Hello! I haven't updated for a couple days because I have been busy scurrying around London, my dorm, and campus meeting people and accomplishing big things. On Friday I cut a bunch of optional lectures in order to go get a phone and on the way I found an avocado! I took a picture so that dad can identify what type it is, but I am pretty impressed by its overall size. It took some doing but I found corn "crisps," so I will probably try to eat it tonight!
This is a poster for the new CD that Coldplay is releasing. Brad is raging because he couldn't get tickets to their concert. : (
On Saturday I met Meg, a girl I knew from high school who is studying in London this year as well, and we wandered around by Parliament doing touristy things. Look, Westminister!
...and Parliament!
We had crossed the river to get a better look at Parliament and then figured it was time to get some lunch. I had sorrel juice and an intense mutton wrap from a Caribbean food stand, which was pretty good. Very interesting flavors! We went to the Tate Museum of Modern Art after that (Meg is doing her MA in Art History), and finally wound up in the neighborhood of the Globe Theater. They wouldn't let us in to look around but we saw the outside! It's okay because the real one burned down anyhow.
We found St. Paul's Cathedral next. Some guys at the Jazz and BBQ thing from the night before had invited me to go with them on a pub crawl of Fleet Street and we were supposed to meet at St. Paul's, so Meg and I decided to try a daytime tour of Fleet Street. I really don't understand what is supposed to be so interesting about it. I mean, it is an old street but it seemed to be more banks and tourist stores than interesting pubs.
We did find a Twinings on Fleet Street, however, so we had to stop. I should explain that I discovered what Twinings was on Thursday when I was meeting with a professor. He offered me tea, I asked him if he had any decaf, and he was shocked that I didn't realize the majority of tea from Twinings is naturally uncaffeinated. He was more disturbed when I had never heard of Twinings to begin with. So when I saw the store we had to go in. Tea bags were 10p each and I ended up with about twelve different varieties to try. How quickly I fall to the dark side. Meg bought a nice wooden box they were selling that came with sixty bags of tea or something, so I think she will be set for the next couple months!
On Sunday I went to church with Serene, her boyfriend, and Daniel, a cop from Hong Kong. He is studying Crime Science here for a year before he returns to his old job in Hong Kong. We went to a Unitarian Church that I had passed when I was looking for a cell phone up in Hamstead. The church was gorgeous -- centuries old, remodeled on the inside but very austerely so the halls retained all of their cool older feel. The service was just kind of okay. I mean, I didn't mind it but it was nothing special. I should have taken pictures of the church but I was too busy talking to random members who approached me. During the handshake portion they asked me what my major was and when I said "Digital Humanities" I cringed because then I am forced to launch into an explanation. I was relieved when two people actually knew what that was, one of whom worked at Penn State and Grinnell WITH digital humanities! Nice!
I wandered around Belsize Park later in the afternoon, being just a bit bored, and finally got close enough to one of these monsters to take a picture. I don't really know what they are (mosquitoes? Lacewing flies?), but they are very large and scary looking. I tried to get a sense of scale included in the picture but I still failed to communicate the immensity of the bug.
Monday was my first day of Freshers' Week. I stood in line for a long time (wait, sorry, I mean I stood in a queue) to check in with Information Studies. I met a couple people who are studying Publishing and who were all from the UK. The were nice enough to include me in their conversations but I had a hard time following what they were talking about because of my geographical ignorance of northern England, haha. They were joking about universities in Leightonhampshireworcster, etc, etc. But they seemed nice. I also talked to a girl named Anna Maria from Greece while I was queuing. We all went to a couple boring orientation / introduction type things at the department level before they broke us into our majors. Digital Humanities had an hour or two in between things so Anna Maria and I went with a few other people to sit at a café and wait. It was interesting to see the broad fields that people are pursuing within DH. I seem to be mostly visualization / text analysis / database management while Anna Maria is almost entirely digitization and e-publishing (she worked on the Perseus project, which I think I included in my very first blog post! WHOA!). A guy named Mannin, from India, is interested in distribution and manipulation of digital video and sound. There is an Italian girl who seems to have wandered into digital humanities somehow who is still a bit confused about it, but she was previously Librarian Studies as an undergrad and seems to want to continue that work with a digital media twist.
In the afternoon we met our professors and were assigned to mentor groups. I was assigned to the head of the whole information studies department, yikes, but she seemed pretty nice. We also found out that DH people are cranky unless they get cake / biscuits and tea every meeting, so we got a break in the middle of this orientation when a cart was wheeled in with all the fixings. The DH people were sad that it wasn't wine, but they figured 3 in the afternoon was a bit early for that and settled for tea.
