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Today I also skipped breakfast and elected to eat my chocolate muffin from last night. Today’s academic session was entitled “Progress and Sustainability,” so we got to talk about the environment, climate change, responsibility, possible futures, and how this relates to citizenship.

We went to Richmond Park today (cool name!), which was beautiful! It looked exactly what I thought English countryside would look like – though very close to the metropolis of London. It’s a royal park, and historically, it was hunting grounds, and places like Roehampton would be akin to hunters’ lodges. There isn’t hunting today, but I believe it is one of the largest parks in at least London, maybe in a greater area too. It was beautiful! Trees, some rolling hills, a stream, tall grass, some people riding on horseback.  And to complete the whole mood, it was raining too. We walked by the projects/socialized housing in Roehampton, where Dave explained that when they were built post war, the architectural idea was for them to be connected to nature, so they have a view over the park – though physically getting from there to the park involves quite a walk (there was talk of putting a gate so the residents could directly enjoy access to the green space in the park, but it has gotten stalled). We talked about issues of sustainability, and climate change. We discussed skepticism of science, as well as how the general perceives (or doesn’t perceive) the effects of climate change, and how the political power of countries can affect that.  It started to rain quite hard – I wish I had my umbrella, I only had my semi water resistant rain jacket since I had read “light rain” on the weather website.

We took shelter in a little café, where some of us got coffee, or other snacks and we continued our discussion there. We took an online quiz about our own sustainability practices, and discussed why we thought our numbers were what they were (how many earths we’re using), and how we can lower our numbers. We continued our conversation on how climate change affects different countries, and what governments can do about it. We also discussed new forms of “green technology” and looked at how environmentally friendly they really are, as well as the role of corporations and oil companies, and the use (or lack of use) of social/environmental responsibility.  We walked back to Roehampton in the rain, and upon arrival were told we’d be speaking with Spanish teachers.

The Spanish teachers were in the UK for a while, also learning, they were from Spain, and we got to talk with them, which was a fun experience – I got to use my Spanish too! (A little bit at least – Katie’s vocabulary range is better than mine! But one teacher said I speak well!) The teachers are here to learn more English I believe, to better work with English speaking students. We talked a little bit about America, and our own courses of study, and we went to the Froebel diner to eat lunch with them, which was nice. I’m glad we had the chance to talk with them! There were some scheduling miscommunications at the beginning, but it all worked out well.  Lunch was quite good as well, roast chicken with peas and carrots, roasted (fingerling – they didn’t say that though) potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding, which was all quite delicious!

After lunch, we went on a Roehampton outing with Jonathan (the Environmental Initiatives Manager, or something similar to a position like that), and Tessa (from the education department, but also an environmental champion).  We got to see some of the different areas around Roehampton that are helping to contribute to environmentally friendly solutions. We saw beehives with honeybees – some of the most important insects to pollinate our food! We saw LED lamps on the paths, some bat houses for local bat species to come live in, and some of the species of water fowl in the lake were named for us. We went into the forest where there was an old orchard on the Roehampton estate (if you can call it that?) from a long time ago, and they were hoping to restore the apple orchard in the future. There were apples on the ground and trees, but it was very overgrown. We then walked by the stone wall – there’s a door there I’ve been seeing whenever we passed it, and it turns out that it’s the refrigerator – or ice shed, from back before electricity, and whoever lived in Grove House had to keep meat and other things cold! The ice shed was built into the rock to keep it cool. We walked further and saw a new orchard – less than a dozen trees, but they’re trees that the students take care of, which helps to promote environmental sustainability, and show people little steps they can take. MP Justine Greening had apparently come to help open the orchard, and planted one of the trees herself! They were apple trees from 2010, and they seem to be growing nicely. We also got to walk by a community garden in Roehampton, where many vegetables were being grown – some plots were a bit overgrown, but others were nice – there was corn, tomatoes, carrots, onions, and much more! Of course it’s not enough to feed the whole school, but again the idea is to expose more people to sustainability and show them what steps they can do to help the environment. We made our way into the forest, into a circle clearing cut out (and some people had some nasty experiences with nettles!), where we talked about different possible futures – basically there are 3 basic  routes for society to take – 1) society collapses, and there’s nothing we can do about it, 2)technological and scientific fixes will be discovered that will save the environment, 3)we adapt and evolve, changing our political, social, economic, etc structures to live within this new paradigm. We got to read “future newspapers” from 2027 about these different possible routes we could take, and it was quite fun – the stories were interesting, and they even had ads for movies in the future!

