Hard to say goodbye

It's been over a week now since I got home from London, and I don't know if it's taken me this long to write about the last week because I'm a procrastinator or because if I don't write about it in some way it's not over...

That week really was eaten up by our papers. I finished my second art history paper Sunday night and edited it Monday afternoon. Monday morning was an art history field trip to the Tate Britain. I went there so many times on this trip. I really liked it, and there's still a lot I never got around to seeing.

We went back to papers after the field trip. I turned mine in mid afternoon and then, back in my room, I found out that the blue book had gone up online, so I wasted time with that for a while before attempting my English paper. Didn't get very far, so I got Lissa and Bill to take a walk (funny how Starbucks happened to be in that direction...) and then finally wrote some. My paper was on images in Vanity Fair; a lot of the characters had portraits of each other and those paintings reinforced the false images they held of one another. I think it was a decent paper.

Tuesday we had our last English class and talked about Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. I really disliked it while I was reading it but liked it a bit better after talking about it. Not much but a little. I spent the afternoon researching for my last art history paper (I wrote on Constable and how his landscapes were influenced by his memories and how that changed), had Chinese food for dinner, hung out with Gabor for a while before returning to paper writing. That was also the day my friend Maya clued me into Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog (drhorrible.com), a Joss Whedon musical that was available online for a while. It's amazing, is available on iTunes, and... yeah. Watch it.

Wednesday we didn't have class in the morning, so I went to the centre early and worked some on my art history research. You have to realize though, "worked" is often a euphemism for "read some stuff vaguely related to the topic and didn't take notes" or, if I was on my computer at the time, "talking to Kari and Maya". However, I did manage to get everything done.

We had a field trip to the National Gallery (I wish I'd had more time there, really neat gallery and two visits was not enough). After class Martin bought us all coffee (cocoa, of course) and then most of the day was spent "working", though I was careful both those days to eat outside as much as possible. We had some really nice weather as well as some rain (I think) and it was depressing to be tied to my computer.

Thursday was the last official day of Yale-in-London. I got some work done before our field trip to Dickens's house. The house wasn't hugely exciting but there was a really neat painting called Dickens's Dream. I almost bought a poster of it but then didn't... kind of wish I had. Oh well.

The afternoon involved paper swapping and editing, and I turned them both in around 4:30. It was such a relief, and I expected to feel really happy on the walk home, but instead I started getting hugely nostalgic, even a little teary-eyed. I was thinking things like "this is the last time I'll walk back this way, the last time I'll go by the British museum". It didn't end up being true, I walked that way the next day, but at the time it felt pretty darn depressing.

We went out to Pizza Express as a group, which was fun, and then Lissa, Bill, Nell, and I went "night sight-seeing". We took the Tube to Green Park and walked to Buckingham Palace. It was pretty at night, lit up some, but not overly exciting. We wandered back until we got to Piccadilly Circus, where we caught the Tube back. Lissa, Bill and I went to the pub we went to on our first Sunday, which sort of made things feel like they came full circle but also reinforced my usual conflicted feelings about time: I always feel like it's gone quickly and I want more of it, but at the same time I feel like I've been there forever and am completely comfortable.

Lissa and Nell were leaving the next morning, so we said goodbyes (or didn't, in Lissa's case, and just said goodnight). I went back to my room and randomly decided to start packing, while talking to my mom on Skype. I stayed up till 1 a.m. or so but by the time I went to sleep I was pretty much packed.

The next morning I went to Portabello Road Market, the market featured in the movie Notting Hill. Despite getting a little turned around on the way there and back, I had a really good time. I bought a necklace for myself, scarves for my mom, myself, and friends, and several books (there was a nice used bookstore along the road). When I got back to the dorm, I had lunch with Bill, who left that afternoon, and then I went to Charing Cross and checked out a bunch of bookstores. I got a few books and then headed back to my room for a book break.

Around 4 I set out to meet my friend Kati (Demetra!). We did the Summer Writing Program (SWP) at Carleton together a couple years ago and she was in London studying at LSE. We met up near Charing Cross Tube station, had coffee, went to dinner, and then went to see Spamalot! I had bought a ticket for 10 GBS earlier in the day and on the way to the theatre Kati stopped and found she was able to get a ticket too.