After the orientation, Anna Maria, a girl from Ireland named Shawna, and I went to a pub to celebrate our first day at uni. I ordered chips, which was pretty exciting. We were in a pub that reminded me a lot of the set of Cheers. It had free wi-fi and was pretty quiet, so I'm thinking that maybe pubs would make good homework places the way that coffeehouses do in the US.
The whole way home it rained buckets on me, but I had remembered my umbrella so all was well. I had made food on Sunday to eat during the rest of the week, but I'm discovering that if I just snoop around kitchens enough during dinner hour I may never need to buy food again. On Sunday I was forced into a three course meal by the Chinese girls on my floor (on the condition that I learned to eat with chop sticks, which I actually did under their expert guidance). That was an accident, I just wandered in to heat something up leftovers in the microwave, which they found appalling and assumed I was starving or something. Then last night while I was doing laundry, I popped my head into the ground floor kitchen to say "hi" and saw that a guy, Sanjeev, was doing some cooking. I was curious to see what it was so I watched while he made an Indian stew of a sorts. Cooked potatoes, chickpeas, water, tamarind paste, and then a bunch of curry-smelling type powders went into the pot and after a while I was offered a bowl of some of the most biting potato stew I've ever had. He served it with rice, which was nice because it took care of some of the spiciness, but I was still had a runny nose by the time I finished. It was really good so I asked him about the spices. He was quite certain that you can't get them in the US. "Not even at an Indian grocery store?" I asked dubiously, having seen many packets similar to the one he was using on the shelves of the store on 17th street. He was adamant that you can't get these spices in the US so if I wanted to I would have to look them up on the internet and try to find similar herbs to use, but it would never be the same. Haha okay.
The moral of the story is that two nights I've had food ready to eat and two nights I've experienced cuisine of the world instead! So maybe I'll pop into the Romania / Czech student kitchen tonight and see what they've got going. And then I'm going to need to brainstorm up some "American" food to show everybody. I'm thinking cranberries, gravy, and pumpkin pie as being my best bets for impressing people, but I really have no idea. I think every Chinese person in this building may be a gourmet chef, and Sanjeev seems like he's playing it by ear but succeeding as well!
After the orientation, Anna Maria, a girl from Ireland named Shawna, and I went to a pub to celebrate our first day at uni. I ordered chips, which was pretty exciting. We were in a pub that reminded me a lot of the set of Cheers. It had free wi-fi and was pretty quiet, so I'm thinking that maybe pubs would make good homework places the way that coffeehouses do in the US.
The whole way home it rained buckets on me, but I had remembered my umbrella so all was well. I had made food on Sunday to eat during the rest of the week, but I'm discovering that if I just snoop around kitchens enough during dinner hour I may never need to buy food again. On Sunday I was forced into a three course meal by the Chinese girls on my floor (on the condition that I learned to eat with chop sticks, which I actually did under their expert guidance). That was an accident, I just wandered in to heat something up leftovers in the microwave, which they found appalling and assumed I was starving or something. Then last night while I was doing laundry, I popped my head into the ground floor kitchen to say "hi" and saw that a guy, Sanjeev, was doing some cooking. I was curious to see what it was so I watched while he made an Indian stew of a sorts. Cooked potatoes, chickpeas, water, tamarind paste, and then a bunch of curry-smelling type powders went into the pot and after a while I was offered a bowl of some of the most biting potato stew I've ever had. He served it with rice, which was nice because it took care of some of the spiciness, but I was still had a runny nose by the time I finished. It was really good so I asked him about the spices. He was quite certain that you can't get them in the US. "Not even at an Indian grocery store?" I asked dubiously, having seen many packets similar to the one he was using on the shelves of the store on 17th street. He was adamant that you can't get these spices in the US so if I wanted to I would have to look them up on the internet and try to find similar herbs to use, but it would never be the same. Haha okay.
The moral of the story is that two nights I've had food ready to eat and two nights I've experienced cuisine of the world instead! So maybe I'll pop into the Romania / Czech student kitchen tonight and see what they've got going. And then I'm going to need to brainstorm up some "American" food to show everybody. I'm thinking cranberries, gravy, and pumpkin pie as being my best bets for impressing people, but I really have no idea. I think every Chinese person in this building may be a gourmet chef, and Sanjeev seems like he's playing it by ear but succeeding as well!
Maia and I are joking that we need to hold a house Olympic event while the real Olympics are happening because we have so many countries represented:
China - approximately 60 million
US - 5
India - 3
Czech Republic - 2
Mexico - 2
South Africa - 1
Ecuador / Canada / France - 1 (multiple citizenship)
Romania - 1
Spain - 1
Trinidad and Tobago - 1
Hong Kong - 1
We are thinking the events would be racing around the block, a football shootout, etc. I hope it happens because that would be a lot of fun!
I have to go soon to look at my department's "Option Fair" to decide my final schedule. I am pleased to see that the one class I very much wanted fits in the timetable with my required courses. Adios!
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