lots of walking, lots of cold weather, lots of strange food: the first week & a half.

so i've been in london for a week & a half now. i finished the first week of classes (it'll probably be official once i have the required issues in contemporary british politics & culture class tomorrow night). i think now it's starting to hit me that this isn't just a VACATION, which sucks. of course, i have tons of reading to do now. fail.

thursday, i had my modern drama in performance class, which'll be hard as a semi-english major not in the english-major section of this class. being an english education major apparently doesn't count (which is silly because if i have to teach theatrical works as part of the curriculum, i need to approach it from an expert view instead of an amateur). but the class looks great anyway! we'll get to see every good boy deserves favour by tom stoppard, which is going to be BRILLIANT considering the full orchestral accompaniment. and we're also going to see arthur miller's a view from the bridge.

friday, we went on a day trip to greenwich (home of the royal observatory & the prime meridian). i got to be in two places at once, kind of like in "a walk to remember." but it was SO COLD and there was SO MUCH WALKING. and i ate a cheeseburger with mayonnaise, which was really awkward.

i look positively ridiculous in this photo, i know. it's cold! and i am not photogenic obvs.

left foot in the western hemisphere, right foot in the eastern hemisphere.

here's the royal observatory. the ball dropped at 1PM exactly. it's how people told time here. the ceremony of the bal drop was significantly less exciting than, say, new year's. no suspense or anything. just... BAM! drop.

the foot tunnel you take from one side of the river to the other, to reach the light rail. too hilarious.

they have such strange food here. i mean, besides the bangers & mash, the toad in the hole, the steak & kidney pie & the cornish pasties. haha. but the worst, most offensive foods:

canned hot dogs? that is positively horrifying.

prawn cocktail pringles? really? that's disgusting.

riley, jessica & i went to the student union for some two-for-one drink night friday night and met some british and irish guys who gave us a little bit of a tour around the city while trying to find someplace else to hang out that was open past 130AM. that's the thing about london: most of it closes really early. but most of the weekend has been spent in the dorm room.

the rest of the weekend has been superlow-key. i saw the reader last night, and am watching revolutionary road right now. kate winslet is so incredible, it's insane. now, i have to do some more food shopping & reading for my east european gov&pol class. sometime this week, i'm making plans to visit kelsey in madrid over valentine's day weekend, and then we'll start planning for spring break. while i'm thoroughly excited about traveling around europe, i kind of want a roundtrip ticket to new york for the second week of break. too bad that's expensive and silly of me. but i miss america!!