Intense Sightseeing

Continuing with descriptions of this week's marathon days of seeing the huge amount of London it appears we haven't gotten to in the past five weeks...

Wednesday
Our second-to-last class excursion was to the Tate Modern, a museum on the south bank of the Thames that is in a building that used to be a power station. I went there once before, with John, but only to see one exhibit, on urban development. This time we had a tour, as usual, but this one was quite short...only a little more than an hour long...and a little strange. Our guide was entertaining but a little bit scattered; he seemed to fit well in amongst all of the crazy modern art in the Tate. He was very enthusiastic but spent a really long time at a few select pieces throughout the museum, going into depth trying to get us to discuss their meanings. Then, at the end of about an hour, he suddenly was like "Oh well I've got somewhere to be (looks at his watch hurriedly" so I suppose I'll see you later, hope you enjoy your day," and hurried off. Our professor was on the tour with us and was like "Did he seriously just leave? Really? Was that a joke? How postmodern..." So strange. My friend Colleen and I spent a very long time walking around the rest of the museum (or at least a good chunk of it), before going to eat our lunches (I try to always bring most of my lunch, if not all of it, to save money) outside. It was so, so cold and windy that we got hot chocolate as well.

After lunch we walked across the Millenium Bridge toward St. Paul's, and it started raining and being really windy again...not a fabulous day for a walk. Colleen took pictures of St. Paul's from the outside and then we headed toward the Monument. The Monument commemorates the Great Fire of London in 1666...so people remember it, but also because it gave the city a chance to rebuild, and some of the most gorgeous buildings in London were built during that time right after the fire (including the current St. Paul's). We were stopped on the way by a torrential downpour. While waiting for the rain to calm down a little bit, a British couple asked us if we knew the area. We told them we knew it all right, and that we had a map if they wanted to check something, and pointed them in the direction of the tube station they wanted. The man pointed at a small church and said "But that's St. Paul's, so isn't it the other way?" Um, no, we just came from St. Paul's, we told him, and it was really the other direction that they wanted. "Oh no, that one is St. Paul's" pointing to a slightly bigger church. No, still not, look at the map? See it's that way. "Well, I think it's that way so we'll try it. Goodbye" It was really incredible; like as soon as we opened our mouths and were Americans there is no way we could A. Know our way around London better than they did or B. Read a map. We were pretty amazed. We walked to the Monument and climbed the whole thing (all 311 steps up and down). The view was beautiful although it was incredibly cold and windy at the top.

I don't remember what I did for the rest of Wednesday night so that probably means I did homework, or at least attempted it. I may have also gone grocery shopping. Hmm. Anyway, it was a quiet evening.


Thursday

Thursday we had literature class as usual, but history was cancelled because instead we all had appointments with our professor for 10 minutes during the usual class time. I went to the student café with Colleen to do some work while waiting for mine, and actually got quite a bit done. Then I went to my appointment with my professor, who was grading exams for a VICTORIAN history class that she finished teaching right before ours started. I was so frustrated to discover that she knows so much about the time period I will be largely studying this upcoming year for my thesis, and would have rather taught in that area because it is what she knows best. It seems like such a waste to have missed the opportunity to study that with her, and now I will be super behind on my thesis because of this program, when I could have been so far ahead! Oh well; at least now when novelists talk about the history and geography of London I will better understand the context--that's something.

After that I went home quickly to drop off some things before meeting Charlotte at the British Library (it poured rain on the way there, so I was a bit late). The British Library was very interesting, particularly because they had an exhibit on sacred texts of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism which had on display manuscripts from thousands of years ago, including a tiny segment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The beautifully illuminated texts were absolutely stunning, some with the color and gold remaining after hundreds and hundreds of years. There is also a large display of the writings of various authors, including Jane Austen’s letters, the manuscript of Jane Eyre in Bronte’s own hand, Lewis Carroll’s diary open to the page where he details telling the Alice stories to the children of a friend of his, the only verified signature of Shakespeare in existence, and Beatles lyrics with things crossed out and changed, etc. It was fascinating and we spent a good two hours there before coming back to my dorm to make dinner after a quick stop at the grocery store. We made eggs, potatoes, toast, and some veggies, and it was delicious. Then Charlotte headed home and I did homework. Booo. It is really difficult to describe how much I hate spending any of my time here in London doing work that I don’t think is benefiting me very much at all. I haven’t learned nearly as much as I would like, and there is still so much to see!

...


Ah well, now it is quite late (I have been very good tonight about doing work and only writing a paragraph as breaks between working on real things). I should finish up my literature paper and go to sleep, so the weekend (which was incredibly eventful) will have to wait until tomorrow. Char flew in with some girls from her Ghana program today, since they are in London for a few days on their way back to the US, so Woopy and I will meet up with them tomorrow evening for dinner, so that is exciting...then there will be three members of South Quad's ResStaff in London, all together! How adorable. We're hoping to convince their group that we should go out for Indian food. Yum.