"I wasted time, now time doth waste me"

The title of this blog comes from Shakespeare's Richard II, which I just read for class. I am determined NOT to end up like good ol' Rich and waste any time while I am here (or be imprisoned and murdered by an overzealous knight in a jail cell come to think of it) which leads me to the rest of my post since I have a bunch to talk about as I have been very busy.

On Saturday (the 22nd, yes I'm behind) Kelly and I went to Chapel Hill market and did some shopping. We found some great fruit stalls that were pretty cheap. There was also a butchers and a fish stall (the latter of which I avoided since fish with the eyes still on them freak me out, I'd rather see my fish fried and with chips). I braved the meat stall and got steak super cheap, which I was a little nervous about but it was good and I have not got mad cow disease yet so I will go back for sure. We then went to the Wellcome Museum for free which had a display all about the history of hallucinogenic drugs. That had a "drug free" hallucination machine that was spinning lights in a dark room. Basically you close your eyes for a minute then open them and stare at the spinning orange lights and they appear to go faster and faster. The museum also had a display all about medcine and medical stuff (some nasty looking amputations saws) all of which reaffirmed that I belong in the English department and not in medical school. Saw Florence Nightingale's moccasins. After that we got Indian food and found a random street with a whole bunch of Indian restaurants so it was a great find!

On Wednesday I saw a FANTASTIC production of Hamlet at the National Theatre for my Modern Theatre class. They set it in modernish times with everyone in suits and bodyguards with guns. It was four hours and I was enthralled the whole time, which gives you an idea of production quality. Plus, they implied that Ophelia was murdered rather than killing herself, an interpretation that I always liked when reading the play.

Thursday I got to go see the musical Legally Blonde for free!!! Laura got free tickets through work and gave them to my friend Christine who took me along and we had a great time. I had just gotten off of work at my internship and the theatre was about 2 minutes away so it was perfect. Totally different from Hamlet of course but it was fun and energetic and made me laugh and two plays in two nights both for free, can't beat that!

I don't remember if I already mentioned this but I joined a travel club that I thought was through Birkbeck but turns out it wasn't so I'm not really sure how I found it but I'm glad I did since they get you all sorts of discounts for student travel. I went on Saturday to Wales and Wye valley which was awesome. Small world, I met Kelly's orientation roommate who was from Mexico on the trip and said I was from Stonehill and she said "Oh! I know someone from Stonehill" a voila, we both knew Kelly. Back to Wales trip: First stop was Gloucester, which was still in England where we went to the Gloucester Cathedral. The guide said they added this to the tour because parts of Harry Potter were filmed there, cool right?

Here is a very pretty stain glass window I found in a random chapel in the Cathedral and I'm posting it because I think it is nice and its my blog and I can post whatever I like :)

View from the back of the Cathedral

Next we crossed the river and were in Wales. We stopped at Tinturn Abbey (see pic below) which is all in ruins but was still awesome and beautiful! I can see how the area inspired Wordsworth. When Henry the 8th took over and got rid of the Catholic church they stripped the abbey of a lot of the stone and it fell into disrepair

Inside the Abbey

After that we went to Chepstow, another town in Wales, where we saw a castle and wandered around. I saw the alley that allegedly inspired J.K. Rowling's Diagon Alley, though the guide admitted that was just a rumor and he was unable to confirm. The guide was an interesting man, middle aged Irish fellow. When I was walking next to him close to the road he all of a sudden grabbed my arm and gently pulled me to the other side of him, informing me that ladies were supposed to walk on that side. I was surprised and he explained that this was from the days when the roads were not paved and full of sewage and the passing horses used to kick up muck as they passed so the girls walked on the other side of the men so they would not get their fancy clothes dirty. I refrained from mentioning that I was in jeans, not petticoats and the road was paved and there were no horses... but I guess it was nice in a sort of outdated way :)

Alrighty on to Sunday! I wasn't going to let complete exhaustion from my Wales trip keep me down this weekend so I was up bright and early to go on a day trip to Stonehenge and Bath with Hannah, Nina, Christine and Sam.

