Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Good Day

Guten Tag! That means good day in German (Amy, correct me if I'm wrong). At any rate, I had a pretty good day today. I usually do. Today wasn't that exciting really but the sun was shining which almost automatically makes it a good day here.

I got up and went to my Islam vs. The West class. We spent most of the class taking notes while our teacher lectured on the early history of Islam. He started at Muhammad (obviously) and his minstry in around 680 and we made it all the way to about 1400 or something like that. About 700 years in three hours, not bad. He told us about what Muhammad did and how everything after him kind of got all messed up. The Shii believe that Muhammad only had one rightful heir but the Sunnis believed that Muhammad wanted there to be elections and the two sides have not gotten along well since then. The rift between them has gotten worse since the US invaded Iraq and there is a sort of civil war going on there right now. To think all that started with no one remembering exactly what Muhammad wanted after he died. That's a good lesson to make sure you have a clear will, if I have ever heard one ;-) Seriously though, it was a very interesting class. I've already said this before, but it's amazing how little I know about Islam. I am still amazed by it.

I went back to my flat and had, what else, a couple PBJ sandwiches and an orange for lunch. They were delicious. Then I took the Tube to the National Gallery (picture 1) in Trafalgar Square (picture 2, with Big Ben down the road and picture 3). I got there a little early and took some pictures of the square. I liked the fact that the sun was out for the first time in a couple days. I really like the fountain picture below (picture 4). I met up with the group and we spent the class period looking at Middle Ages art and the transition from that to the art of the Renaissance. We discussed paintings in churches in the Middle Ages and how they were all very religious based (saints, Mary, Jesus, etc.). Then we moved on to paintings in the Renaissance of Roman and Greek myths and how they were all done for patrons for their homes and furniture. Again, I know nothing about this stuff so its fun to just sit and listen to my prof tell us all this stuff in the paintings. Very interesting.

Vanessa and I walked back from the Gallery (to save money) and then sat around in the computer lab. I ate dinner (chicken and bacon tortellini with tomato sauce, under £2 total, awesome). From dessert, I am currently eating chocolate mousse (6 for about a pound, what a steal) and an apple. Very good and good for you. I spent about 2 hours looking up stuff about visiting somewhere in Britain Wed. through Fri. but I couldn't really find anything so I gave up. It was fun to just look up prices and read more about all the towns. I learned a lot.

I am getting excited about my Spring Break plans. We decided to start reserving plane tickets and hostels by the end of the week. We hope to have everything reserved that we can by Sunday, I don't know if that will happen however. Tomorrow I have Senior Seminar and then its's the weekend for me (haha)! Yay!

Bye!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spring Break sounds like it will be a lot of fun. Break in Italy ... just being in Europe would eb awesome if you ask me. Hope you are having a blast over there!

Anonymous said...

Sup sup sup!! I LOVE the fountain. So I hope not to offend, please take it as a compliment, but I played with your fountain pic in photoshop a little tonight. You can see the results (skip the PSD file).

Edit is a blue added to the sky and a warming filter applied

Edit2 is a crop, which now I am not so sure of. At first I felt the sky took away from the fountain a little bit. Looking again, the light really does a good job of drawing your eye to it.

Edit3 is a BW, level adjustment, then adding a sepia tone