The theatre wasn't full so I was able to move down and sit in the front row of the balcony with Kati. The show was a lot of fun, not quite as good as the movie, but the music was great. I wasn't a fan of the dancing girls, but I thought they did a good job translating key moments (the Black Knight, the Knights who say Ni) to the stage.

I said goodbye to Kati in the Tube station and took the Tube to Russell Square for the last time, walked down the street to the dorm for the last time (there I go with nostalgia again).

I finished packing before breakfast Saturday morning, said goodbye to Matt, Amy, Hayley and Conor at breakfast. I'm 99% sure that I'm the only person in the group who made it to breakfast every single morning. (I'm also sure Hayley and Bill would've, if they hadn't gone away some weekends, and that Conor was very very close). I got my suitecase from my room and caught the Tube at Kings Cross to Heathrow.

I relaxed on the Tube and didn't have too much trouble getting to the check in. The people at Delta asked me if I'd be willing to go on a later flight, stay a night in NYC and get $1000 of Delta money. I said sure, but they didn't end up needing me to. The time in the gate before my flight went fairly quickly.

The plane ride was long, about 9 hours. The guy sitting next to me was nice, a grad of Carleton who was probably in his late twenties and had been working in London for a year. I read some, slept some, watched a movie. Was pretty tired when I got to Atlanta.

Funniest (and most annoying) thing that happened as I went through customs was having to wait in a long agricultural line because I had forgotten to eat my apple from breakfast on the plane. A bag-sniffing dog got me in trouble. Oh well. It meant that by the time I got my bags through and checked in, I had maybe an hour to sit in the gate.

I talked to my parents, to Kari, to Maya online, watched the final installment of Dr. Horrible (so sad!) and then flew home. My parents met me at baggage claim with balloons (I love my parents) and took me home. I gave out my presents and talked to my mom a bit before going to bed. I've been sleeping so much since coming home.

Today I stapled all my tickets and programs and such from things I went to into the journal I kept on the trip. Hopefully it'll help me remember that yes, I did do a lot of things while I was there, even though sometimes I feel like I wasted a lot of time and didn't see enough. Six weeks is so much longer than most people get to spend in foreign cities on trips (we had only days in each city on Italy tour last year), and I did my best.

In case you can't tell from this blog, I had a wonderful time. I'm so very, very glad I did Yale in London. Despite my complaining about papers, the classes were really awesome, the professors were outstanding, and my classmates were so much fun. The city was beautiful, and comfortable, and always interesting. I really hope to go back, and soon. I could even see myself living in London someday (hopefully with a well-paying job, haha).

Whenever I leave something, it almost feels unreal, like the whole experience never happened. I'm home now, and it almost feels like I've been here for weeks and weeks, not 9 days. But London was real, however it feels now, and it was amazing.

Papers? What papers?

No, of course I shouldn't be working on my paper that's due tomorrow, or the two that are due Thursday, what are you talking about? It makes much more sense for me to update my blog!

This week flew by. Last Sunday afternoon I met Blair at her hotel in Piccadilly Circus and we wandered back toward my dorm, stopping first to get hot drinks and gossip. I took her by the PMC on the way back and we had fun checking out some of the crazy architectural structures that were constructed around the Square. I especially liked this one that looked like an upside down banana peel. We went for Chinese food, and later met up with Bill and Lissa and went to a pub called the Doric Arch.

Monday was Research Day for most of us. We didn't have class because the Session 2 kids were having their first day, and it was our only chance to go to the library for our paper that's due tomorrow. It was a frenzied day of looking through books and trying to figure out exactly what we were writing on. Toward the end of the day we found out that they were going to let us pick up a couple books to use this weekend---if they hadn't, we would've been completely screwed.

On Tuesday we left for our three day trip to Bath. Our first stop (well, second. Our first was picking up our professor at a bus stop in Richmond) was Stonehenge. We only stayed about half an hour. It was kind of weird to see it without a ton of people milling around. No drums either. And as you can see it was a nice day (well, at that point it was). Kind of looks unreal, doesn't it? The whole experience of going there for the solstice was kind of unreal too, though, so maybe it is no matter what. Someone mentioned that it was smaller than they expected, and I definitely agree. But it's still kind of amazing.

