We got to sleep in a little again this morning! We had to meet Jane in Hyde Park at 11:30 this morning at a place called Speaker’s Corner. That was an experience… Speaker’s Corner is basically a corner of the park where people come to voice their opinions and argue with each other about mostly political and religious issues. Today we got there as a Middle Eastern man in a bright yellow t-shirt was yelling above a big group of people. He was basically talking about how, in his opinion, Christianity and other religions tell people that women are not as good as men and that he did not agree with this. Besides the anti-Christian sentiment it sounds like he’s sticking up for women, right? WRONG. He then proceeded to talk about how men needed women. Okay…but then he said what for. To cook and clean for men! It got a lot of us a little riled up, needless to say. One man yelled at him in protest and then the yellow-shirted man said to him, “You’d have a better attitude if you had a woman to cook you three meals a day!” He said other things like, “Men need sexy, young women to look at!” Pig. There was also this older woman if a bright flowered dress and a straw hat talking about something so ignorant it was ridiculous! She’s been coming to Speaker’s Corner every Sunday for the past 40 years preaching the same thing. She yelled about how we were not worthy of the ground we were walking on and that everyone needed to go back to their homeland and wait to meet their maker—basically saying that people who weren’t English should go home. She was in one word—racist. She wouldn’t acknowledge anyone or answer anyone’s questions who wasn’t English. It was crazy; just being there for about a half an hour made me so frustrated at those people because they were just so close-minded!
We finally left the park and headed to Brick Lane. Such a cool place! It’s a big international market where all these vendors have national food stands full of all kinds of food I’ve never heard of. There were booths set up selling jewelry, clothes, bags, and other craft sort of stuff. There were also a few booths selling music from their countries and playing music too! It was so much fun to be there and look through all the stuff. I even bought a really gorgeous necklace for just £5! Sara B, Sara S, and I got some really great, and really cheap, Chinese food and sat outside in the square at a big picnic table for a while because it was so beautiful outside again today. After that we walked back through the vendors and headed back to Ability Towers.
Today was also the first day that we had our tutorial group meetings. The whole group of us is divided into three smaller groups for these, and we have three meetings while we’re here—one with each professor. Before I went there I finally mailed all my postcards! Hopefully they’ll beat me home!
My group met with Susan and her husband Douglas today at the British Museum. We didn’t go inside the museum, which I thought was a little weird, but instead we walked back over to Bloomsbury Square near our classroom to sit in the garden and talk. We just went over the assignments that we could choose from for her. Two of the options that I like are to make postcards to send to myself or to narrate a conversation between the old and the new. She’s the architecture guru so I think I might do the assignment about the old and the new, since there are so many buildings next to each other that were built literally centuries apart. It shouldn’t be too hard at all. After our talk a few of us girls, Claire, Caitlin, Kristen and I went to get something sweet. Claire and I got iced coffee and Caitlin and Kristin got ice cream. Perfect end to another beautiful warm day.
Once we were back at the flat a bunch of us got together to make our plans for our free weekend this weekend. Turns out that two of the girls got together and bought train tickets to Paris for £145 and now they can’t find any hostels that aren’t full or booked for less that £100 a night!! They can’t refund their tickets either…so now we’ve all given up on Paris. I’m totally fine with it though! Six of us got together—Caitlin, Kathleen, Sara S, Sara B, Alex and myself—to make plans for the weekend. We decided to take three smaller, and cheaper, daytrips to castles further out into the country. I can’t wait! We’re going to Windsor Castle, Dover Beach and Dover Castle, and then one other place we’re not sure of yet. It’s going to be so fun! I can’t wait to get tours of the castles and to take some great pictures!
Right now I’m trying to figure out this devil of a washing machine! It’s so strange—it’s one machine but it’s a washer AND a dryer! The buttons are so retarded and it took forever to figure it out. It’s running and making noises right now; God willing my clothes will be clean when the noises stop…
When I went earlier to buy laundry detergent I apparently made a very American move. I picked up what I thought was detergent and went to the counter to pay and the 24 hour marked underneath of our building. The man behind the counter laughed at me and said, “Every one of you Americans does the same thing!” Apparently detergent only comes in powder form here, or in little pouches like dishwasher detergent does—what I had picked up was only fabric softener. I felt like such an idiot because the guy was just walking around shaking his head showing me where to find actual detergent and saying, “I need to put up a sign for you Americans…” I’ll let you know if my clothes got clean tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s going to be another gorgeous day in London, and luckily it’s not going to be too busy of a day. Judging from the schedule our days aren’t going to be too packed like week one. I’m pretty glad about it—maybe we won’t be so worn out!
Week two begins tomorrow,
Whitney
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