First Day of Class and Mid-Weekend Update

Hello Again!

It's been four days since I last wrote; that's not too bad, right?

So Thursday was my first day of class, and it was incredible. We met up at the school at 9:45 and left a 10:10 for a mystery coach trip to an unknown location. I chatted with a girl from Israel for a bit, and it was interesting to talk to her. She was really cold - which I understood - although it was a beautiful 60-ish degree day.

I was trying to follow the road signs on the drive, but having very little geographical knowledge of England, I was completely lost. We kept following the signs for France though, and I was concerned that I didn't have my passport, but thankfully I didn't need it (it would have spoiled the surprise a little if she had told us to bring passports). But our driver was using someone else's bus, and had no idea how to get where we were going, and was using a combination of GPS and what looked like a Google-map. So that was interesting. Our instructor and her assistants hadn't been in 2 years, so they were also a little foggy on the details. (I was sitting right behind them, so I was listening in on the conversation.) So, after the driver said he thought we might be 20 minutes away, we turned on to this random little road (that the GPS said to take) and ended up against a boardwalk driving down something that only resembled a dirt road... It was muddy and rough, and not something I would feel comfortable driving a bus down (or a car for that matter). We continued on that for about 10 minutes and the instructor and driver decided it might be a good idea not to continue. The driver then drove the bus backwards down the "road" and all the way back to the main motorway. (On the way we almost hit a wall and an old man got really mad and starting waving his fists and telling us to stop-we ignored him. And everyone walking by stared at us.) It was pretty intense.

Finally they figured out where to go, and we sent off in the right direction, and it took about half an hour to get there - "There" finally being Dungeness (look on a map - I had no idea where it was either). We parked at a little pub and set off on foot in a group. It was amazing outside; it was sunny and warm and wonderful. We walked down to a house that used to belong to Derek Jarman, who I have never heard of, but apparently he was a film director. His house was pretty neat, he had collected a lot of the junk that littered the beach (I'll get to that in a moment) and made a sort of sculpture garden with it. It was neat, but not that exciting... It was kind of funny though, because the house was in a row of houses, so people were taking pictures of the neighbor's laundry. And, people actually still live in the house, and thank goodness they didn't appear to be home; I felt really awkward taking pictures from a distance, but some people were actually taking pictures of the inside up against the windows!

After that we walked down to the beach-which was no easy feat, it was so hard to walk on, it was worse than sand - I got a really good workout! The beach was amazing. It is an all stone beach and it is just littered with old boats, beach houses, and other boating stuff. It was so scattered and just everywhere. Very weird, but good for photographing. We all sat around and ate our packed lunches (finally - with all the mess getting there it was about 1:30 by then and I was starving!). The we learned about our assignment, which was basically have a good day, take lots of pictures and collect things that will remind us of the journey/environment, and then write two short narratives about what we experience at the different beaches (we had one more to go to) and how we connected with it. So, it was basically a free day at the beach.

Then we walked back along the beach to the pub to catch the coach to the other beach (about an hour later than we told the driver to meet us - ha). It was so cool; I can't even describe it, just look at the pictures. (I haven't counted how many I took at Dungeness, but over the whole day I took 460 pictures, just playing with the camera and enjoying the scenery.) (And, I love my new camera! Thank you again!)

Then it was a pretty short bus ride to Camber Sands, which was a much more popular beach. It was all sand and had a little beach pub on it. It was very nice there too, but somehow it wasn't as impressive as Dungeness. I would go back and go swimming though, if it were warmer, it looked amazing. There actually were a few families in bathings suits and a few others just having a good time on the beach. So, I was kind of creepy and took pictures of other people... But, it was all part of my "experience," and I didn't post any, so I'm not that creepy. We spent about an hour there just walking around and taking pictures. I found a piece of sea glass - which made me really excited! I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't photograph well. And now I seem to have lost it... Oh well-it's on my desk somewhere...

Then we just went home, and luckily the bus driver knew how to go home (I saw him studying the maps when we got there), so it was about 2.5 hours and we were back at Elephant & Castle! Overall, a very wonderful day, and I'm hoping the rest of class is this fun!

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Speaking of Elephant & Castle, I realized that I haven't posted any pictures showing my location, so I took some today and put them in an album (as always, I will put the links at the end). Personally, I think it's a little bit of a grubby area, but it doesn't bother me much. Honestly, it reminds me a bit of Milwaukee, with fewer crazy homeless people, so I actually feel pretty at home. Maggi said that it kind of scares her, which is fine at night (anywhere in London is scary at night) but by day it's actually pretty nice. And even at night it's mostly empty anyway.
I didn't take any pictures of the street we are on (Walworth) going away from the shopping center (except the green apartment buildings), but it's a nice little area. It has some ethnic grocery stores, a few clothing stores, a post office, a few banks (the closest ATM because the one in the shopping center is broken!), a regular grocery store, and a really neat market called the East Street Market. I walked down it for the first time the other day, it was neat, it had a lot of interesting stuff, some Jamaican music stalls, tons of children's clothes, some fabric stalls, and one table that was just covered in a huge mound of bras... It was nice - and I will have to go back there to check it out more thoroughly.
I'm so glad I live by a shopping center! It has two small grocery stores (one that mostly sells frozen stuff - but super cheap) and it has three drug stores I think, and a ton of other things. Apparently there is also a decent bowing alley on the top floor that we might have to check out sometime.
So, check out those pictures and you can see where I live!