Our next stop was Stourhead Gardens, this gorgeous estate, owned originally by the Hoare family. They created this landscape garden that basically imitated landscape paintings. It was carefully set up so that you would walk around and pause every so often to look at different "views". There were little temples and cottages and grottos scattered around the lake, and we walked around and looked at them. It rained on and off but we were all armed with umbrellas and raincoats. Funniest part: when each of our professors in turn stopped to "tie their shoelaces"... in the bushes...

The garden was amazing, and I loved the lake. I think on this trip I keep seeing places I would love to live, if I ever have millions and millions of dollars. This is one of them. I joke that I'll just go back to my thousands of photos someday and pick out which bits I want to use when planning my house. Ha. Wish that were even remotely possible.

We went inside the house at Stourhead, which was also pretty cool. As always I really liked the library. They had some neat paintings, including one of Richard Wilson's Lake Nemi paintings (which I may write about in my paper), and several showing the Epiphany scene of Mary, Jesus and the Magi. There were sheep in the field in front of the house. Before we went in, I thought there was one loose and running with someone... turned out to be a dog. Oops.

I absolutely love the sky in most of these pictures. I am sure I have more interesting shots that have the little temples or grottos, but I'm a sucker for blue skies with clouds.

We arrived in Bath, at the George Hotel. Lissa and I were rooming together. Our professors took us out to dinner at Pizza Express. I think the meal lasted a good two and a half hours, between some people getting starters and most of us having dessert. MMmm I had margherita pizza and chocolate cake. There was also wine, which was really good. It was neat to see our professors outside of class; I was sitting next to Martin Postle and I talked cycling with him (he rides to work every day, and my dad does pretty often too), and we all talked about other stuff with him. He used to be the Senior Curator at the Tate Britain, is probably one of the most preeminent Reynolds scholars, and we get to not only take classes with him but also have dinner with him. And he's just a normal person, except he (and Andrew Sanders does too) knows a lot of really interesting stuff. I guess Yale should prepare me for things like this, but it still gets me.

A group of us wandered around Bath for a bit after dinner, since it was still light. Bill and I saw an older woman dragging a dog by a leash... only it wasn't a real dog, it was plastic. Crazy.

The next morning we did a walking tour of Bath. It was pouring rain for most of the time, and we got pretty miserable. Nell was sharing my umbrella and we started singing rain songs, and eventually reprised "Little Bunny Foo Foo." We stopped frequently, going inside the Pump Room, where we drank a bit of nasty restorative water, to the Assembly Rooms, which were boring but where we got hot drinks (mmm cocoa with marshmallows) and to One Royal Crescent, a Georgian house. We had a break for lunch, and then we did an audio tour of the Roman Baths. A little boring at first but it got better, and at the end of it some of us had tea in the Pump Room (I of course had cocoa again. More marshmallows. It was a good day).

Most of the class (including the professors) went to a spa after this, but Nell, Bill, and I opted not to. We wandered back to the hotel, stopping at a bookstore, and then reconvened to go to dinner. We found an Indian restaurant, which was delicious, and then we wandered some more. We made our way to the river and walked along it for a while, admiring especially the ducks. We have seen a lot of ducks lately, and somehow it never gets old. It started raining again, which was not quite as fun. My umbrella developed a habit of flipping inside out. The first time it did that it was funny. The next five times, not so much.

We checked out of our hotel on Thursday morning and drove to Salisbury, where we walked around the Cathedral, its Close, and the Water Meadows. It figures a lot in John Constable's paintings, which I think I'm going to write about in my last paper, so it was pretty cool to see where he'd been painting. When we were on our way in, some guy from BBC South was filming us for something about tourism, and when we got back I found the link on the BBC website. You can't see me in it, but look for my class at around 43 seconds: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7500327.stm The Cathedral was beautiful inside, and hilariously the jazz band from the Cathedral school was playing Born to Be Wild when we were in there. They were really good too!

