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Oh my goodness it’s been 2 weeks already! I can’t believe it – it’s gone by so fast! And another 2 weeks to go still – not quite the halfway point yet.

Today was an official free day, so we spent the day getting as much out of London as possible! I woke up around 8 to go to breakfast, just plain croissants today, and picked up bag lunches.  We (Adam, Alexis, Kelsey, Kevin, Ahren, Brendan, and myself) started off the day by going to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. It was a nice walk we had on the way there, passing through the trees, and a really nice tree with drooping branches and you could walk “inside.”  We got to hear a man speak – the guy Nicola told us. It wasn’t so much a debate as it was a guy on a soapbox – yet it was interesting to hear his views, whether I agreed or not.  Though it wasn’t the highest level of debate (but not debate) – excessive use of the F word, and the assumption that if you support a place, you should go there and not here. But it was a London experience worth having!

After that, we took the tube over to Tate Modern. We had lunch outside before going in, out by the river which was nice.  Afterwards, we went inside, and split into several groups. I went with Adam, Alexis, and Kelsey.  We couldn’t go into the Miro exhibit because you had to pay, but we went through a lot of other ones. The first exhibit we saw was rather interesting, it was a 18 stories about bloodlines, and pictures of the families. They were very different and ranged from light hearted to serious to sad – part of a family who was kidnapped in North Korea, an orphanage, 2 families involved in a South American blood feud, a Nazi high up in the ranks, a family that believed in reincarnation (so one man was both father and son to his biological father), a family partly wiped out by genocide, a Chinese family (chosen by their government of course), and Australian rabbits (imagine having 30-40 offspring a year! Yikes.)  We wandered through some other galleries – saw some really  modern things – wood carvings, a video of a guy kicking a trashcan, a staircase made of fabric, stones arrange in concentric circles, hardened foam that looked like lava, a mirror, some strange scultures, and much more. We also saw some older 20th century pieces – Picasso, other cubist pieces (Alexis gave me a short history lesson on one of the art pieces!), and the Whaam! Painting which was a pop art piece which was pretty cool. After a gift shop walk, we crossed Millenium Bridge to find a tube to Camden.

We took the District line – and the last one, we were lucky. Once we were on the tube, the driver said something like “This is the last train service today. There will be no more trains today. If you are still sitting on the platform you are wasting your time!” (He said it somewhat humorously.  I started falling asleep on the tube, and couldn’t lean back so I had to lean forward, though as I fell asleep I began leaning to the right…toward Adam. Awkward. We switched trains and made it to Camden, where there were many outdoor markets. Wasn’t as nice as Covent Gardens though, but I’m glad I had the experience – not sure if I’d want to go back again. There were some signs saying beware of pickpockets. And also the stall people were very aggressive at trying to sell us things. We took the Northern line back down to Waterloo, and got back for dinner, around the same time Nicole, Ahren, and Kevin got back.

Sophia was feeling better, so 9 of us (Brendan was back already too) went to dinner tonight. After dinner I finished my academic blogs! And so now we’ve got ice cream and watching the movie Hunger.  And the Harry Potter debate between 2D…and the world’s largest IMAX! We’ll see. And Hunger is a super intense movie. Oh my. Horrid prison conditions. Horrible…Wow.  Time to go watch.

Again I should point out that today’s title uses “and” to connect to separate ideas, not to imply causation. Though maybe these puns would work better and be funnier if I weren’t so quick to explain them. So I’ll explain the day instead.

I woke up for breakfast (chocolate croissant day!) and found out that Katie, Stephanie, and Tom had gone to Wimbledon very late last night/early this morning to try to get tickets. Meanwhile the rest of us planned to go into London to see the British Museum, the Pride Parade and do some shopping on Oxford Street.  We took a train in, and went up to the British Museum, and ending up splitting into a few different groups. I walked around with Adam, Alexis, and Ahren (just noticed I’m the odd one out of the group – messing up that assonance). The Museum entrance was big grand and looked a bit like the Supreme Court.  Inside was a huge glass atrium with a circular reading room in the middle (I didn’t get to go in but really wish we had time to go into the reading room – it looks stunning from the pictures.).