First off we stopped at Stonehenge which was pretty cool, though you only really need an hour or so there because when you come right down to it is is just a pile of large rocks, albeit cool mysterious-how-the-hell-did-they-get-there-rocks. It was sunny and clear and beautiful. Even though it is January the plains we drove through were all green so I got my classic English countryside fix. So nice to get out of the city for a bit.

My favorite part of the day was Bath, which is so beautiful. The whole city is made out of the same apricot colored stone and it is actually a law that you have to build any new buildings out of the same stuff, though its expensive so they get around it by building out of concrete and adding the stone after. We went to the Roman Baths first. You can't touch the water since they used lead pipes and it is untreated, though that didn't stop the 4 people I saw stick there hands in... Pics below:

View of some of Bath

Me in front of the big Roman Bath

View from bridge in Bath

The first sunset I have seen in a month

All in all it was a great weekend! Since the theme of my blog this week is not wasting time this ending is appropriate because I have to leave in 5 minutes for a 15 hour bus ride to Galway! I can write all about that adventure in a few days!

Cambridge, Globe, Mummies and Blue Socks

I have been shamefully neglectful of this blog so I'm just going to have to work backwards from what I've been doing so sorry if it is a little long! On my way home from my internship I pass a bunch of theaters and last night I decided to walk into the one in the West End that was playing the Lion King and see if they did student discounts. The guy at the box office said they had seats for that night so I thought why not! I keep saying how much I want to go see plays and I figured there was no time like the present. I got a ticket that would normally have cost 57pounds for 21 and it was a great seat, right in the middle on the middle balcony! I'm notorious for wanting everything planned out so acting spontaneous for once was nice; I may not know where I want to be in the next 20 years but I knew where I wanted to be in the next 2 hours!

On Tuesday for my Shakespeare in London course we visited The Globe! The English nerd in me was super excited- we did a tour of the theatre (which isn't in exactly the same location as the orginal theater, but close enough and is on the South Bank of the Thames) Here are some pics:

Last Sunday everyone from the program took a bus down to Cambridge, which was beautiful. We had lunch and Cauis College (pronounced "Keys") which apparently is a big deal since they don't let many people in and we couldn't take pictures. What was great is we got a free lunch! Had about 10 glasses of free orange juice to build up my reserve of vitamin C because there is no way in hell I'm paying the ridiculous amount of money for juice here. After eating we explored a bit (it was actually sunny!) and then went "punting." Punting is where you go on this flat boat pushed along by a pole- so kind of like a gondola I guess, but flat.

View from the Boat Punting

The day before I went to the British Museum with Hannah and Christine, which is huge! The nice thing is its free so you don't feel like you have to run around and see everything to get your money's worth. I pretty much focused on Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece and will go back another time to see more. They are doing an exhibit of the "The Book of the Dead" which I am tempted to go read from, unwittingly set off a chain of events that will bring about the end of the world and wake up a mummy and then wait around for Brendan Frasier to burst in heroically and clean up the mess I made.... yeah, "The Mummy" is a guilty pleasure; I'd apologize but I'm not the least bit sorry! Daydreams aside, here are a few pics from the Museum:

This mummy is Cleopatra. I don't know if it's "the" Cleopatra... who knows that name could be the Megan or Katherine of Ancient Egypt, but the sign said Cleopatra so I'm calling that pretty awesome regardless.