We walked through the Water Meadows to see Constable's view. Things were pretty flooded, and it actually started raining again so we went to a pub for lunch. It stopped raining while we were inside, and I took as many pictures on the way back to the bus as I had on the way to the pub, since the sky was now blue and (you guessed it) had pretty clouds. Too bad I can't paint, I could've been the next Constable and made a bunch of cloud studies. Instead I just take endless (and not always very good) photographs. Ah well.

We then headed to Wilton House, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke. A big old mansion, it was filled with paintings and sculptures. There was an entire room with paintings by Van Dyck, several Reynolds, and a series of Wilson paintings of the house and its grounds, which was pretty neat. The grounds were lovely, with a Palladian bridge, an obelisk that purported to be Egyptian but didn't seem to be at all, a Whispering Seat where you could whisper messages to the person at the other end, a lovely little rose garden, and some kind of Japanese-like garden with red bridges. Another place I would love to live. Well, not the house, really. Even though I like art, I wouldn't want to be so relentlessly surrounded by it. But I loved the grounds of the house.

We got back around 7 and were all pretty exhausted. We made a Waitrose trip to get food for dinner. My room turned out to smell terrible! The carpet was wet, no idea why, and it smelled just awful, so they let me sleep in another room. It's starting to smell better but it's been almost three days, they washed the carpet I think and left the window open, and I still am not ready to move back in. So I'm down on the ground floor by myself.

On Friday Patty, Marla, Hayley and I went to Greenwich (second time for me). We explored the National Maritime Museum, and then I left them to run through the Queen's House briefly, where I saw a couple Reynolds paintings, as well as a Gainsborough and a Hogarth. I met them back outside in time to see the red ball at the Royal Observatory drop at 1 p.m. Sailors used to set their clocks by it.

I then got on the Tube and went to the Tate Britain, where I looked at works by Wilson and Jones in the Prints and Drawings Room for my paper for about an hour and a half. When I left I saw a train car dangling from a crane. Music was playing as it turned in the wind. Apparently that's art? Kind of weird.

I went back to the dorm, got some dinner, relaxed a bit, and then it was time to go see Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe! It started raining, and we were really worried that we would just be wet and unhappy throughout the performance, but no! We got ponchos and it did rain some, but the play was absolutely hilarious and it didn't matter. We were groundlings and because there was a bridge that extended out from the stage, we were almost in kind of a pit, between the stage and the bridge. We were able to lean against the bridge while watching, which was really nice. Seriously, we had so much fun. The actors were great, the set was nice, the music was good, and it was just in general a fun show.

Unfortunately yesterday I had to settle back into the real world, where I have papers to write. I wrote and goofed off all day, was about halfway done by the time I stopped. We were going to a pub as a group, but most of the group pregamed so Lissa, Bill, Conor, and I left early and headed to the Bree Louise. We were there about an hour when the rest of the group showed up....and we left. Oh well. We were tired. And knew that we had to write papers today.

Unfortunately I have little motivation right now. I need to write about 700 more words to finish the paper due tomorrow. Too bad this blog entry can't count toward that, I'm sure I've written far more words than I need.

I go home on Saturday. Don't even want to think about it.

Music books wine tennis and more! Err... I hate titles

Last Sunday as expected Lissa and I went to see The Edge of Love, the new movie with Keira Knightley and Siena Miller, about Dylan Thomas. It was very well done and powerful, I highly recommend it (even if it did cost 12 GBS to see...)

I spent a lot of time reading this week, first Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which I read most of (again) in the garden behind St. Paul's Cathedral, and Vanity Fair, which I finally finished today.

On Monday a bunch of us went to St. Paul's Cathedral for evensong, which was lovely. I walked there from Trafalgar Square (having walked to the square from class) and then as mentioned read in the garden in the sun. It was a nice, warm and sunny day, so though the walk was a little longer than I'd anticipated, it was fun, and along the Thames.

Speaking of the Thames, on Tuesday after a day of double classes, I went on a river cruise with Patty, Marla and Liz, as well as a number of the British Bulldog kids. It was sponsored by the Adam Smith foundation and was for young libertarians, but apparently there weren't enough of them so they opened it up to young people. It was free, and there were free sandwiches and wine, which was pretty nice. We tried to find ice cream on the way back and walked to Covent Garden. Eventually we resorted to buying pints of Ben and Jerry's at a little supermarket near the dorm. Half Baked? Delicious.