In the afternoon and evening, we went into London – today was Ahren’s birthday! I went with Katie, Stephanie, Ahren, Tom, and Alexis. First, we stopped at Trafalgar square for the Harry Potter premiere! It was crazy! There were so many people! There was a traffic diversion (detour), and police kept yelling at people to get out of the street! There were people on the steps of buildings across the street from Trafalgar Square. You needed tickets to get close (I think, we would’ve never made it up there anyways), and it seemed to have several layers of fencings. But from our vantage point, we could see into Trafalgar Square a bit, from up on the side of the Square, and saw half of the huge screen they put up (the other half covered by trees and a lamppost – and with the help of 16x zoom of cameras, could see the stage. Though I had to hold my camera high up to get over all the other people! We saw a little bit of the premiere on Nicole’s laptop earlier, but it was amazing to actually be there! While we there, we were able to see (albeit a bit far off) Emma Watson, Helana Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, and Daniel Radcliffe! It was amazing to actually be there! And every time an actor was shown on the screen, the crowd went wild! (Though I think a few times, people just wanted to cheer!)

After that, we went to try to find a Thai restaurant in Soho. But my google maps directions had us closer to Goodge Street – we found our way, thanks to a bike rent map thing (and the maps they have all over London, which are super helpful – even though we have a good idea of where stuff is, it’s nice to have those maps!) – though I had a run in (literally) with a pole while looking at my tube map. I fought a pole and lost! A bit of blood on my fist – they definitely do not have smooth poles like in the US! Interesting cultural difference, theirs are much bumpier…well it was interesting to find that out. In the end, we didn’t have time to go to the Thai restaurant, because the line was too long, but Ahren found this crepe place, which was quite good! I had a savory ham, cheese, spinach crepe which I enjoyed.

Afterwards, we took the tube to the Southbank at night, which was absolutely beautiful! We took a lot of pictures of the Thames at night. We went to the other side of the bridge between the Embankment and Southbank, so we could look at the Eye and Parliament, which were stunning at night! I’m glad we got to go there. It was peaceful, and I put my camera away for a couple minutes, to enjoy the ambience. It was a nice time, there weren’t too many people, but enough to not feel empty.

We came back, Katie and I played our roles as leading wheel on a tricycle, and got back to Roehampton. Adam was still awake, “kept the porch light on,” and even came and opened the door for us! Speaking of Adam, I got to be Adam today, being the directions person leading the way (or appearing to know where we were going!) around London. It was a successful day, and a lot of fun!

Today’s session was on Nomads and Citizens. I thought it was quite interesting – learning about “New Age Travellers” and the movements in Britain in the 80s, which seemed similar to US movements in the 60s, as well as the portrayal of these nomads by the government and media as “others” who were different and like a scourge, who needed to be eradicated. We learned about legislation that has been used to curb the travellers saw some clips of police violence during the travellers’ attempts to have a festival (strangely enough edited out of the original newscast in the 1980s) – makes you wonder about some things. And the media here appears that a lot of it seems to lean slightly right of center (as opposed to what I think about American media being more left of center) – so it’s interesting to compare raw footage of events with the way the British media portrayed events.  Though I think it’s quite interesting for me to link these travellers to the communalists in America in the 1970s and what I’ve learned in STS. While maybe not as nomadic, they did have back to the land, utopian, communal ideas and spiritual experiences through drugs, and things like that. Though it seems to me that many of their communities out in the deserts in America failed to survive because they ran out of money, and had to go back to “regular civilization,” while people in Britain were able (for a while at least) use the welfare system, which probably increased their negative reputation. But in the end, the American communalists searched for their “out of body” experiences in other ways – for instance through computers, and the fledglings of the internet, which was some stuff I learned this past year!

Today was the visit day for new (or looking for a uni) students – tours and everything (I think one walked through our dorm halls), saw Kriss getting ready to do a tour, and the lunch line was very long! But it was alright – had a glazed salmon which was very good!

