bad metaphor

Okay. I have been derelict in my updating duties. I’ve been in London for about two weeks, and this is the first time that I have had the time to blog. I’m actually leaving London tomorrow morning, heading to York, so I probably won’t post for a bit until I get stable internet access again.

London is…definitely an interesting experience. I enjoy the city, it’s filled with great museums and beautiful cathedrals, exciting shows, movie premieres, and all sorts of different ethnic restaurants. That said – I’m excited about leaving. I’m not alone on the trip either – I think most people in the group are ready to abandon the city for greener, happier places. If nothing else I’ve learned that people either really enjoy big cities or are depressed by them (god, don’t I sound like a Kansan). It’s not really depressing per se, but it’s…grimy. Polluted. Crowded, hot, and humid. On the subway system, the Tube, during rush hour, there can be literally not a place to put your foot, it is so packed. And then when it’s crowded like that, pickpocketers, which are rampant in London, have a much easier time of it. One girl on our trip, who happened to be the girl that could least afford it, got picked within the first few days of our being here, and lost over $500.

The last few days, when we’ve had more free time to roam about London ourselves, have been better. I’m not sure if it’s the pace of the city that I can’t get accustomed to, or the pace of the program – the program is scheduled just like how Mary, my advisor and one of the profs on the program, talks – quick, rapid-fire and with little pause for breath. I keep falling behind when we’re all walking as a group, because I’ve stopped to take a picture of something, or admire a strange warning sign (they have some pretty quirky ones here). I’ve been nearly hit by a bus twice, and no wildlife except for pigeons and the Tube rats exist in the city, I believe, because of the great big doubledecker buses raging about the streets, plowing through crosswalks and hapless pedestrians.

The worst thing of all, is the fact that most of the people we encounter seem to hate us because we are tourists. I have started to get irritated with them back because, hey, we tourists bring them revenue. Lots of revenue, as we keep getting ripped off at every turn. In New Mexico, I understood and sympathized with people’s distrust of tourism – there, tourism takes on a more exploitative, somewhat racist form. Here, though, I’m getting sick of being treated rudely and being given dirty looks just because I don’t know how to get to Holborn station. Hey, I come from a country where everything was planned out on a grid. It’s not my fault I can’t divine how to get to a place by knowing what flavo(u)r of scone the Queen had with her tea last Wednesday – which, from what I’ve gathered through asking locals for directions, is how they find things here.
But I’m just whining again. It has been fun. My favorite parts of the trip so far have been our day trips outside of London, like to Oxford and Canterbury, so perhaps it’s just the city that’s bugging me.

Anyhoo, it will take more coherency of thought than I have right now to organize my pictures into a neatly summarized story, so I will just post them. I was up till about 3:30 last night finishing a paper, and doing my laundry, which was the harder task – the door to the washer got stuck and to unstick it, I had to run the cycle through again. Sometimes it’s the little things, like stuck washers and strange mayonnaise, that you don’t think to prepare for, that get you the most. Since then I’ve been traipsing all over London, wrapping up a few site visits before we leave for our next destination.

Both of these are of the Christchurch College campus, in Oxford. This is where Charles Dodson, aka Lewis Carroll, taught. Apparently he was a really dull lecturer and all the students loathed his classes.

The bookstore that was the basis for a scene in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (I don’t remember the book very well; apparently it’s the shop where the sheep is knitting its own wool?)

Parliament building, London.

King’s Cross Station, the Tube in London. I thought this scene looked so perfectly desolate and like an Edward Hopper painting, so I snapped a few photos.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.

View from the top of St. Paul’s. It’s a little hazy because of all of the pollution. Another girl and I, though we are both extremely claustrophobic and terrified of high, winding staircases, made it up to see the great view.

Random ruined arch near the Museum of London.

Abbey at Canterbury, which I wish I could have spent all day at, but alas, my friend and I had to catch a bus parked on the other side of town, at a location unknown to our navigationally-challenged selves.

Sissinghurst Gardens, uh…I’m not sure where. Outside of London. Anyway, a woman named Vita Sackville-West and her husband bought the property and set about cultivating a great garden area, combining elements of Roman and English gardening techniques into an enchanting, Secret Garden-esque whole.

Same garden. We were all reluctant to return to the smelly streets of London after spending time here, inhaling the fresh, rose-scented air.