On Thursday, Patty, Ashley and I went to Wimbledon! It was just as fun as the first time, and there was no queue, which was amazing. We even managed to sit at Court 2 (our tickets were only supposed to let us stand) and watch Bryan and Bryan, the Americans who were seeded 1 for men's doubles, lose. There were a couple of rain delays but it was still great, and the match was really interesting. We then watched B. Bryan (whose name is apparently Bob; we were really hoping it was Brian) and his mixed doubles partner dominate, from right next to the court. There were a few times that the ball seemed pretty close to our heads, haha.

On the 4th of July, I headed to Oxford with Nell, Lissa, Conor and Patty. We climbed a tower to get a view of the city, where we were terrible people and left graffiti. Oops. But we had to join the thousands of other visitors who'd done it, and so we added some nice Yale touches. We got some lunch after that (Patty and I went to Pizza Hut, to celebrate the 4th of July with some American fast food), checked out a little shop with Alice in Wonderland memorabilia, a used bookstore, the Oxford bookstore (where I bought a red t-shirt so I could further express my patriotism; I'd been wearing orange), and Christ Church college. We saw the steps where part of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was filmed (the bit right before the sorting) and the dining hall that inspired the Great Hall. We checked out the art gallery, and then made our way to the Ashmolean, the oldest museum in the world. I was excited there because I saw Rosetti's sketch for his painting Prosperine, and I'd seen the painting in the Tate Britain the week before.

We met up with MJ and went punting, which was a lot of fun. Our chauffeur (or punter) took us on a canal or something behind Magdalen college, and we talked and ate and laughed at the people who were trying to punt on their own. MJ then took us to see Merton College, which she's affiliated with during her internship, and which was I believe the college of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

I spent most of Saturday reading, though in the middle of the day Matt Long arrived for session 2! We caught up some and went to the grocery store, and later I had dinner with him and Amy, another session 2 person. That evening Nell, Bill, Lissa and I went to the Bree Louise, the pub we took MJ and Heather to when they visited, and sat outside and talked for a while. We met a guy who kept asking if we had Nokia phones (his was dead and he needed to call a friend), asked where the Dragon was (we think it's a pub) and then decided to sit and chat with us for a while. It was kind of hiliarious.

All I've done today thus far is church with Matt and reading, but Blair arrives today! so we're planning to do something this afternoon/evening. Two weeks to go, three papers, and one three day field trip!

Papers...and fun!

This week has been kind of intense, but by the end it was a good kind of intense.

Last Sunday was crazy---Heather and I spent several hours running around. We went to Hyde Park, then to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs (though that is a giant sloth), then to Regents Park for ice cream and a few minutes of cricket. We then rushed to the Tube stop near the V&A museum because the only person who could give us a key to the flat Heather was staying in was out there, and we needed to get her bag still. She made her bus to the airport, but just barely.

I crashed pretty hard that night, but by Monday or Tuesday I was mostly recovered from the Stonehenge-induced exhaustion. Monday through Wednesday we all pretty much were working on our papers, with a break Tuesday night to celebrate having turned in the art history paper. Classes were pretty good, and we went to the National Portrait Gallery as a class, which was nice.

Second paper was due on Thursday morning. After class, I went to Russell Square and met Matt Marr! who was visiting for the weekend and staying with Gabor. We went to the British Museum and Regents Park, before meeting Gabor and heading to a Spanish tapas bar to watch the Spain-Russia 'football' match. It was a little ridiculous, everyone there was extremely happybecause Spain won.

On Friday Matt and I took a double decker bus tour, where we met a girl from Canada who went around with us for a couple hours. We saw some of the sights of the city, took a boat down the Thames, had lunch in Trafalgar Square, where a veteran's day celebration was going on, and checked out the National Gallery. We wanted to go on a Beatles walking tour but it rained, so Matt and I ended up taking a boat to Greenwich.

We made the trek up the hill to the Royal Observatory, making it with just a half hour till it closed. We looked around the museum, took pictures in two hemispheres, and met up with Gabor. The three of us wandered Greenwich for a bit before getting dinner and making our way to the London Eye to meet Lissa. We took some stereotypical tourist photos in the phone booths on the way.