In the afternoon, we got to meet with activists who were pretty cool. One, James, had made a video for a community organization, and gave us some tips on editing, interviewing, and the whole documentary making process.  After that, we got to interview them for our videos, which was great, and we got a lot of great footage. We also had time to meet in groups which was also wonderful, since our group got to get our topic more focused and come up with some more focused questions, so our following interviews should be more relevant and really help a long way in supporting our video.

At lunch break, Katie and I tried doing some mini karaoke in my room – Adam came and joined a bit later too. Coming back from class, Nicole and I did a quick game of bowling with water bottles and oranges! (Unfortunately Brendan delivered me the news that it won’t be an Olympic sport. Shucks.) Brendan, Adam, and I stayed in the dorms, mostly trying to get a head start on blogging and the night’s reading. The others went to meet with some of the volunteering kids, and ended up watching a movie and bowling I believe. We had dinner at the Digby Diner (or canteen?) – hamburger patties, chips, veg – though they had a lot of salads tonight, including a dessert pasta thing and a sweet couscous. After that, Adam and I headed out!

We took a 72 bus to Barnes, but realized we would have to wait for a train for 20 minutes. It was 1914, and the Camden Arts Centre where we were going closed at 9pm – so not much time. We went back up onto another 72 bus (empty though, so that was nice to get seats!) We got to Hammersmith and took a line into Westminster where we took the Jubilee up to Finchley Road. We got out of the tube and realized we didn’t look up which way to go! There was a map at the bus stop which we looked at and started walking…and didn’t see anything. But we kept going, and found it – it looks like it used to be a house, but now an art centre. It was rather small, only a few rooms, but there were some interesting things. There was a huge room, with tape machines (or recorders) at both ends, and the tape ran around the wall between the two machines. One made sound, while the other didn’t – we weren’t sure what the purpose was, or if one was just broken, but it was interesting to look at. (Contemporary art I suppose). There was also a film that was shown on 2 side by side 16mm projectors, one with a 20 second delay. Which was pretty cool – though I think it’d be awesome if there were portions that would line up with the 20 second delay and “interact” or something. There was a room with a huge plaster curtain draped across it, with plaster molds of flying figures poised to fly above the curtain – interesting that if you look from some angles, you can see the hollowness of the molds (only like half of them were open), but it was cool to see – they were modeled on ancient statues. Last we saw a film about the last cosmonaut – about a cosmonaut trapped in space for 10 months. It was interesting, because space scenes were in English, while earth scenes were in Russian. Also, video was shown (edited or not, I’m not sure) to be scratchy and jumpy, with snow and noise in the picture. It was also shown non-chronologically which was interesting too.

We went back to the tube station, and got on the district line train WHICH WAS SO COOOOL!!! It was a doorless train, so you could walk between the carriages, connected by accordion style connectors. You could see down the whole train, and watch as it turned and bounced! It was a very new train, and had very nice seats too! If there weren’t other people, we’d have run up and down the train! At Baker Street station, we got a picture of Sherlock Holmes in the station! The next tube had sofa like seats instead of single seats (there were armrests, but the benches were made of one cushion instead of separate ones) - so I made Adam bounce up and down a couple times! Then we took the tube down to Trafalgar Square, where the Harry Potter premiere is tomorrow night! We couldn’t believe it! It was amazing! There were fences, a huge sign, huge lights, people camped out (literally! – probably for entry bracelets – only 8000 for tomorrow – we didn’t know, or we’d have tried to find out how to get them), banners with the houses on them, it was an amazing, unbelievable experience. If you had told me I’d be in London during the last Harry Potter movie premiere a few months ago, I would’ve that you were crazy! Noticed in the Metro and Evening Standard, they both described fans as “Potty” – I wonder if that’s a regular British term now. Don’t really hear that in America much – except for Oprah 9 years ago saying “We’re having an Harry POTERRR POTTYYYYYYYYY!!!”