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Yesterday, I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but Megan called and asked if I wanted to go to the Tower of London with her and some friends. I was really looking forward to it, but the tube had a malfunction and it took me forever to meet up with them. (But I did sit by some really amusing people on the tube, so that made it a little bit more interesting.) When I got there, Megan said that she had forgotten her wallet, so we couldn't go to the Tower and ended up walking around trying to find a DLR (Docklands Light Railway - I didn't know either) train to Canary Wharf.

I thought it was a little weird that they wanted to go there, because it's basically a business area and there is a really fancy shopping center. But it was beautiful out and we just walked around the river and the big business buildings for a while, which was fun.

I had already been there briefly with Maggi when we went to Greenwich Market, we had to walk around to find an ATM. I really wanted to go back to take some cityscape pictures, but we didn't really walk around the city part much, so I will have to go back and take more pictures. Our trip to Greenwich ended up being a bit of a bust anyway, since the Markets actually aren't really open on Wednesdays, so there was almost nothing there. So we are going back again, possibly tomorrow. Which is good, because I want to go the the Observatory and take a pictures of myself at the Prime Meridian! That should be exciting - and I'll let you know when we do get around to it! I think I'm going to the Tower on Monday, so I'll try to post about that on Monday.

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Today I had originally planned to hang out with Maggi, but a friend of hers ended up coming down from Leeds (they used to work at an international camp together), and I wasn't sure what they were doing, so I decided to go market shopping! It was so wild. I went to Portobello Market (in Notting Hill - if you've seen the movie), and it was so huge! I think the website claims that it is the largest street market, but I think I've read that on other markets websites, but so far, Portobello is the biggest I've been to. It was seriously huge and packed! I don't really mind crowds, and it wasn't the worst I've ever been in, but there were tons of people there. The first part is all antique stores/dealers. There was so much amazing stuff - and what was weird to me is a lot of the stuff was 100+ years old, but it wasn't super expensive. I guess that makes sense, considering everything in the UK is older than the US, but it was interesting to me.

After the antiques there is some "new stuff" and some flea market areas, kind of mixed together. There was a huge section with food stalls (it smelled amazing!) and there are lots of interesting "fashion" stores open on the road as well. I think my favorite part though was all the colorful buildings (look at the pictures) a lot of them were pastel shades and some brighter colors; I really liked that.

I did spend a fair amount there, but I got some pretty neat gifts (I think) so I'm happy about that. I also got some ideas for other gifts, so if Maggi and I go back, I'll probably buy more stuff. But it is really amazing, and I hope everyone gets to go sometime. Maybe it's just me, but I love seeing old things and thinking "hey - I could own that!" That sounds funny... but it's neat, like you own a part of history or something. I didn't buy anything for myself except a £5 watch because I hate using my ugly phone to look at the time. It's a really cute watch though, a lovely teal color.

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And that was pretty much my day... I spent about 4 hours walking around the market then came home to rest my feet. When I got back, Maggi asked if I wanted to met her friend (and her friend's friend) for dinner - so we went to this place called Giraffe. It was right on the river down from the London Eye, so now I have another place I need to go and take pictures! Anyway, they said that Giraffe was an African restaruant, and I was actually really looking forward to trying some African food (the ethnic food places here are pretty awesome). But it turned out to be this kind of trendy, "we love to try new things and treat our guests special," a little bit like "Flame." It had better food than Flame, but not much better... I had a hamburger (I know lame, but I was expecting some wild African Dish, and none of the stuff they had looked "wild" so I just gave up). It was okay - I wasn't thrilled. Everyone else seemed to enjoy their food, which was good. We chatted about the differences between England and the US and our favorite TV shows and where Maggi and I should travel to. It was pretty fun, and I had a good time. Maggi and I really need to get a map and plan out some good trips!

And now Maggi and I are going to watch a few Office episodes and then hit they hay (I'm pretty tired...) I have no idea what we're doing tomorrow, but I kind of want to go somewhere, or do something exciting, so I guess we'll have to see!

Thanks again for reading, and feel free to leave comments if you want, or just email me - I'm trying to be good about emailing back!

-Manon


The Much Awaited Photos
Dungeness and Camber Sands
Canary Wharf with Megan
Elephant & Castle
Portobello Market

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