was cool walking around Central London in the evening, just looking for shops or the station (although there was a bit more smoke than I would have liked).

That's basically all that happened today. It went by pretty fast. I'll be happy when our schedule's are more settled. I'm still deciding on whether I should take a fourth class or not...I keep thinking up pros and cons for each side...it's a dilemma... We have to decide by Monday evening, so I'll make up my mind by then!

Exploring London for the first time...

So, because of the snow and ice, school was canceled again. However, we did not let that deter us! Anne, Nicole, and I took the tube into London, which was super easy--yay! We learned how to get to school and when we got there Martin (our program director) gave us a tour of the building. He is so nice and the building is so cool. There are lots of staircases and little rooms and it's much bigger inside than it looks from the outside. We are all really excited to go there tomorrow and get started and meet everyone.

After that we were off to explore London! We took the tube farther down and when we got off we were in the West End (i.e. London's Broadway). EEK! Anne and I can't wait to go to plays there! Then we walked to The National Gallery, which is right across from...Trafalgar Square. (Don't worry Patrick, Anne got your picture.) Oh my gosh! Everything about London is so impressive! The buildings are so huge and ornate. I took lots of pictures, but they can't do any of what we saw justice. (Speaking of pictures, I am having huge difficulties getting my pictures onto facebook, so sorry about the delay in photographic evidence!) Anyways, we wandered down--passing important-looking-building after important-looking-building and around St. James's Park--until we reached...Big Ben! Of course, that means we also saw the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey! There were all HUGE! We didn't go into any of them, but we did go into a "little" church next to Westminster Abbey called St. Margret's Church (I think). There are so many old/historic buildings--I couldn't take it all in and I definitely can't remember all their names. There were people with memorial plaques, in the church we went into, who died before the United States even existed! We kept wandering and we eventually made it to the edge of the Thames. After that, we started making our way back to the tube station to go home. On our way Anne and I stopped to get post cards; we also stopped in an art store and visited the National Portrait Gallery.

Eventually, we made it back--tired and a bit wet. So, that was our adventure for the day. I am quite satisfied. Now that we know more about our schedules (hopefully we will find out about the rest tomorrow), we can make plans and a list of everything we want to do. Oh! And this Thursday we are going to see our first play. Ready? It's...A Midsummer Night's Dream! Seriously. Isn't that hilarious? I'm really excited, though. We will have seen a play within our first week!

So far it's been pretty amazing. I'll let you know how our first day at school goes. :)

First Day!

Hello everyone,
I've never really blogged before, but I thought now would be a good time to try! So, here it goes! I, Sara, am in...London! (hence the title) I'll be here until May studying for the semester with a program called ILACA London (through AHA International). I suppose I had better start with my journey over here.

My plane was supposed to leave Sea-Tac at 9pm on Saturday and arrive in Heathrow at 2:15pm on Sunday. However, apparently our plane was struck by lightning as it landed in Heathrow earlier on Saturday, so it had to be checked over before it could fly back to Washington. Consequently, we did not board the plane until about 12am and we didn't actually leave until 1am (because they had to de-ice the plane's wings). fun. The plane ride itself wasn't bad. I got to watch Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which was nice. Because I had a whole row to myself, I was able to stretch out and sleep for a bit. yay! We did not land until 6:30pm (or somewhere near that time). Going through customs was no big deal and, after searching around, my roommate (Anne, who was on the same flight) and I found our shuttle driver. (He had my name on a sign!) I was quite a bit weirded out by the whole driving on the "wrong" side of the road thing. I was sitting on the left side of the car and I kept thinking that the car was driving itself because no one was sitting in front of me! Finally, (at about 8pm) we got to our homestay family's house. Everyone is very nice. We were surprised to discover that another PLU student (Nicole), who we know, is also staying here. Crazy coincidence! We ate dinner, gave our presents to our homestay mom, showered (you have to be really quick so you don't take all the hot water), and did most of our unpacking. Because our bodies are still on Pacific Coast time, it was kind of a rough night. We went to bed at about 11pm, but I woke up at about 2am. We (Anne and I) gave up trying to sleep at 4am and turned on the lights for half an hour to putter around our room a bit. I think I slept a bit for the last couple of hours before our alarm woke us at 7:20am today.

Our first day has been interesting. We got snowed in! It is very pretty outside--quite picturesque! Orientation had to be postponed, because almost all of the public transportation is down. So, today (instead of going into school and getting our schedules and what not) we are hanging out around the house, finishing unpacking, and checking out the Internet! Our room is nice. The stairs are so steep and the upstairs is just a little landing with doors leading off to the rooms and bathroom and toilet (which is in a room all by itself). I hope the transitions of living in an English household aren't too hard. There are differences, but our homestay mom seems really nice and full of lots of information and advice. I foresee small eating issues (knowing my picky-ness), but I'll try to just eat whatever there is to eat.

I hope I can keep up this blog thing. I don't know who will want to read it, but hopefully it will be interesting to some people and I'll have it to look back on later! :)