After that, we walked down through Westminster, past Parliament, which looked just beautiful at night, so did the London Eye across the river – unfortunately my camera battery died! We kept going, into a hotel building we thought we could go through, but didn’t seem like it, so we turned back, and went past a sketchy part on the unseen side of Waterloo – there was one stair going down that we passed which was all graffiti – we walked past that. We ended up basically walking around 3 sides of Waterloo instead of 1 – so next time, we need to figure out how to get straight there! But we made it, and got onto a train to Barnes (at first it seemed like we were the only ones, but then others got on). 1 more academic session to go tomorrow – Progress and Sustainability!

Today there was a small breakfast group – Alexis, Stephanie, Adam, and myself, for the regular croissants. Maybe I should have slept in today – oh well, it was alright. Today’s session was on Globalisation. I didn’t get a lefty desk though – talk about inclusion/exclusion! In the morning we did a lot of discussion – first the presentation of our human rights articles from last week, and there was some good discussion on nationality versus citizenship, the use of torture in regards to suspected terrorists, and the right to life. It was interesting to see how we used language in these debates versus how words are used in the more political debates.  We went into globalisation, talking about our views on it, and the use of the media, which provided for a very lively discussion.

For lunch I elected to go with a sandwich – which was pretty good – and I got ice cream and  chocolate and a pack of crisps!

In the afternoon session, we had some more lecture, on 8 different facets of globalization. We did some group research looking at examples of globalism. Our group did China and creolisation, while other groups did liberalization in Korea and transnationalisation in Mexico. It was a fun bit.

We came back, and played a couple fun games of mafia – Sophia and Katie are pretty good narrators. We made it through a somewhat nervous and awkward dinner back came out alright. After that, Adam, Alexis, Kevin, Sophia, and I went to Westfield mall. Brendan came along to go meet a cousin, and left at Hammersmith. It was great at night – though a little bit darker from the skylight. I bought another Thomas book, and sat and did some reading. I was thinking about getting starbucks, but decided not to – lucky me, Alexis bought a pack of ice cream!  Coming back took a while. It was raining (also when we left too), and the bus took a long time to get here, and I fell asleep a bit on the way back.

We came back and some of the group was watching hunger. But now we’re watching the movie Four Lions – a humorous take on secutiy and terror – focusing more on terror from what we’re seeing now. It’s much more peaceful than hunger, but a lot of fun too. It’s nice with the rain coming outside – gotta go watch now!

Happy Independence Day! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUdB8gCMcXI#t=57)  Interesting here in London – just another day gone by – the 4th of July could be like any other day – like the 3rd of March or something. But anyways, today.

As Americans, Roehampton kindly gave us the day off. In the morning we did some shopping at Westfield Mall (Sophia, Brendan, Adam, Alexis and I – the scarred for life people who watched “Hunger” coincidentally or not). The bus ride there and back took a long time – over an hour there, almost an hour back – there was a lot of construction and some car crashes we passed by. The tube might have been faster, but it was alright in the end. The mall was HUGE! Doesn’t even compare to Ithaca, and much bigger than Puente Hills or Brea Mall.  It was arranged in basically a double square formation (like the number 8 on a digital clock) – and most of it was 2 stories, the second story was over 20 feet tall, allowing for areas to go to 4 levels (or here it’d be ground, 1,2,3 floors). And the ceiling was mostly glass, allowing a lot of natural light in – it was beautifully constructed. And so many stores! I went into the lego store for a while, saw a Dalek bathtub toy in a toy store, and walked by so many more shops. I got a Starbucks muffin take away (instead of take out) because I didn’t eat breakfast. I went to a couple of bookstores (they have more than 1 there!) and found some Christopher Awdry Railway Series books (very rare to find in America! Even Amazon isn’t selling the collection anymore…so I’m buying them 1 by 1) – and bought a couple of those. Thomas is British after all!

When we came back, the Roehampton team had coordinated a barbeque for us Americans! I think it may have been planned by the marketing side, but the academic people came and spent some time with us as well – thanks to Talah and Emma for doing a lot of the set up and cooking! It was pretty American, and it was interesting to talk with the academics and some Roehampton students about Independence Day, how it’s celebrated in America, treatment of the US flag, some of our patriotic things, and catching them up with what we’ve done over the weekend. There was so much food! Hamburgers (small but thick patties, and some nice artisan buns), mustard and ketchup (and BBQ ketchup), pringles, doritos, sausages, grilled chicken, and lamb kebabs (which while not part of my usual 4th of July food was very very good!). And salad (with rocket! I love it! I think it’s arugula in the US…at least I think it was the rocket. A bit of a nutty flavour. It was good. Had it the second night too in my salad). And strawberries. And chocolate cream Oreo’s! Which were a lot of fun introducing those biscuits to Stephen. And Emma’s cookies which were delicious! And there were Roehampton people in the background playing rugby. Not American football...but close enough I guess!

