oh there's no place like London...

London trip today! I woke up this morning at 8 feeling not too terribly tired despite the best efforts of my flatmates to not let anyone get any sleep at all before 4 in the morning. I put all my stuff together and went to catch the bus for London.

It was a long drive - took two hours to get to our drop off point. They played The Devil Wears Prada on the way. I was able to follow the gist of it but I'm afraid I missed the more subtle nuances... and I'm ok with that. When we finally got there, the bus dropped us off in front of a nondescript wall. No landmarks or anything nearby to let us know where we were... so I asked, and we were at Hay Market, and if we wanted they would show us how to get to Chinatown. Thinking that would be a more well-known place for Lisa to meet me, I went along and texted her. Turns out she knew where Hay Market was too : P In fact, that's where we'll be seeing Phantom in two weeks! Anyway, Lisa found me with no trouble and we began wandering about Chinatown. But it was really crowded and we couldn't see anything, though we could hear a parade. The place looked neat:



This is Chinatown all decorated for Chinese New Year!

But we moved on pretty quickly. There were supposed to be some interesting things happening in Trafalgar Square, so we went on that way. The square was even more crowded than Chinatown, though - approaching German Christmas Village levels. We went into the National Portrait Gallery instead and amused ourselves by making up stories for the people in the painting - the ones that didn't already have stories, that is.



This is one of my favorite paintings from the gallery, but it's hard to tell why from this image...



This is the upper right hand corner of the painting blown up. Even here it's hard to really see the maniacal glint in the cat's eye... trust me, it's really funny.

Anyway, from there we headed out for some lunch, and then to Piccadilly Circus:



It's basically Times Square, London, complete with McDonald's advertisments.



And it's got a fountain with huge horses.

We saw some odd telephone booths - they were black instead of red!!



Lisa decided that the phone booths were angry. I decided that they were sad.



Here are some normal, cheerful red ones!!

Next we went through Green Park. Very creative name... pretty accurate too.

This is a circle of trees in Green Park. I call it the Giant Ring.

Just through Green Park is Buckingam Palace! Or, as I like to call it, Buckingham Building-that-doesn't-look-like-a-castle.

These are the gates. Very impressive.

This is a guard. What happened to the red uniforms and big fuzzy hats? Possibly the same thing that happened to those black telephone booths!! O.O

Here's a shot of the facade between the bars of the gate.

And one taken from a distance.




You can see the Eye of London from the square in front of Buckingham Palace... physically, it's bigger than Sauron's, though not quite as scary.

This is a really tall monument to Queen Victoria in the square in front of Buckingham. This picture was me standing at the base and looking up. She's enormous.

The monument from a more reasonable distance

Here's me in front of a random weird looking statue. Lisa and I sat here for a while to rest.

Then we moved on, heading for Hyde Park.

This is a random arch on the way to Hyde Park. It is NOT Marble Arch, but if it was I'd have an interesting story to relate, thanks to Lisa. Marble Arch, which this is not, was built as an entryway to someplace for some kind of duke. But when it was built, the Duke's carriage was too big to fit through the arch. So they picked up the Marble Arch, put it down randomly somewhere else, and built the Duke's obese carriage a bigger arch. I saw Marble Arch... that carriage must have been HUGE.

Look, they put helpful signs in the street for us poor tourists who have no idea where to look so we don't get hit by a car.

Here is the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens! We had to wait a while for a bunch of dopey people to stop climbing all over it, but we finally got a clear shot : ) While we waited, we watched some pretty amusing birds jump on each other... birds look funny when they pop back up from underwater like corks.

Here is me with Peter ^.^ I almost bought a copy of Peter Pan today to keep with my tradition of buying a copy from every country I'm in, but books are SO expensive here, I couldn't bring myself to do it just yet. Maybe when I have more pounds on my Waterstone's card.

The plaque in front of the statue. You can't really read it, but it says who sculpted the statue, and talks a bit about James Barrie.