The first thing we did was go on a quick guided tour of some of the exhibit of England under Roman rule, and the guide talked about the culture, mainly the cross between Roman’s polytheism beliefs and the English Pagan beliefs and how they intermingled before eventually monotheism became the state religion.  We saw some little votive offerings, and silver plates amongst other things. Even though we could take pictures, many glass cases had a lot of light reflection - maybe to discourage you from pictures we joked - but this entry will probably be more picture heavy than other posts.

Next we went downstairs through the library like setting exhibit for the Enlightenment – there were lots of cross cultural items in the area depicting trade, as well as some early telescopes and models of the solar system which I thought were especially interesting (and again wish I had more time to see!).

We made our way into the African Art exhibit, which consisted of both modern and older art. There were masks, some in the shape of fish which I thought were very cool, some bronze work in tile like forms that came from Nigeria I believe. But I was most impressed by the “Tree of Life” which was commissioned for the museum. But it was from a part of Africa ravaged by war, and there wasn’t enough money to melt down the metal from guns, so guns were traded for goods and ways that families could support themselves, and the guns were put together into a sculpture called the “Tree of Life,” representing just that.  I thought it was a beautiful piece. 

After that, we walked and saw the Rosetta Stone! Which was amazing. I’ve seen pictures in books, but my 5 seconds with the real thing was well worth it – even though it was one of the most crowded rooms in the museum. 

After that we went to the Greek area, which was stunning and amazing. We walked in and saw this huge temple raised up in one of the rooms – the Nereid Monument, which by itself in its reconstructed form was breathtaking upon sight.  We walked through and saw many Greek statues and carvings, including parts from the Mausoleum, one of the 7 Wonders of the World! Lions, and Gods and Godesses, and Chariots and Horses. We also got to see statues from the Parthenon! And read a little about the debate that Greece wants the artifacts back.  But it was amazing to see them. And I got my Dr. Seuss on:

Horses and horses, of course it’s the horses,
The men and the horses it’s moreses of horses.

But the museum was amazing – such a huge breadth of history is covered, I could have spent months there – I was in awe of the history, and how much of our history as a race was collected together under one roof – it was astounding. 

We ate lunch in the atrium area, with the sack lunches from school, then we went on a quick whirlwind tour of the museum as we each picked one thing. Two things we wanted to see based on the highlights section of the museum map were Australia and a gold llama – so we went to find Australia and the gold llama. Gold llama first (Ahren’s) – which turned out to be a very small llama. About a few inches big – we were expecting like a gold Trojan horse sized llama! They were from the Incas, and were part of offerings to their Gods. My choice were burial statues from the Tang dynasty in China, which were pretty cool to look at.  We walked through the jade collection on the way to another exhibit, and I wish I had known about that before, so I could have spent more time there! There were beautiful pieces I saw as we whisked by, but I would’ve loved to stay longer. Adam’s choice was the mummies, which were really fun to see. And Alexis was the Australian garden out front, which we used to end our tour at the British Museum.

We missed the Pride parade, but that was alright – we had a new mission – time to find Sophia at Oxford street, as her phone had died. Oxford Street is full of huge clothing stores and other shops. We went into the Topshop where she was inside, and it didn’t look too bad. A lot of girls, an escalator up and down – so I went on the down escalator, thinking it’d be relatively easy to find her. The ground floor went out of sight, and the -1 floor came into view – it blew my mind, it was insanely huge, like a clothing Costco for girls – the room wasn’t tall like Costco, but the width, length, and enormous crowds of people made me think of that! Could totally see this as a scene in a comedy film – the men go into the store thinking “how hard could this be” only to get that reveal. And there was a -2 floor which was just as big. (Floors 1 and 2 above – entry is the ground floor, the next floor up is 1 in most buildings here – were for men.) Eventually we did find her, and we split up for shopping. Walked through the Nikeworld, Topman area in Topshop and H&M, and I found a British sweater (or jumper? Not sure on terminology) that I rather liked and bought.

