Day Twelve Update

Ahem. Yes. Where was I?

So we had the boat party Friday night. Here is a belated picture of me and Joy before we left for that.

Saturday morning we met Rachel at Harrods, stopping for breakfast along the way. I had the worst bagel I have ever eaten in my life. I guess I am spoiled living near NYC. Harrods was nice, big, versatile, expensive, expansive, exhausting.

It was very crowded, and we probably shouldn’t have gone on a Saturday during their sale season – that’s right, sale seasons. Jan-Feb is a big sale season for all stores and then there’s another one during the summer I think. And I’m not sure if they offer very many sales in between. Weird. We walked around a bit, wandering streets and getting lost and finding our way back. Rule #1 of living in London: Always carry a map with you. It comes in handy. My stocking-stuffer-turned-life-saver also features a Tube map, which is indispensible. Nothing too exciting happened, and we headed back to Marylebone while Rachel headed to Wigram. I spent the rest of the day reading.
Sunday I didn’t set an alarm and slept in until about 1pm. Lovely. I leisurely showered and had breakfast by 2:30, and then just hung out and read for the rest of the day.
Monday classes started, although my Monday class is only every other week. Actually, let me give you my schedule.
Monday: Even weeks, Renaysance lecture 10-11
Tuesday: Odd weeks, Modernism lecture 10-11; every week, Third World Studies seminar/lecture 11:30-2:30
Wednesday: Renaysance seminar 10-12, Word/Sentence Structure seminar/lecture 6-9
Thursday: Modernism seminar 10-12
The end. So I am enjoying my weekend right now :)
Monday I found a bigger grocery store nearby (and not down a creepy road) called Sainsbury’s. Still only about a quarter of the size of Stop n Shop but it will do. Classes were all right – I think I’m really going to enjoy Modernism. We’re reading James Joyce’s Ulysses right now and I am, to my surprise, actually very engaged in the story. I thought it would be like Portrait – difficult to read and follow and care about. But it’s actually quite fun to read. Although I am only about one-sixth of the way through. Renaissance has the potential to be boring, but a girl I met today said that the [100% of our grade!!] final exam isn’t too hard. Whew. Third World Studies is a little weird since I am not really familiar with (or interested in?) the subject at all, but I will grin and bear it all the same since it is satisfying both Honors Global Engagement and Social Science Core. And Word/Sentence Structure is a small class, only 6 including me, and the lecturer for now is a grad student from UCL (University College London). Who was very nervous even if he was very cute, and very well dressed for that matter, but who knows in this city? It looks as though it will be enlightening though – we reviewed morphology (::sigh:: Oh Fitzgibbons. Oh HEL.) which we’ll be doing for the first 5 weeks, and then syntax will be the last 5. There was a guy next to me, an adult, who was clearly not a native speaker of English but who had taken Intro to Linguistics last semester. He was giving the lecturer a hard time because he had already learned that stuff (Intro Linguistics is a prereq) and the poor guy was already shaken up without worrying about boring us. Then we did a few examples and he started telling me that “at” is a morpheme in “misrepresentation” because “at” is a word, you know, like “at the store”. It took a lot of patience to set him straight on that one. But he couldn’t understand why “grat” was a morpheme in “ungrateful” since “grat” doesn’t mean anything – it’s not a real word. Ugh. Free and bound morphemes buddy. There’s a difference. And here he was yawning every five seconds. Maybe he could use a little refresher course.
Anyway. Let’s see what I’ve learned so far.
quid = pound
y’alright = Hi, how are you?
hob = stove
People rarely hold the door for others.
Outlets have power switches to turn them on and off.
Brits say “like” in the middle of sentences much much less than we do.
They LOVE New York City.
They LOVE Obama.
Boots are the only shoes that they wear.
Carriageway = main road
uni = college
knicker = female underwear
pants = male underwear
loo, toilet = bathroom
fringe = bangs (hair)
If they go to college right from high school (or whatever its equivalent is) it is only 3,000 Pounds per year tuition for any school in England, regardless of how much their parents make.
Marmite tastes AWFUL.

And there’s more but I can’t think of anything right now. I’m going to go hang out with Joy and Hayley, a British girl (yay!) from our floor that I met earlier in the week, for dinner and drinks. The three of us saw Bride Wars yesterday (8.50 agh) and it was actually really cute!

Actually I should probably leave you with a picture of my room:

and my view:
Goodbye for now – I will try to update in shorter, more digestible posts in the future.
Love,
Amanda