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.