So that’s my trip so far, in a nutshell. Obviously more has happened, but as I am exhausted and I still need to (re)pack, I will postpone the telling until later. Hope you all are doing well, and I’ll write postcards. When I have time, and if I can afford these bloody expensive stamps. Yikes.

I am flying outta here at 6:51 p.m. (+/- two hours probably, as has been my experience with flight delays) tomorrow. Tomorrow, that is, instead of Friday. For some reason I had been thinking that I was leaving Friday, and acted, planned, and talked to people under said assumption, until a couple of days ago, I emailed another girl that’s going on the trip about carpooling to the airport. Not long after that, I received a frantic reply: “you know WE’RE LEAVING THURSDAY, NOT FRIDAY, RIGHT? Ho ho, why, of course I did! La la la, I am not ridiculous at all.

I guess I have a bad tendency to confuse dates for important events. I’ve missed two final exams because I thought they were on the wrong dates. I even wrote them down in my planner wrong, so my brain must have some weird version of dyslexia except for dates instead of letters. Luckily both courses were really easy and the professors are super cool, so I was able to make up both tests and get A’s The silly thing this time is the fact that the e-ticket had been sitting in my printer tray for the past week and I hadn’t bothered to look at it. I’m pretty lucky I’m surrounded by people who actually have something between their ears. Yeesh.

Anyway, I am not in danger (as far as I know). I have packed and am basically ready to go, except for the stuff that I can’t pack yet, like toiletries. I’m contemplating bringing laundry detergent with me, except I couldn’t find one of those little travel sized boxes so I was going to put some in a plastic bag. Except, since it’s the powder kind, I wonder if a mysterious white powdery substance in a plastic bag won’t set off alarms while they’re scanning my bag. I won’t put it in my carry-on, but the less any of my bags are searched, the better, I figure. I’m paranoid about thieving baggage-handlers (owing to my mom, I guess), so I’d bring everything carry-on, except that with the amount of space they allow for carry-ons now, I can barely fit a sack lunch. It wouldn’t be a good sack lunch either, only a PBJ and a bag of Sun Chips. No Lunchables or anything.

This’ll probably be my last post in Kansas for awhile. So long Toto and Fred Phelps, hello Big Ben and smog! (That is, if I actually make it to the airport on time. Christ.)

I’m back in Lawrence, briefly, before my excursion beyond the pond. Just went and saw the movie ‘Crash’ with Kristen, a movie I hadn’t heard about or seen previews for since I haven’t watched TV or paid attention to movie news lately. She got free Fandango tickets from her parents, who couldn’t use them in Wichita. Our options were either ‘Crash’ or making fun of Paris Hilton in ‘House of Wax,’ and we chose the former.

I’m really, really, really glad we did. And not just cause I’m tired of seeing Paris Hilton’s trashy mug all over the place. ‘Crash’ is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. Don Cheadle produced and stars in it, and he’s beginning to be one of my favorite actors. Apparently, from what Kristen told me, many of the big-name actors in the movie took a pay cut to do it, because they found the script so interesting. And yes, Ludacris, the rapper responsible for all the “Ho” songs, is in it, and he does a surprisingly excellent job.

I loved the movie, yet as with most movies that I like, I don’t know how to really describe it. ‘Crash’ is a movie about racism in America, but it’s more than that. I guess ‘the human condition’ or something corny like that. If I could put it more eloquently, I’d be a published writer and not a mere wannabe. My complaint with most ‘racism’ movies is that they tend to be rather heavy-handed and moralistic, but it doesn’t stick to this movie. Every single character, every bit of dialogue, was very convincing and real to me.

The plot follows the lives of several people in Los Angeles, spanning across different cultures, races, and classes. It might be a bit hard to follow for some people at first, because so many different characters are introduced, but I didn’t have a problem with the flow at all – the transitions were beautifully done. Cheadle and crew do a good job at tying all the disparate elements and storylines of the movie together. Dialogue: funny and intelligent. Acting: splendid. Story: damned compelling. I’m going to be mentally chewing on this movie for quite some time. (ed. – hehe. As soon as I read over that, I pictured a disembodied cerebellum chowing down on a DVD case. I didn’t call this blog ‘Bad Metaphor’ for no reason).

Go see it! And bring along some tissues (if you’re at all like me, you’ll need them. Damn).