Covent Garden and the Tower of London

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Hello Again,

I've done a few things since I last wrote so, I thought I should catch up now, before the weekend starts, so that the next one I write won't be obscenely long.

So, the day after I last wrote, Maggi and I went to the Covent Garden Markets, which was a lot of fun. There were some interesting street performers, which I really enjoyed. I took a few pictures of the market and the street performers. My favorite, I think, was this guy who was dressed in a green suit that looked like it was covered in leaves, and a green hat, who spoke in this weird, high pitched birdlike squeak. When we walked around him, he had taken someone's camera, who had been filming him, and was talking into it and making weird gestures. Then he tried to sell it to someone else, then he finally gave it back when they gave him a few coins. It made me laugh. There were also some musicians who were pretty good.

And the markets had some good stuff (although, after Portobello, they all seem small to me!). I found a few gift items and Maggi and I both got giant cookies at a cookie bakery. The cookies here are weird though, I think they must use a different kind of flour or rising agent, because they are really fluffy... It's strange - it was pretty good, but I think I'll stick to cake.

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On Monday I finally made it to the Tower of London. It was amazing; I love history. I could never possibly remember everything that I read about there. It was so interesting though; I usually only think of it as a place for prisoners and executions, but royalty actually lived there sometimes, and it wasn't actually designed to be a prison, I guess it just kind of happened. And I think it was about 300 years ago, that even though it was still being used, it became a tourist attraction and they had all sort of stuff in the White Tower for people to look at - the armory has been there since then I guess. I really wanted to go on one of the tours, but there were such big groups of people that I didn't think it would be worth it. And I was hoping to get one of the audio guides, but they cost £4 or £6, so I thought that was a little extreme. So I just walked around and enjoyed it. It was a little bit cloudy, but it didn't rain, thankfully, and it even got sunny as I was leaving, so I walked down to the Tower Bridge and around to the Tube Station. I think I might have to get a book about the Tower at the Library so I can lean more about it. (I just discovered how to check out books at the school library, so maybe they will have one.)

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The rest of the week has been pretty boring, filled with class... Tuesday I did some grocery shopping and went to my first VCT (Visual Culture and Theory) classes. Decent... I have a "cinema' studies course, which I thought was just the English way of saying Film Studies, but apparently there is a difference. The instructor, who seemed like a pretty nice guy, said that "film" is just the study of how films are developed and the history of film, whereas "cinema" is trying to learn about people's reactions to film, how films "hook" us, and what we experience when we actually go to see a movie in the theater. I thought that was interesting, but apparently they don't get into that until the second term, so it's basically just film studies for me!

The second class was Media and Communication Studies. I think this could be really interesting, because I am always interested in how the media/advertising affects us and gets us to do things, and all of that kind of stuff - but I am not expecting much from this class. The instructor talks really fast and jumps around from subject to subject and kept referencing people that no one else had heard of, and asking questions that had nothing to do with what he had been talking about. So it was a little frustrating and hard to understand what was going on or what we were going to learn. And I was also irritated because it seemed on the syllabus that we would have weekly reading assignments, which is fine, but most are 10 pages or at most one chapter out of a book (none of which I could find in the library, by the way) that we don't actually have access to. At the U, if we are supposed to read a few pages of something, they usually run copies of it for us, or post it online. And when I asked him if they were weekly readings, he just started talking about the difficultly of the readings... Very annoying. But, I went to the library anyway, to try to find them - but I could only find one of the books he had listed, and I searched for about half of them (and that was about 30 books...). Most of them said they were in the library, but they weren't on the shelves, so I gave up. I did get an interesting looking book called "Saturday Morning Censors" which is about how parent groups have been trying to censor children's TV since it began, and what they have been doing... It had a pictures of Muppets on the cover, and that is why I picked it up, ha.

On Wednesday, I had my first Islamic Art and Architecture Class. It was pretty interesting, but I felt stupid because almost everyone in my class had either studied it before, was Islamic, was from the Middle East, or spoke Arabic, or all of those things... But, it should be interesting, so that's nice. The Instructor seemed nice, but kind of absent minded, he kept forgetting what things were called, or asking the class what things were (I think he knew what they were, and were just asking to see what we knew, but sometimes it was hard to tell). And he also had a sort of stutter... not with sounds, but he would start talking really fast and repeat the same phrases or words over a few times before moving on. That got a little annoying...

Thursday was another studio day, which was interesting. Our instructor brought in a ton of left over printed pages from magazines, and left over posters, from print shops, and told us to use them however we wanted to make a sort of collage... Only she said it should be "more than a collage..." I didn't really have any idea what she was talking about, but we had pretty much free range, so I made a neat mobile. I felt kind of weird though, because she came around to talk to everyone about what they were doing, and she chatted with the people around me and gave them ideas and stuff, and she just nodded and said that sounded good when I told her what I was doing, so I felt a little left out. But otherwise, she was friendly to me, and asked how I was doing with getting the school stuff figured out and getting to classes and stuff, so that was nice. Apparently we are now supposed to use images of our "collages" for advertisements for some sort of sustainability debate that is going on. It should be interesting, although I have to figure out what paper sizes are here, because she said A1 and A6, but I have no idea what that means... I love that at home, they just say 11x17 or letter sized - so much easier.

Today, I went back to Portobello with Maggi, but sadly most of the antiques are only out on Saturdays, so we just wandered around and saw some of the other stalls and shops along it.

Tomorrow I am going to Oxford with Maggi's program (apparently some girls didn't want to go, so I'm going to buy an extra ticket from them), so that should be exciting. Then, Maggi and I have planned an exciting trip to Scotland! We are leaving Saturday night, will arrive Sunday morning, take a bus tour around the Scottish Highlands and to some castles, come back with a few hours to spend in Edinburgh, then take a bus back Sunday night and arrive home Monday morning. We really wanted to go to Loch Ness, but it's just too far away for a one day trip, but we are both really excited about our trip! It will be our first trip out of England, and since we are riding the bus at night, we don't have to pay for a hotel room! Which might be a little icky, but we are both going to shower before we leave on Saturday, and bring a change of clothes for the bus home on Sunday (it's supposed to rain, so I want to bring a change, so I don't have to be wet on the bus ride back). So, I will probably end up taking a gazillion pictures, and will post them upon my return, with some sort of blog on Monday. (Neither of us have anything on Monday, so we are both just going to relax and sleep before starting the rest of the week.)

We are still working on planning out more trips... Megan asked if we wanted to go to Greece with her and friends, and Maggi is really excited about it, so I hope that actually happens - Megan hasn't gotten back to me about it. But, we still need to plan a trip to Ireland (sadly it won't work next weekend, since Maggi has class on Friday and Monday, and it's pretty expensive planning last minute), and Maggi really wants to go to Disneyland Paris, so I think we might plan a long weekend in France so we can do that for one day, and spend another day in Paris, and hopefully take a train to Brussels on another day. Our main probably is that taking the train is actually really expensive, but it's much easier than trying to fly. But, maybe on Monday we'll sit down and plan some more.

So that's all that I've been up to, and I will be sure to update you with Oxford and Scotland pictures and details soon after it happens!

-Manon

The Pictures:
Covent Garden Markets
The Tower

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