This is a squirrel talking to a fairy on the back of the statue!! : )

We finished up looking around Kensington Gardens, and decided to catch a bus back to the Hay Market area because we were tired from all that walking! We decided to take the bus to Oxford square, and it turned out to be a bus painted entirely black with Phantom of the Opera adverts all over it! Neat! We rode the bus up Oxford street, and therefore got to see all the shops from a nice safe distance from all the people. There are many retail stores and lots of familiar brand names... Anyway, we got off pretty close to Hay Market, with about an hour and a half to kill before my bus came. So we went into a Caffe Nero and got tea and hot chocolate and sat and talked for the remainder of the time.

Look, a pic of the two of us together! : ) I'm bad at centering...

Then the bus came, and Lisa and I parted ways, but we will see each other again in two weeks.

On the ride back, they played a movie which I think was called The Perfect Man, but which only held my interest because I couldn't see anything out of the windows... when the bus dropped us off, there was thick thick fog. I couldn't even see the tops of the Towers. I went and got a panini because I was too tired to cook and I wanted something hot. I was planning on getting tea too, because my throat really hurts, but the shop was already closed. Ah well. Food and a hot shower made a big difference...

And that was my adventure for today! Tomorrow... class... wheeee

i'm lazy, but productive...

Today I had planned to go grocery shopping, work on my essay, and go to archery. When I woke up I just did not feel like walking to Tesco, so I worked on my essay instead, and got the hardest bit done. When I got back from the library though, I went to enter the code into the dorm entrance, and my mind went completely blank. I forgot the code I have known effortlessly since January 9th. I had to wait for someone to walk out, and then go in...

I proceeded to work on my essay for a while.

Then I read webcomics for a really long time.

Then it was time for archery. I looked for Chris, but he was nowhere to be found so I went alone. As soon as I left the building I remembered that I had not found a solution to completely forgetting the key code.... argh. Anyway...

Archery was a much smaller group this time, but Bashar, the Syrian from last time was there, so we talked a lot and I met another guy named Pete, from Cambridge. Both of them are working on their PHDs - Bashar in software engineering and Pete in artificial intelligence (O.o) But they're both really fun to talk to, and are permanent members of the club.

We started using sights today, so I didn't do quite so well as I had the last time : P But by the end of the session I was getting the hang of it. After every session, the club goes out to one of the bars on campus to hang out - Top Bar, so called because it's on the top floor of a building. I can't tell you which because they're not named. I mentioned I don't drink and they gave me this look like "so what?" which was cool : ) Anyway, I didn't go tonight because Pete and Bashar weren't going, but we all agreed to go next weekend.

Bashar and I walked back to the tower together because the way to the Quays is just past there and he wanted to make sure I got in. I did! I remembered the code! That was so weird. Anyway, I ate a quick dinner and here I am.

Tomorrow - LONDON!!! (but i can't text Lisa for some reason! oh noes!)

aaahhahahaha it's 3 am

ok i totally meant to put this in the last post. purple skittles from america taste like purple skittles from america! it's not me! freaking british candy..... isleepnow

bumpy day

This morning the garbage trucks did not wake me up. But the cigarette smoke smell did. Normally Ben limits himself to one a day, but when he starts this early I know I'm going to be spending a lot of time outside.

Since I was up, I had enough time before class to check my email. I found out that applying for 390B instead of 390A gets me a better chance at an actual tutoring position next Spring, so it looks like that is what I am going to do. Also, I had an email about an internship from a New York based company. I'm applying even though I am in England, so we'll see how that turns out.
I needed to rework my resume for both of these, though, and just in general anyway...

