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!