Museums, Markets and Classes

Again, the day has slipped away from me so this will have to be a relatively brief entry, which shouldn't be particularly difficult because today was quite uneventful.

Sunday

On Sunday, Eszter and I slept a bit later and headed out around 10:30am on her last excursion into the city. Because the weather forecast predicted rain all day (shocking! although it did not end up raining very much at all), we decided to not bother trying for the changing of the guard again and headed to South Kensington for some indoor fun at the Museum of Natural History (which, like most of the major museums in the city, is free to the public). The museum itself was in a beautiful building with great architecture and stained glass...what building in this city isn't gorgeous? We saw the fishes, mammals, and dinosaurs exhibits, the last of which was particularly well-designed and interesting, although we didn't have too much time to read all of the information. The volcanos exhibit also looked really good, but we breezed through it only by accident on our way to the gemstones. We also saw the extensive minerals exhibit and the beautiful exhibit on gemstones called "The Earth's Treasury." It looked like there were lots of other interesting things to see but unfortunately, we had to leave soon after to get lunch.

Lunch, however, was also an adventure, since we walked down the street to Harrod's in order to get it. The department store is as tremendous as I remembered, and is almost more of a museum than a store. The "food halls" were where we headed, and I think I could spend hours in just those alone. We lucked out and Eszter noticed that the bakery section had just put out hot "baguettes" that were really more like pastries, filled with bacon and cheese, for only a 1.10 GBP. Impressive. I also picked up a loaf of bread for the week, and we headed back on the tube to eat at my dorm since it was pouring rain and there was nowhere to sit inside. Apparently Harrod's Summer Sale opened today, and one of my friends went this morning before class to see Sarah Michelle Gellar open the sale. It looks like I have too much homework to do this week to pop down there before the sale ends, however. Sad, although most of it is probably not affordable anyway, even if it is on sale.

We ate and Eszter packed up the rest of her stuff and we headed off to Liverpool Station relatively early in order to make sure that Eszter's ticket was correct. After confirming that, we wandered around the area for awhile until it was time for her to get a seat. We had a lovely weekend and I at least had a great time seeing the city with a good friend. I hope she did too.

After Eszter left, I wandered around a big outdoor market nearby for a good two hours, looking around in general and more specifically for some sort of warmer jacket since it has been very chilly here and shows little sign of being less rainy any time soon. I found a couple of promising ones, but was in general unsuccessful, although I did buy the most delicious and chocolately brownie that I have ever had. I wanted to walk back here, but I forced myself to take the tube so that I could come back and do some much ignored homework. London is so much more educational than class. I feel like wandering around the museums would be perhaps a better use of my time, but c'est la vie. I have to do some work.

I spent the evening reading and updating my blog, as well as sorting through my huge amounts of pictures from the weekend. I just started a webshots account today and will put the link here when I finish captioning the pictures, just in case anyone wants to wade through the 100+ photos I've taken so far. I edited them down, I swear. By quite a bit.

Today

I am finally caught up! Today I really didn't do much at all. I woke up, had breakfast (oatmeal with a little Nutella has become my standard, because I forgot to buy brown sugar the first week and this is a really delicious alternative), and went to class. Drama was interesting, because we got to talk about both plays we saw last week, but it was difficult to stay awake during literature, although I am enjoying Conrad's The Secret Agent more than I thought I would after hating every page of Heart of Darkness. It is about terrorism in London during 1906, which seems quite fitting. I think I was just exhausted by the weekend. We'll see how history goes tomorrrow, since we have yet to discuss Great Britain and the professor seems more interested in hearing our opinions about America in particular, and world politics and social injustice generally. The reading for tomorrow was about the Cold War, and deals much more with the USA and USSR than with Great Britain. How unfortunate. I did not come here to learn about my own country.

After class today I went grocery shopping for the week, and bought, among other things, more tea and some honey because I have stopped trying to convince myself that it will soon be so hot that I won't want a cup of tea in the morning and at night. The weather clearly has no intentions of being agreeable anytime soon. Then I made dinner and did homework in my room, which was somewhat successful although I wish I was more motivated to go to a library with people. It is hard to be motivated in my room. I also posted the aforementioned pictures and wrote captions for about half of them.

Ok well more tomorrow I suppose, or more likely more on Wednesday, since we're going to yet another play tomorrow night, this time called "The Philistines" at the National Thater. I have no idea what it is about, so hopefully it will be a good surprise.