Then Myth class, where I found out that the lecture is moving from Monday morning to Thursday morning. Thursday morning is when I have my Versions of Modernity seminar. Can they do this? Well, probably. By the time I got out of class, though, the office was closed til Monday (they close at 1 on Fridays. Most places do around here. How does anyone get anything done?). I emailed Hazel, so we shall see what she has to say about that, though I have no idea what they could do about it just for me... really it shouldn't be possible for me to have conflicting classes. Maybe if the scheduled classes by computer instead of just having students look up the times and write them down this wouldn't happen? I got really lucky that all the classes I chose when I got here didn't conflict. Most students had to reschedule everything. The administration here needs to go to Purdue and figure out how to do things more efficiently. I think it's probably because they are such a small campus here... they can deal with each student individually (that's how I got my schedule: I went in to Hazel and said which classes I was in and she told me the times and I wrote them down. When I dropped one and added a different one, she tried to enroll me in a seminar that clashed with another class - which wouldn't be possible at Purdue. Luckily, I am on top of things.)

Anyway, after myth I did laundry and then I ate an ambiguous meal somewhere between lunch and dinner. Then I sat down and reworked my resume. I thought it turned out pretty well, but when I emailed it to dad the formatting got wonky. Not good. Probably I should use a more common font.

Now, I am in for the night puttering about finishing odds and ends.

Title goes here

I borrowed my title from Emily : P

I woke up at 8 AM today, again. This time I found out what woke me up! It's the garbage trucks. I looked out the window to see what the weather was like, and as soon as I saw them, I could hear them too. Clearly my unconscious hearing is better than my conscious hearing. Now that I know they are garbage trucks and not some beastie coming to eat me, maybe I'll sleep uninterrupted past 8 tomorrow.

First class today was Versions of Modernity, in which we talked about Mrs. Dalloway. There is a scary girl in that class, very argumentative, always has something to say about everything. She got a bit out of hand today, but Clare, the tutor, handled it really well I thought... the girl was going off on a tangent about how Virginia Woolf isn't brilliant because she can write long sentences: any German could do that, and if she (the student) handed in an essay written like Virginia Woolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway, no one would call HER (the student) brilliant. I think someone's bitter about an essay grade... anyway it was really annoying.

Back to the dorm for a nap. I don't nap very well here for some reason, but it was nice to be under the blankets with my eyes closed, anyway.

Next was Early Modern Culture. No one read the reading for today except me. So the prof asked me to tell the class the story in the last half hour of class, but he kept interrupting to talk about certain points so class went over. In fairness, he was also interrupting because I was glossing over the gross and violent bits, and that was what he wanted to talk about : P

Back to the dorm for some school reading and a teeny amount of writing. Dinner company was good today - Phil and Sam. We decided to organize a flat trip to the local roller-rink, which should be really fun, especially since i'm pretty sure I'm not the most uncoordinated person in the group : )

I got an e-mail from Assistant Director Conrad-Salvo, who is in charge of reading applications for the tutoring practicum next semester. I had applied for 390A, which would lead to me tutoring 306. In her email, the assistant director asked if I'd consider applying for 390B instead, since I am a professional writing major. The difference is that after taking 390B I'd be helping students with business documents, such as resumes and cover letters instead of introductory composition. Now, this is a dilemma. It seems that I would have an advantage applying for 390B since I was specifically asked to. But, on the other hand, I am far better at general composition than I am at resumes... what to do. I had better decide soon.

Now I intend to sit down and really do some writing... Tomorrow: Myth!

packagepackagepackage

For some reason this morning I woke up around 8 AM. There was no noise in the hall and I didn't have a class til 2... the only thing I can think is that the sun woke me up, because it was a surprisingly cloudless day today, and my curtains really do nothing to keep the light out.

Well anyway, I went back to sleep. When I did wake up I ate a tiny lunch and began the reading for tomorrow. I was surprised by its length... so far for Early Modern Culture we have only had excerpts, nothing I couldn't finish in a night. This time we had a 68-page (that's English printer pages - larger than 8.5x11) travel journal, written in 1590-something. It was rather boring, and, I am inclined to believe, 60% or more made-up. I read 29 pages of it before I had to go to class, determining to print the rest out because I couldn't handle staring at the screen that long at a solid block of text (paragraphs hadn't been invented when this was written I guess). Right before I left, I checked my email, and lo! My package had arrived!! Excitement.