So far I really like my internship, my supervisor is great. Bought me lunch yesterday and I tried Thai food for the first time which was delicious! One of her contacts in the Health Protection Agency is interested in me helping on a project for them all about stockpiling medical supplies in the event of a nuclear attack, which should be pretty cool. Yesterday I got to sit in on a meeting that is the start of a project about protecting the Critical National Infrastructure of the UK (which are things like energy, water, transportation, food etc. that are critical to the running of a nation and are particularly vulnerable to a terrorist attack). I didn't understand a lot of what was going on but it was interesting to see how these sorts of million dollar projects get started and how professionals from totally different backgrounds like social psychology and computers try and communicate to each other what exactly needs to be done to make sure energy and transportation are resilient by 2050. I also have been making a terrorist profile where I look up information on past terrorists- which is chilling but interesting. All in all really liking my placement! My supervisor is really insistent she does not want me to be bored or just stuck in an office. She wants me to find speakers and conferences to go to and she also is letting me audit her master's level course she teaches "Responding to Terrorism" which meets on Wednesdays from 3-5. The class is going to be super interesting and relevant to my internship, especially since each class she brings in a professional to talk about how they actually deal with terrorist threats in the real world. People like emergency responders, police officers, insurance agents, government officials etc. All in all going well!

I turned all my socks blue two days ago when doing laundry, but I figure if that is my biggest complaint about London so far then I'm doing ok :) So far I've learned: Don't be afraid to take a different street on your walk back from work as you find some pretty cool places (ended up on Drury lane and have been singing the muffin man song all week), don't feel embarrassed about cultural slip ups (because honestly, who gives a damn if I have to sit there and take an extra second to figure out the coins, I'll get it eventually and if I get a weird look for asking where the "restroom" is... meh.), the washing machines here take at least 3x as long to clean anything and our dryer is probably broken, walk into a theater and see if they have cheap tickets because the end you get to watch I man dressed as a lion get whacked on the head by a chick dressed as a baboon as one of your favorite Disney movies comes to life on stage.

Living a Lie

Yes ladies and gentleman I have just discovered that for the past 20 years I have been deceived by grocery stores all across America.... eggs do not have to be refrigerated. After vainly searching the refrigerated dairy section I discovered the elusive cartons hiding on a shelf next to the pasta, first cultural weirdness discovered! I didn't by them though- the rational part of my brain tells me that millions of the British people have been living with non-refrigerated eggs for as long as there have been fridges and seem to be surviving just fine, but couldn't bring myself to do it just yet... But enough about eggs. These last few days have been hectic, exciting, overwhelming and awesome! To start, I LOVE my flat. The neighborhood is great, the flat itself is much bigger than I expected and walking distance to where I will go to class and intern. Here are a few pics (which don't really do the place justice but just to give you and idea)

Walk in the front door and turn right and you will come to these stairs (which, unsurprising to many of you I'm sure, I have already managed to fall down once and trip up twice on)

They go down to three bedrooms and two bathrooms (both with separate tub and shower). My room is a triple and looks like this:

There is a bathroom in our triple that I share with my two roommates and another bathroom the other three girls share downstairs. Upstairs there is another bathroom and the living room:

with two couches, table, lamps and a tv none of us can figure out how to use. Down a hallway is our kitchen:

There is a back door that goes to a tiny garden, which is awesome in a huge city. Bloomsbury itself is full of gardens, every couple of blocks there is a big square (I am next to two, Russell square and Bloomsbury Square) which are all still green and very pretty.

These past few days have been hectic: class orientation, shopping, exploring, meeting people, went on the London Eye, went on a walking tour and a bus tour which were both great because I got to see a lot of the city that way including: Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, St. James' Park, Albert Hall, St. Paul's Cathedral... basically we just drove everywhere today (completely sunny and beautiful day too!) and saw all the good touristy spots. Here are a few of my favorite pics: Tower of London

Buckingham Palace Tower Bridge St. Paul's Cathedral

Westminster Abbey

View from the London Eye

Well, this takes forever to upload pics so that's all I'm doing now, more to come on facebook!