The London Eye was not as impressive as I'd hoped but it was still a lot of fun. It's a giant ferris wheel with enclosed capsules. It takes about half an hour to go around and it lets you see the city from above, but I guess I like regular ferris wheels better, where you're outside.

On Saturday Matt, Gabor, Lissa and I went to St. Paul's Cathedral. We went into the crypt where we saw a bunch of famous people's graves, including Joshua Reynolds', William Blake's and Joseph Turner's, all people we're learning about in art history. We then climbed the 800 stairs to the top of the Dome. I love climbing tall things. Well, I hate the stairs, but I absolutely love the view from the top, the wind, and just the general rush of things seen from a height. I didn't really want to come down.

Afterward we grabbed lunch, then Gabor, Matt and I took the Tube to Wimbledon! We got in line around 4 p.m. and didn't get in until 6:30 (which is exactly when Matt predicted we'd get in). We lucked out though when we got there, getting to a gentlemen's singles match on Court 11 that was just finishing first set. It was Mathieu (seeded 14) v. Cilic (unseeded), and we got seats just in time to watch them play a tiebreaker in the first set. Mathieu took it, but it was clear Cilic had rattled him, and parts of the next two sets were painful, watching his mental game be shaken.

BUT a lot of awesome tennis was played in those two sets, and the fourth set was fantastic---it went to tiebreaker again. Cilic won, but Mathieu fought hard. If they had gone into fifth set it would have been ridiculous, it was getting dark.

Also we think one of the line judges was Steve Carell. Well, we did till he took his hat off. But... with his hat on... it was so him.

I was utterly happy the entire time I was there, I think it was the best (of many awesome things) I have done since getting to London. I just had such a great time, and the tennis was wonderful. Makes me want to pick up my racket again. It was a lot of fun going with the boys. We got strawberries and cream afterward, went and looked at Centre Court (we'd looked to see if we could sneak in earlier, to the Nadal match, but the entrances were too well guarded), and hit the gift shop. We left around 10, got back to Kings Cross around 11.

We went to a pub, where Lissa met us, and hung out for a while. Eventually we came back to swap pictures, then the boys went home. I didn't get to sleep until at least 2:30, if then. People were loud in the hallway, and at 4 a.m. some kind of ruckus was going on in the street, Liz and Nell heard it too.

I got up around 7:15 to meet Matt and Gabor; they were meeting Joker, who was in London for the weekend and who Matt is hanging out with in Paris this week, for breakfast before Matt and Joker caught the Eurostar. Afterward Gabor and I went to Kings Cross and took pictures of Platform 9 3/4.

This Sunday afternoon has been a lot like last week's Saturday---relaxing, uploading photos, doing laundry... I need to sleep some more. Lissa and I are probably going to see The Edge of Love tonight. I hope I can stay awake.

Anyhow, this weekend was kind of awesome, I had a great time, especially going to Wimbledon. I am not ready for the fact that we're half done here. I don't want to leave!

Week 2, or, actually trying to work

Our second week here was a bit more characterized by work than our first week, as we all started to think about our art history papers. None of us have thought all that much about our English papers, since they're due two days later and don't require research. But so several afternoons were spent in pursuit of knowledge about paintings---in my case, the self portraits of Reynolds and Hogarth. Technically I should be working on that paper right now, as it's due on Tuesday and I really need time to edit. Oh well.

On Monday I had lunch and went shopping with Deepa, a friend from high school who is going to college in London. We had meant to go to the Natural History Museum but ended up at Gap instead. We had a lot of fun, though, especially afterward when we took a walk around Harrods and looked at expensive dresses. That night Lissa and I met up with the Bulldogs kids at the pub across the street from their flats, and I finally saw Anna, and got to hang out with Gabor, Casey, and Leang for a little while.

MJ arrived on Wednesday and despite a few problems with arrival time she got here fine and we hung out that afternoon. I dragged her to the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Britain to look at paintings for my paper, and we walked from one to the other, so we walked by the Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Big Ben and Westminster, among other things. It wasn't a long walk, it was a fairly nice day, and I was glad to finally see a few of the famous sights of London. I'm going on a bus tour this week so hopefully I will actually go inside a few more places.