I went to class and discovered that I had done the reading for next week by mistake. Ah, but it's Oulipo, which really means randomness, so no one could tell and now I'm done for next week.
Sebastian actually showed up for class today and we parcelled out bits of the presentation so that we won't actually have to meet again until the day we present in class. Yay.

After class, I went and printed out the rest of the boring travel journal. Then I went and joined the sports federation and archery club... then I went to get my package!

Contained therein were my workout pants (just in time for Lent), fuzzy toe-warming socks, a spare cell phone battery, clothesline, a booklight (thank goodness!!), a back-up booklight (that is to say, string), and a lot of food... oh yes, various tasty American goodies... on Ash Wednesday. Quite the trial. Tomorrow, I will get fat.

Ash Wednesday Mass was tonight at 6, which was weird because I'm used to going in the morning and having ashes all day. Good thing it was this late though, because man, they are serious about their ashes around here. Rather than just having the ashes in a somewhat indistinct smear across the forehead, they mix the ashes with holy water, making them into a black paste, with which they draw a cross identifiable from rather a distance. It was interesting explaining the meaning of the big black cross on my forehead to my flatmates when I got back to the dorm for dinner. I mentioned something about England being mostly Anglican, and was quickly corrected. England is mostly atheist. Well, at least they are the nice sort of atheist and not the militant kind.

After a small dinner I took a shower... goodbye ashes after only about two hours... Then I sat down to try to read the rest of the boring travel journal. There really was far too much, so I just skimmed for the interesting bits, and was done rather quickly.

Tomorrow is an early class and some yummy American candy : )

The end.

I'm so stuffy give me a scone ^.^

Yay for Tuesdays! One of these Tuesdays I'm gonna sleep in so late that the noon fire alarm test wakes me up. On that day I will likely be grouchy. Today was not that day.

Today I woke up and finished my essay! I am 100 words above the minimum. Yay me! And I know a lot more about Irish faerie folk than I did before, which I guess is always good. So I skipped lunch to finish this paper since I was on a roll. Then I decided that since it's Fat Tuesday, I deserve a pastry. So I went out to campus to get one. It was surprisingly warm outside, despite the gusting wind, so I didn't have to wear my hat. In fact... warm day, strong wind... oh yes, billowing about campus like a specter of the darkness in men's hearts, I descended upon the cafe.

But first... remember me saying how the Ents wall was sort of depressing with nothing on it?....

I guess all I had to do was mention it : P

So anyway, I went to Cafe Vert, and they have this afternoon special where you can get a pot of tea and a scone with jam and clotted cream for 1.75, which I thought was a good deal, so I did. The tea was really good - English style with milk. The scone was also tasty, and clotted cream, though it sounds disgusting, is actually really good. Altogether, a most satisfactory snack.

I went to sign up for a London trip this Sunday after that. For 16 pounds I got transport into London as well as a day pass for the tube and the busses. Excellent. The trip is to go celebrate Chinese New Year, and I think I will be meeting Lisa there so that I won't be wandering around alone : P

Next was a stop at the Computer desk to find out how to change my comp to play region two dvds... Star Wars, here I come. I was gonna print off my syllabi while I was at it, but the lab was too full and I didn't feel like finding another.

Then I headed across the square to ask the Post Office about box sizes, and the lady there had no clue, so she told me to come back in an hour. So then I had to kill an hour. I went over to the bank to see if I could get cash without using the ATM, and therefore without a charge. I cannot. I am going to have to get some more cash before London though. Then I puttered about the bookstore for a bit, then wandered over to the lit lounge to do some reading. After an hour I went back to the post office and asked about the size of packages and found out that it does not matter, as long as I can carry it down there. Cool.

I went back to the dorm to do some more reading and some chatting, and went out again later to get a good dinner in preparation for fasting tomorrow. I can't believe tomorrow's the first day of Lent already. I plan to exercise daily, and wear my retainers every night, and give up cracking my knuckles. This is ambitious, but is definitely for the good.

Tomorrow there's an Ash Wednesday Mass at 6. Other than that, just one class. I plan to spend the rest of the day writing... we'll see if that actually happens : P