I took a much needed hour or so nap this afternoon (I don’t see how some people can go with so little sleep! I’ve been getting 6 and I’m going crazy!), and did my reading on globalization for tomorrow. Emma brought us our dinner – packed sandwiches. Adam gave me the excited tuna call! We favour the tuna sandwiches out of the 3 types – those, ham and cheese, and cheese and tomato because they usually put in a good amount of tuna…and it just tastes better than the others. And there’s usually enough people who don’t like tuna to leave them for us. Though with all the packed sandwiches, we’ve got a good stockpile up in our fridge. I think if we went through, we’d have a good amount of chips and water too. In case of emergency, of course. We went to a Putney bar (sports bar - saw an American game of baseball - not cricket- Cubs vs Nationals) tonight with some Roehampton students/workers (like work study I think – they study here, but we’ve only interacted with them when they’re working). It was…interesting. Big steps for me tonight I guess. And I witnessed some other aspects of British drinking culture. And interesting night overall. I can definitely vouch for Adam’s RA skills though. But we all made it back safely, and I should be ready to go for tomorrow’s class!

So I just finished watching Hunger (wikipedia here)with 3 other people. Emotions flying. It was hard to watch. Partly the use of static shots – like a long (seemed like 20 minutes, maybe shorter) static shot of a conversation. But also just the graphic imagery and dark nature of the film. It was an emotional roller coaster down into the depths of emotion I never knew existed. I don’t really have words for the film. Good yes, but very heavy, very dark. And I thought Schindler’s List was a darker film. It’s hard to believe that it all happened. Definitely something that relates to our sessions on Security and Terror and Human Rights. But I can’t really express how I feel right now. I think I had my eyes covered for a good portion of the film. And it wasn’t like a horror film. Though there was a lot of horrific stuff. I think that’s been the hardest hour and a half I’ve ever had to sit through. Very intense. I’m not sure there are words to describe it. Maybe that’s a good thing. We shouldn’t have to describe those things. Yet they occur. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this now. But it was a very hard film. Good film. But hard to watch. And I’m pretty sure it was meant to be like that.

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!

Today was the day of the protests! The teachers’ unions, and other public sector unions went on strike today to protest pension cuts, and had a march and rally in London, and we were able to go and observe this citizenship in action.

But first, we covered a little about our planned (and now changed) session of security and terror, a little about the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005.  We went to a memorial outside a tube station, where an innocent man who was suspected as being part of the terrorist plot was shot while running down the tube with a backpack. It was a horrible day, though the reception to it may not have been quite as shocking as our 9/11 attacks, as there is a little more history here of bombings (IRA, etc) – but comparing the two events and the response and reaction by government made for an interesting discussion. 

We then followed the J30 rally toward Westminster. There was a large police presence, as well as several police helicopters flying overhead throughout the ordeal.  There were a lot of signs, some people tried to do chants as they were walking down the street. Many of the signs were regarding pension cuts and teachers, but there were also signs from socialist parties demanding a general workers’ strike and a few signs calling for other things like David Cameron’s resignation, LGBT rights, and cutting war spending.

But overall, the rally was very peaceful – it will be interesting to see how the media portrays it. Though most media coverage in my opinion has seemed to be less sympathetic toward the protesters. There’s a statistic about only 32% of people support the strike (I forgot what the Wisconsin support numbers were this spring, but I feel like more people supported public union rights in Wisconsin. Though I may be mistaken.) Also, most newspaper coverage (from what I’ve been able to read on the tube) mostly covers the mom who is burdened by the strike because her child cannot go to school, confusion caused by closed schools and long lines at customs at airports, and not so much about the issue at the heart of the strike. Though I think I need to look at a wider variety of sources to see if this represents the wider media portrayal. 