We met up later, and Katie came out into the city too. We did a little souvenir shopping and passed by a National Geographic store (no time to go in unfortunately) before going to Wagamama in Leicester Square to eat with some of Ahren’s college friends in London. Wagamama is like a Japanese fusion type of restaurant – I had yakisoba which was quite good.  We had to wait a while, and the restaurant was downstairs, but it was a good meal – and no potatoes for a nice change! It was cool that we can navigate the Tube system pretty well – I’m even starting to know some of my lines – Northern line will take you from Leicester Square to Waterloo, and you can catch the Piccadilly line from Leicester Square as well.  We came back by the way of the co-op so we could by some snacks and ice cream, before coming back to work on blogs and get some downtime. I wanted to do laundry, but there were some other people (older people, and French? Asian people doing laundry too) so I waited until late at night when there were cats prowling near the door – scary experience, but I’m getting through it! Time to go start folding.

Note that the and is denoted 2 separate topics, and not 2 parts of one whole - just so you know!

Today’s academic session started at 10, so I took the much needed opportunity to sleep in and get a little extra sleep. Today’s session focused on inclusion and exclusion in regards to citizenship, specifically in regards to children’s rights and disabled persons (or people with disabilities in America – we had a whole discussion on the use of language in describing disabled persons). It was interesting, we talked about things like facilitators, what it means to be a citizen, stigmas and preconceptions people have with disabled persons, disability acts and accessibility, and probably most importantly the social model of disability, which states that society disables persons, not the individual incapacity. We also saw a video clip of an institution for people with learning disabilities subjected to horrible and I’d go as far to say inhumane treatment – it was pretty horrifying to watch.

But perhaps on a lighter note, author Lois Keith, herself disabled, came and spoke to us a little bit. We read an excerpt and she read an excerpt from her (fiction) book Out of Place, which takes place during and after the Holocaust, following a Jewish girl and a disabled girl (both who would have been persecuted), who escape to England, and try to overcome the struggles in their lives. The little I heard was very touching and I would definitely like to read the whole book – I’d suggest it too!

On a side note, I think I’m getting used to little things here in London – writing 1/7/11 for the date, “recognizes,” and “favours.” It’s pretty cool actually – now if I could just get working on that accent! In the afternoon, we had a little 2 week (I can’t believe we’re there already!) talk with Dave about what we liked/thought could be improved about the program. 

We also got our Oyster cards (transport cards) topped off (or it might be unlimited now actually), so more freedom moving about the city! That’ll be fun. Today was fish and chips day – both lunch and dinner. But since I had them for lunch (didn’t want to wait for stir fry today), I had the vegetable option at dinner, which was some fried eggplant cheese and other vegetables – but it was surprisingly very good – probably better than the fish, and was one of the better vegetarian dishes they’ve had here. They also had pineapple tonight which I took advantage of.

And tonight was our night to go watch Wicked in the West End! It was so much fun! Talah and Emma went with us, and we got our seats just in time. I’ve heard some of the songs, and heard good things about the musical, but it blew my mind away! It was very very good! Makes you look at the classic movie in a whole new (and not so innocent) light – almost like a Shakespearian tragedy now. With music. Speaking of music, there was a live orchestra pit! I couldn’t see it, but I could see the conductor, so that was really cool! And the set pieces were very technical, I enjoyed the visual complexity of the scenes.  A big thanks to Emma and Talah for coming with us, and to Roehampton for arranging this for us!

Afterwards, we went on very crowded tubes – most of us went to Leicester Square which was even more crowded (to me at least!) – a lot of people there for the party scene, though we were there for ice cream. We got turned around a little, so Adam and I had to find a map before we ended up in Chinatown! We were planning to go to a Haagen Daz, but Ahren spotted a Ben & Jerry’s (Hello Vermont!) a few stores before, so we stopped there. I had some kind of chocolate and swirl with something with chocolate covered peanuts – they didn’t have the flavors listed! But it was quite good! We got back on a not quite as crowded tube, then a train from Waterloo – which was very slow, and delayed, stopping at several stations for a long time (but I got in a little nap!). We ended up walking back from Barnes, missed a couple busses – misjudged how often they ran. But Katie and I did some fun (if you can call it that) 20 second bursts to walk and try to catch up with the main group. But overall today was very fun and enjoyable – even got a little work done on some of my academic blogs!