I went with several of my classmates to see Strauss' Ariadne auf Nous at the Royal Opera House. I'm glad I went, it was a beautiful theater and the first half was funny, but overall the opera wasn't as interesting as I'd expected. We may try to get cheap tickets to Le Nozze di Figaro, but it's pretty much sold out so it may be pretty difficult.

On Friday, after hectic struggles, baking cookie cake, and meeting Heather, we went to Stonehenge for the summer solstice! The group included four of my classmates (Liz, Conor, Nell, Lissa), MJ, Heather, Gabor, myself, and a number of the Bulldogs kids. We had a prime spot on the outside of the circle, opposite from the Heel stone. Too bad it was rainy the entire time and the sun never really shone. It was kind of a crazy night, there were tons of people, drinking and smoking and dancing to drums. There were some people doing different ceremonies, people meditating, people being jerks... We had fun at our little camp site, huddling under umbrellas, singing and making shadow puppets. I went into the circle with Heather for a little while and danced, and then got cocoa and a crepe (delicious).


We got tired as it got toward sunrise, and contemplated trying to leave ahead of the crowd, but decided to stay and see if the sun would show. It didn't, but we still made the 6:20 train back to London and got to the dorm in time for breakfast. We all napped a bit on the train, but that doesn't really count, so this was the second all nighter I've pulled in my life (the first being the last day of Italy tour last year), I'd gotten up around 7 the day before and didn't go to sleep till 10 a.m. (and then only for 3.5 hours). I'm tired but okay, but haven't been able to focus on my work this afternoon so have mostly been doing laundry and relaxing.

I've been here two weeks already! Ridiculous! I have two papers due this week! Also ridiculous! But I'm having a wonderful time, this is a great city and a great country. So glad I decided to study here this summer.

Castles and classes and parks (oh my!)

I have been in London for about a week now, and it's wonderful. The weather has been beautiful (maybe the bad weather is merely a rumor meant to deter tourists? I think it's actually just lurking around the corner, waiting until we get so comfortable with the 70 degree temperatures and blue cloud-studded skies that we lose our umbrellas. Then the skies will go gray and we'll be screwed).

I arrived at Heathrow last Saturday without any problems, and even managed to find (or rather, be found by) Liz, a girl from my program, in the baggage claim, so I had a buddy to ride the Tube into London with. We rode the Piccadilly line, and that was the first time (but won't be the last) that we giggled hysterically when we heard the name of the terminus: Cockfusters. I've decided that even if we were to live in London for years, we would still laugh. I don't know how Londoners don't, maybe the connotations are different here. (NB: when discussing Joseph Andrews our (British) professor assumed we knew what a "booby" was. While I knew it meant a silly or stupid person, I don't think that was the first association most of us made.)

I spent most of the weekend recovering from jet lag. On Sunday a few of us met up with the British Bulldogs kids (Yalies doing internships in London), including Gabor, Casey and Leang, for a picnic in Regents Park, a beautiful huge park only a twenty minute or so walk from our dorm. It was a gorgeous day, and afterward Liz and I found our way to the rose garden, eating ice cream and doing our reading for class.

That night we went out to a pub, most of my class, and got to know each other a little more. We've done that a few times now and it's really nice, and relaxed. Everyone is really interesting and cool, and in terms of classes we're all about at the same level of stress. We have a lot of reading, as well as five papers to write (three are due in the last week), so we're constantly saying we need to read and wanting to do other things instead.

I've now visited two royal residences, the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. Both were really interesting as well as beautiful. Our tour guide at the Tower fell in love (okay, not really... lust, maybe? Even though he's in his late forties and married) with Hayley, one of my classmates. He told the tour group that the step into the chapel was haunted and had a way of popping up to trip the ladies, so he was in the doorway ready to catch us. Hayley didn't fall but he told her she should have, and when we left at the end of the tour he gave her a little hug. All of our tour guides have been kind of hilarious and they always call on someone from our group.