We left before the speeches started, and went over to the Tower of London. We ate lunch outside before going in. We had the yeoman tour, which was quite entertaining (think Jungle Cruise tour guides, but less bad jokes, and more entertaining, like jokes about the French…and Americans.), talking about some of the history and grandeur and prisoners and ravens and death and executions at the Tower. The area was quite big – a castle or palace I suppose – it was very big, much bigger than I thought.  It was fun, though I was very tired! After the tour, we went to see the Crown Jewels – which was much like a Disneyland ride (in fact, there was a moving walkway to stand on to see the crowns). There were long lines, and not a whole lot of attraction – though while we were in winding Disneyland like lines, we snaked through some rooms with videos showing the Royal Jewelry, before being able to actually see some of it – crowns, maces, dishes, and more, after passing through some mighty looking steel doors into the “most secure place in London.”  It was nice to see, though short – and it started raining when we came out! Afterwards, we split up into groups. Ahren and I went to the torture place, which was short, and only one room, but had a few torture devices. After that, we went onto the walls, going through the towers, over the ramparts, past exhibits about animals in the Tower, weaponry, and other things – Kelsey and Nicole joined us for a bit. After that, we went to White Tower for a whirlwind tour, going past royal armour, wooden horses, a dragon, cannons, guns, and more. And at the end, we went up into one final tower about murders at the Tower.

We came back and I took a rather long nap, headed out to the bar in Putney that Ahren and Tom went to last week out by the water, which was nice, and now time to work – 86 pages of reading!s

This morning I woke up earlier around 7 something, so that I could go to breakfast. Today’s academic session was on human rights.  Darren lead our morning session, which was a lot more of the theoretical ideas of human rights. Human rights as a language, the political usage of human rights, the differences between human rights and citizen rights, legal and social rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and some theories about the Hobbesian and Lockean (liberal as hands off!) views of the state.  It was pretty interesting, and I could tell Darren had a lot of enthusiasm for what he was lecturing about. We also got to watch a clip of “24” which was pretty fun, talking about the portrayal of human rights, and how the show mixed up human and citizenship rights, as well as finding situations when opposing sides can both claim they are standing up for human rights. 

We had our lunch break, where I had a Thai curry, again cooked in front of me – the chef was quite nice and affable, and the curry was delicious! I think Katie would have liked it spicier, but it was alright – it was Thai so it had coconut and was a little on the sweet side. 

After lunch, we did some group work on finding cases with conflicts using articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I paired up with Brendan, and we did some research in the library. After that, Nicola led us through a lesson on free speech, using the examples of comedians, controversial books, and the pope – and using iclickers, which was fun! America as a whole seems to have less limitations on free speech than the UK, which seems to have many in comparison. Though we raised questions, asking things like if free speech is always good, what are its limits, etc.

Dinner we arrived early (because we had a trip tonight) and they weren’t ready yet – eventually we got sausages and mash, with peas and carrots. After dinner, we met up with Kriss, who took us to the London Eye. To be honest, I was a little nervous – I’m not a huge fan of heights – and that wheel is tall – taller than any of the nearby buildings. 13 of us (12 plus Kriss) were able to get our own car/pod, and went around in the circle. It was a little strange jumping onto it (it didn’t stop – almost like walking sideways onto a moving walkway) It was pretty fun actually, and I enjoyed it, heights and all! It would have been nice to do it at night and see all the lights, but night doesn’t fall here until after 9pm, and since the sun was setting, we got some nice pictures but could still see everything. I could see Parliament, Waterloo, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and more! There was a lot of picture taking (not much jumping, thankfully), and there was a helicopter flying and diving around for a bit which caused some excitement. The 30 minute ride felt much shorter than 30 minutes, and I’d love to do it again sometime! Afterwards, we walked on the Southbank a little and stopped in a bookstore – and I saw the British versions of Harry Potter! And the Philosopher’s Stone!

Afterwards, we stopped in Putney with Kriss for a while. We were over by the bridge – some of us went down closer to the water, since there’s an access ramp going down there, and some people went to the pub on the little river walkway area, and we all convened on a patio looking out over the river, which had a really nice atmosphere. I wish we had a place like this at Cornell – it was beautiful, and it was great conversing about lookalikes, college stories, and more.