A Rainy Day in London Town

Don't think I forgot to do a blog entry for today. I realize how late it is. But I got sucked into looking up travel information. I know it seems like that's all I do (you are probably right) but it's not all I do. Today I did some other things too I promise. By the way, it rained all day today and was incredibly windy. Pretty crappy really.

First off, I went to class. In Sociology of the City, we discussed the Kray Twins some more. It was more about gangsters and the fascination that people have for them though. Then we learned about the paper we have to write. It involves observing some people doing something and then writing about it. Like people in a park or restaurant or on the Tube, the list could go on. I don't know what I want to do yet. The last part of the class was spent talking about multiculturalism in London. In Senior Sem, Phil read some excerpts of more of the War Poets and talked about Benjamin Britten some more. On Wednesday, we are going to listen to the whole piece The War Requiem which is going to be a complete 2 hour affair. That should be interesting.

The most exciting news of the day was certainly the fact that I got my debit card and it works. YAY!!!! I was so happy. I felt completely hopeless and alone without any source of money (other than Vanessa) so it's nice to be a little independent again. After class, I went to the library and got some more books. I think a got a nice variety of stuff like usual. Over the weekend, I read a couple books. One was A Teacher's War which was a memoir about a British woman who taught English in what is now Tanzania and then later in Turkey during WWII. Quite a bit of the book is telling stories of things that happened on the trains while she traveled. It was a really good read and I loved her descriptions. She did some paintings of where she lived and people she met which were in the book. I loved them a lot. It made me excited about all the sweet places I am going to go (granted I am not going to Turkey or Tanzania). I also read The Conscience of the King which was a historical fiction novel about the first King of Wessex. It takes place in 450-500 and is about this Saxon guy taking over the area that is now southwest of London. It was pretty good and filled me in on a big part of British History I was missing (the Saxon Invasion).

Tonight, I called my mom on Skype and we made more plans for when she comes to visit. We are going to go to the Andalusia region which is in southern Spain. I am incredibly excited about it. It should be a lot of fun. That area of Spain used to be the center of the Western Islamic World so there are a lot of mosques and churches and just lots of stuff.

The other part of exciting travel news is that my best friend from SJU, Garrett, is going to be in Sweden at the end of May so I am trying to figure that into my travel plans. I hope I can get up and see him and Sweden. That would be really cool. Because of the rain, I spent most of my day researching and thinking about my travel plans (with my mom, the free weekends in April, and after the program). I am getting a lot more of it settled down in my mind. By that I mean, narrowing down the places I want to go and figuring out how to get there and all that stuff. It is really exciting and I love thinking and reading about all the places.

Well that's all for today. Sorry about not doing the update of my weekend. I just never found the time for it. By Wednesday, I will though.

Bye!