Hampton Court Palace was gorgeous, especially the grounds. There was a maze that was too easy on the way in to the center, when we had energy and were adventurous, and too hard on the way back out, when we were getting tired. There were paintings by some of the artists we're learning about, hanging in the King's apartments. Our tour guide was "Sir Thomas Seymour," and at the end of the tour he told us all of what really happened to him. He was the brother of Jane Seymour, one of King Henry VIII's wives. There was an exhibit about Henry as a young man---did you know that he was married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, for twenty years before he had the marriage annulled? I think I thought his marriages were spaced out more than they were, that he kind of got bored after a bit and wanted a change, but he only annulled the first marriage (though he did have affairs) so that he might have a son.

On Friday Lissa and I took a day trip to Cardiff, Wales. The bus ride, both in and out, was gorgeous. The countryside is amazing and I'd like to go back, both to Cardiff and just to Wales in general, see the hills a bit. We went to Cardiff Castle, which stands in the middle of the city. There has been a castle there for 2000 years, though it hasn't always looked as it does now. The interior was redone in the Victorian area and is beautiful and a bit eccentric. The family that owned the castle was extremely wealthy (coal, to the income of the equivalent of $6 billion/year) and spared no expense, even though they only lived there six weeks out of the year.

I went to Sam's Day today at the Globe for a little while with Liz and Erin. It was in remembrance of the Globe's founder, and we saw a demonstration on stage combat and heard a talk about the text of the plays, which were both fun. We're hoping to go back soon and see A Midsummer Night's Dream, paying £5 to be groundlings and walk around the ground in front of the stage.

Our professors are both really nice, and the paintings and novels we're discussing are all very interesting, but it's not fun to have reading and papers to think about when there's all of London to explore. But we're looking for a balance and hopefully we'll find one. Meantime we're having a lot of fun, and that's the important thing.

As expected everything here is really expensive. We are able to get breakfast at our dorm but are on our own for lunch and dinner, so I've been doing a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, cereal, bread, and fruit. It's worth it to save money on food though, because there are so many things I want to do and not all of them are free. But the museums mostly are (we went briefly to the British Museum and I'm looking forward to going back soon), so now that I have palaces and castles out of my system (still need to make it to Buckingham and Windsor though) hopefully I'll spend some time in them.

It's hard to believe a week has already gone by, but I feel like I've been here and known everyone for longer than that. There are tons of things to look forward to in the next five weeks, but I want them to go extremely slowly so I can enjoy every minute.

ETA: Hilarious incident of the evening: I was carded while ordering water at a pub. Yes, really.

Expectations

"What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We will know where we have gone---we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travellers."
~Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

In 17 days, I will be on my way to London. I'll arrive on the morning of June 7th, and for six weeks I'll take classes, live in a University of London dorm, and explore London.

It still hasn't sunk in.

Right now I'm still at Yale, working at the Yale Press (where I'll be working in August), hanging out with Glee Clubbers, and looking forward to Commencement weekend, this weekend, which will be a crazy flurry of rehearsals, baccalaureate services, and concerts. I haven't made any packing lists, haven't finalized how I'm getting from Heathrow to my dorm, none of that.

I am, however, reading. We have seven books to read for British Comic Fiction and one to read for British Art in the Georgian Era. I've already finished Joseph Andrews and Pride & Prejudice (hence the quote, more on that later), and am now beginning Nicholas Nickleby. More Dickens, some Thackeray, Evelyn Waugh, and the Alice books are ahead of me, in addition to the art history book. But I'm enjoying it.

So. This blog. I have another blog, mostly dedicated to books and movies, and I have a livejournal, which I've been neglecting. But I wanted something separate for London, something to include all of my experiences abroad this summer. (The title, by the way, is a bit misleading. I plan to visit Paris, as well as other places in the UK, like Stonehenge and maybe Dublin, so I'll be writing about those trips here too.)

I want to remember this summer, to be able to come back and know where I've been and what I've seen, like Elizabeth Bennet says she will in the quote at the beginning of this post. I want to be able to look back at my trip to London and remember what it felt like to be there, through stories and photos. So this blog is as much, or more, for me, than it is for anyone else.

But I also want it to be a means of communication, of sharing my experiences with friends and family. Check back, see what I've been up to. But also---email me. Blogs are nice but they're very one-sided; you may know what I've been up to, but I won't have any idea about you unless you tell me. I'll write back, I promise.