It is now Thursday and I have been in London for a full week. I can't decide if it feels longer or shorter than that. Kind of both I guess. I don't feel like I've been here that long but it feels like a long time since I left the states, if that makes any sense. This has been one of the busiest weeks of my life. I have spent very little time in my flat, and most of it is sleeping. I have been out in the city most of the day every day or hanging out with friends in their flats. I feel like I know my part of the city pretty well now and I'm proud to say I have never really been lost yet. A friend and I lost our way for a breif moment the other night but we still knew which direction we wanted to walk and got we we needed to be without any problems. I have a lot to talk about so you may want to read this in shifts.
Let's see, on Tuesday, I had my first day of classes. My first class was Christianity and Islam, which I think I'm really going to like. I did the reading for the next class already and actually enjoyed the reading. I knew basically nothing about Islam prior to this class and the more I read the more I notice similarities with Christianity, and many that I didn't expect. Granted, I have noticed many differences but I didn't realize they recognize Biblical characters such as Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as a part of their history as well. Anyway, the class only meets once a week and lasts two and a half hours (not including a 45 minute lunch break). Although we also have class on Friday (Booooo!!!) this week and next week, because our professor won't be here for a couple weeks later in the semester and figured it would be best to make them up at the beginning so that we get a quick start. Yay. So instead of being done for the week at 2pm on Thursday, I now go until 3:45 pm on Friday. But what can you do... My next class was Accountancy in the UK which is going to be very cool. From here on out we only meet 4 times. We have 2 papers (a 7 pager and a 10 pager) and a final project that consists of a 20 page paper and a presentation to Price Waterhouse Coopers managment and some ND alums. It looks like we are going to get some real, practical knowledge though and it will be cool to do some independent research. For the class, we walked to the PWC offices, had a little orientation, and then went out to a pub to watch the inauguration with a couple of workers. (PWC picked up the bill for all of our drinks, which was awesome.) It was cool having the English and Scottish workers asking us all these questions about Obama and the U.S. After that I grabbed a bite to eat and went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed at the Royal Shakespeare Company or something like that. I was pleasantly surprised. I went in having no idea what the play was about, only seeing a clip of it from watching Dead Poet's Society. Anyway, it took me half of the play to figure out that the weird clothed actors that sometimes held and moved around creepy baby doll things were actually fairies and the other non-fairy actors couldn't see them. Things made much more sense after I had figured that out. But the play was really funny, actually. I found myself laughing quite a bit, much more than I thought I would. The only bad thing was the seating. The location wasn't bad at all, first row of the balcony (which was the fourth level up, with the ceiling a couple feet above our heads). But there was NO legroom. Sitting normally in the seat, your knees were pressed firmly against the railing, so your feet had to be turned at a ridiculous angle the whole time. After 2 hours 45 minutes of this, it started to get a tad uncomfortable as you can imagine. But anyway I enjoyed it very much and am looking forward to seeing Twelfth Night in a couple weeks. Oh, and I spent this whole day in dress shoes which left blisters the size of half dollars on my heels - not a good decision.
Wednesday was a really long day as well. I had class at 9:15 - Social and Cognitive Development. I am really going to enjoy this class too. The professor seems to be really good and I feel like I am going to learn a lot. For example, she didn't make us buy textbooks but instead gives us everything we need via articles and handouts. She also wants us to be engaged in class while we are there so she's printed out notes of each class for us so we aren't bothered with them and can discuss freely. I'm liking it. We are learning about the psychology behind the formative years between infancy and age 6. She spent half of the class telling stories about her own kids, which were actually helpful and relevant to class as well as pretty funny. The best thing might be our trip to the largest toy store in London to observe and do some research on the types of toys kids are getting. She also brings in her own kids for us to play games with for class, i guess. Should be enjoyable. My other class on wednesday was Macroeconomic Analysis - yawn - that's enough about that one. Last night we had a flat dinner that consisted of chicken parm with spaghetti and mashed potatoes. It was really good and a lot of fun. We had 9 or 10 people and everybody was full. I attempted the mashed potatoes and actually pulled it off. It was nice to have a real dinner like that because I've been eating mostly peanut butter sandwiches and cereal. But the pound has been dropping against the dollar lately, which has made everything a little nicer.
Today (Thursday) I went to my images of britain through the arts which was not very enjoyable. The guy treated us like we were in 3rd grade. We had to draw pictures of what we thought were icons of Britain. I'm serious. Then we talked about them and he would draw a tea kettle on the board and talk about the importance of tea. Mine was James Bond - A stick figure with a bowtie that had a speech bubble that said "Hi, I'm James Bond". He also thought that we knew absolutely nothing about our own country. I'm paraphrasing here but it went something like this - So you guys don't have a King and a Queen, does anybody know what you guys have? I'll give you a hint, its a P - word, it starts with a P... that's right a President. The whole class was just sitting in stunned silence. And it didn't end there - oh no. We also learned that the stripes on our flag represent the 13 colonies and the stars represent the states. But our learning wasn't limited to just that, oh no.. we also learned that Great Britain and Northern Ireland are Protestant and Ireland is Catholic. Oh and that the difference between english football and american football is that in one you can't use your hands. Great class. After that, I had my shakespeare class is pretty standard, although I am looking forward to going to see the Globe theatre. Tonight, we all had to watch The Queen for our images of britain class. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, I actually stayed awake. After that I came back to the flat and here I am. Wow, I just realized how much I wrote... sorry about that.
I'm sure I'll have a lot more after the weekend, take care!