I've been locked in my room a couple of times, yes you read right. Not OUT of but IN. There was no door handle on the inside side of the door to my bedroom so when I closed it, there was no way to open it again. Imagine me banging on the door trying to explain to a very confused flatmate why they had to open the door to let me OUT of the room. Fixed now thankfully! Interview tomorrow, classes start Tuesday... will update more later!

Inaugural post redo

Since my first blog really should have been how excited I am to be going to London and not my bleak burgerking bitching, I'm going to do this again: WHOOOO I am going to LONDON! But it gets better because now, as I type this very minute I AM IN LONDON!!!! Here's the scoop on what I will be doing:
-Living: Bloomsbury, London- sharing a flat with 5 other American girls in the program from Clark University and Sienna, living in a flat, in a triple room, really close to the British Museum
-Studying: Birkbeck College (3 classes: Shakespeare in London, Globalization and Regionalization, Modern Theater and the London Stage). Each class meets once a week for a 3 hour block, mine meet on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
-Interning: Monday, Thursday and Friday at Kings College Department of War Studies where I will work for a Doctor who (straight from the email so you all know about as much as I do at this point) "is a specialist in Risk and Terror and Radicalisation. You will do some research and also liaise with Porter Down, our British government facility-it is a defence science and technology laboratory." More to come on what exactly that all means after January 1oth, which is when I start.

To explain the traveling nightmare: My mom and stepdad didn't get on the flight to Minneapolis and I did, so I stayed the night in a hotel and they met up with me the next day. Delta's computers showed that the luggage was in Salt Lake and we couldn't just get on the plane and go to London and have them forwarded to us since, due to security restrictions, you have the physically be on the plane with your bags, they can't travel alone. Hence the being stuck in MN as we waited for our bags to get there. Bob (works for Delta) asked a friend to go down to the baggage place in Salt Lake and look for our bags and get them to stick them on a plane to MN, and when he looked he found that the bags were not actually in Salt Lake at all, even though the computer said they were. The baggage guy told this friend that they had been so busy the day before that they stopped scanning bags and just tossed them on the plane. Therefore, they all actually went to MN the day before when I did, and were somewhere in the Minneapolis airport, but we couldn't see where since they were not scanned. After dealing with some very unintelligent individuals who told him the bags were still in SLC, Bob got the 10th baggage person we talked to to go search for them there (which she didn't have to do but she was nice thank god) and finally they were found! (with our London flight leaving in an hour and a half). Funny thing is that the guy who eventually found our bags was British! So we chatted about London and he happened to be from around the same area that Bob's family in London lives. Small world- the one British guy in MN happens to be the one who finds our luggage so I can go to London. In the end it all worked out so enough complaining because I MADE IT!

I get to move in tomorrow and meet the people from my program. I walked around the neighborhood where I will be living and it seems very very nice. The atm from the bank I need is right up the street, plus a grocery store, pharmacy, tons of restaurants and I've only seen about a block from where I will be living so I still have a ton of exploring to do. Orientation starts tomorrow at 1:30, very excited and I will update more as my adventures begin!

Blogging From Burgerking

Yes, you read the title right: I'm in burgerking. In Minneapolis. Now, I know I'm supposed to be writing about London but seeing as I'm not going to get there for awhile due to the incompetence of Delta's baggage services lets chat about Minnesota for a bit. This is the COLDEST place I've ever been. EVER. It is 8 degrees Fahrenheit right now. And that pretty much exhausts my discussion topics for Minnesota. Moving on! There is a good chance I'm either A. flying back to Salt Lake to get my bags since they seem unable to forward them to MN and I can't get on the plane to London without them since they can't forward a bag internationally unless I am physically on the plane, which makes no sense (or my mom or stepdad will got to SLC and get them and send them to me somehow). B. I purchase a parka at the Mall of America down the street, apply for a job at this lovely burgerking and get comfortable in MN because I'm going to be here for the rest of my life. C. Haven't quite figured out C yet but I will keep all 3 of my followers updated don't you worry.