Schoolhouse Rock

Well then. When I originally set up this blog, my aim was to update it everyday so as to keep the people who chose to read itthe utmost informed of my life here. I have not been living up to that and I am sorry. It would be easy for me to make excuses like I was sick or I was busy but there are no excuses really. Hopefully with my sickness almost over (I can feel it) and school starting in earnest I will better manage my time and keep this thing updated more. On the flip side, with only updating every other day or so you all get SUPER LONG posts to read, like this one will almost assuredly be.

*All the pictures along the side were taken at (or of) the Natural History Museum and the British Museum.*

To recap my Sunday, I slept for 18 out of a possible 24 hours. Then Sunday night (Monday morning) I slept from midnight to eight. So out of 32 hours, I slept for 26. That might be a world record or something. It was intense sleeping too, not much waking up and laying there or what have you. It was the down and out for the count kind of sleeping. So Monday we started our first day of class. My first class was entitled (I'm not kidding) Ethnology of Selected Culture Areas. Haha, what a weird name. My professor, Justin Lorentzen, said it sounded stupid too. He prefers to call it Sociology of London. We spent almost the entire class (all three hours of it...) asking him questions about London and his life and stuff. It was very interesting to hear his perspective on American movies and music and stuff. We also filled out a little sheet that was meant to help explore our stereotypes of British people and he would either debunk them or say that they were actually true. Like I said, it was an interesting class and should be fun. He has always lived in London and lives in Notting Hill right now with his wife and six year old son. He said his son's favorite song is "Umbrella" by Rhianna. Everyone in the class busted out laughing. In the class, we will be covering a bunch of different topics about London from its popular music to its history to the different areas, all sorts of things. We are even going to take a tour of the East End with Justin (he grew up there). It has changed significantly since he lived there though. It is now filled with immigrant Muslims and eastern Europeans. Very cool.

We had our Senior Seminar with Phil after that. The topic of our Senior Seminar is Ethics and Morals in Art. We spent half our class time talking about just group business and the other half we spent discussing what ethics actually is. Now I must say that I don't particularly enjoy that type of discussion. I just feel like there is no point really because, as Phil told us himself, "this question hasn't been answered for thousands of years and probably won't be for another few thousand years". Well if there is no answer then what's the point??? Oh well, I can deal with it. Our first reading assignment was reading a bunch of stories and making a decision. Like one was about a father separating conjoined twins and one died. So the question is if he should go to jail or not. Ugh. Again, I will deal. After that class, I went grocery shopping (a week's worth of groceries for £9!!!!) I am expert shopper. I was also broken in on the potato flakes diet ;-). I spent most of the rest of my night laying in my bed watching tv (I watched almost all of Bring It On, I am pathetic). I had a bad headache and was still kind of achy. I did get up to try and find a pub where they were playing the football (soccer) game with Rachelle and Peter but they weren't playing it anywhere. So I went back and watched tv and went to bed.

Today, I got up and was already feeling better. I didn't really have a headache but throat still hurt. Oh well. I went to take a shower but all the hot water was gone (I need to wake up earlier) so I only washed my hair. The first class was my Islam vs. The West class. The course is taught by a guy who was born in Iran but does not practice Islam. We took a bunch of notes and I learned a ton. It's really amazing how I could know absolutely nothing about something so huge in the world; there are over 1 billion Muslims. Anyway, I am going to learn a lot in this course and am kind of excited about it. I hope there aren't as many notes every time. My hand hurt.

I came back to the flats and had a PBJ sandwich and then went to the Natural History Museum with Peter, Kristina, and Vanessa. It was pretty cool. The building is amazing (picture 1) and the exhibits were nice. I guess I just wasn't really that interested when I was walking through. I was glad I went though, the museum is only 4 or 5 blocks from my flat and its free (FREEEEEE!!!). I did kind of tired by the end though. The second picture is of a sort of sculpture thing they had about different ideas on how the Earth (and parts of it) were formed. That is Poseidon I believe.

Next up was our Art History course. The teacher immediately whisked us off to the British Museum to the the Parthenon Frieze there (SO COOOOOOOL!!!). The outside of the British Museum is picture 3 by the way. We were leaving the place where our class was to head to the tube and a girl got hit by a car. The car wasn't going that fast (thank god) but it was a very crazy moment. The light had just changed from green to red for the cars, the car didn't stop, and the girl went out in the traffic and man, crazy. It turns out that she was apparently ok, just a little shaken up. Anyway, we all got to the Museum and on the way to the Friezes and we walked by the Rosetta Stone! Yeah, you know, the thing that deciphered all heiroglyphics... Man, so sweet. It's picture 4 by the way. So then we went to the Parthenon Friezes. Some guy basically stole them from the Parthenon site a long time ago and boy did he steal a lot. He took the whole Southern Frieze, its the length of the long side of the Parthenon. Our professor is insanely smart and she walked us through all the details of the friezes and other marble things from the Parthenon. Very cool and agian, I learned a lot. The Friezes are picture 5.

We left the Museum and I went back to the flat. We had a big FIE get together thing where everyone in FIE came together and hung out. There was free beer (uh oh) and free appetizer. Later on in the evening there was a lot of dancing (mostly caused by the booze, I believe). I had a couple beers and danced but I came back and talked about Spring Break plans with Vanessa. It appears we are the only two without plans at the moment. More on that later (no decisions made and I don't want to ruin the surprise, if there was one).

I think I just wrote a novel... Thanks for reading and have fun everyone! Maybe an update tomorrow ;-)