I Went Abroad to Study......

So this week has been nothing but studying, and doing homework, but don't worry, I promise you this blog won't be boring! For those of you who pay loads of attention to detail and can do math, you'll notice that I am writing this around 11:30pm on a Friday night. Yes, everyone I am being that girl who decided not to go out on a Friday night even though she's abroad. I am being a tool and sitting at home whilst everyone else parties and lives the good life. But you know what, I don't regret my decision because I have my reasons, and I can assure you that they are good ones. But for now, I shall regale you with stories from my life this week.

I last wrote on Tuesday and it was the story of my weekend. Well, I can assure you my life has calmed down immeasurably since then. I mentioned that I went to the National Portrait Gallery in my last post, but I didn’t really say anything about it. Now, our visit to the museum was rather hasty, and we didn’t see a lot of the museum, but what we did see was pretty incredible. We started with the Tudor era and walked through the exhibits in chronological order, which is impressive in itself, because the layout of the museum is not the easiest to follow. Props to our professor for that. The Tudor paintings looked almost cartoonish in nature, because of the quality of the paint I think. The colors were so rich and the paint was so thick upon the canvas and the cloths so ostentatious (the style of the period) that some of the paintings could have easily been a cartoon satire. The next era that was really impressive was the Victorian. Basically, I’m a huge fan of Victoria because she was one of the monarchs who actually cared about her people and wanted the best for them. And she actually loved her husband, Prince Albert, which in those days very nearly never happened for royals and such. They had 9 kids, 9!! Someone worked it out and that’s just short of 7 years of pregnancy. Good lord. When Albert died Victoria was devastated and went into mourning for about 20 years, no joke. She also had the amazing monument to Albert erected (you’ve all seen my pictures of Big Albert by now, that’s the monument) and there is the Royal Albert Music Hall right across the street from it as well. In the 20 years that Victoria wore black and mourned she almost never stepped foot out of her palaces and neglected the country something awful. During this time the people who used to love her turned against her and just thought she was a drain on the country’s economy because she didn’t do anything for the country except spend their money (the tax payers support the royals…duh). Eventually Victoria’s advisors managed to rouse Victoria and got her to take an active role in running the country and once again, the people began to love her (I do love a story with a happy ending). Now Victoria gained the throne when she was just 18 (1837) even though she was about 5^th in line for it because amazingly everyone else in front of her died. It happened a lot in those days, what with disease and all. And she didn’t stop ruling until she died in 1901. She ruled for 64 years. That’s the longest reign of any monarch in the history of the country. Although Elizabeth II (the current Queen) is working on a pretty impressive streak herself. After Victoria died her first son, Edward VII came to the throne and he also ruled for quite a long time, and that period became known as the Edwardian Period. They think of the best names, the Brits, don’t they? We walked through the museum up to some pretty modern and recent paintings, and we even saw a photograph exhibit on Princess Diana, that was pretty spectacular. At the end of out rather quick tour we stopped at a computer station, and picked a painting we wanted to research and give the class a presentation on, and then we were off doing homework. Alison and I chose a painting of Queen Victoria. It’s called Queen Victoria’s First Visit to her Wounded Soldiers. It’s a depiction of Vicki visiting soldiers wounded in the Crimean War. She felt horrible about the fact that her soldiers had to fight at all let alone in horrible winter conditions. She did her best to ease their sufferings and put pressure on Parliament to give the soldiers the most supplies and support possible.

As I said before, Tuesday was pretty boring, but Wednesday was pretty cool. We went to the Imperial War Museum for my politics class (I’m not entirely sure how it relates). That place was seriously cool. They had an entire exhibit on spying in wars (including a bit on James Bond, ‘cause they’re that cool) and all the intelligence agencies that GB has. It was really well done, and we spent a huge chunk of time in that exhibit. Its definitely worth the time to visit if you’re ever in London, and the best part is its free! After the spy exhibit we visited the Cold War era and the Korean and Vietnam War periods, and man for a while I totally forgot we were in a British museum, because our war histories are almost identical. There was even a little movie short on Hendrix’s American National Anthem that he played at Woodstock. The only part that you could really tell it wasn’t the US’s own history was the Falkland War, and in the spy exhibit because they have MI5 and MI6 (the MI stands for Military Intelligence). Our two countries are so interconnected when it comes to war, its insane. Its basically US history with a British twist. Now, don’t go yelling at me that I’m completely wrong and there are so many differences, because I do know that there are, and I’m oversimplifying it, but as far as generalizations go, I’m 100% right. But the best part of the museum was what we saw after class was officially over. Our professor said he was done showing us around, and that he was leaving, but we should stay and have a look around if there was anything else that caught our eye. Well, being the nerds we were, most of us did end up staying around for a while. We totally skipped the WWI and WWII exhibits, and we saw that there were “experiences” in there. So we went. Now we all know so much about the world wars that we didn’t spend time actually looking at the exhibits, except that I stopped and looked at the WWI model of a trench for quite a while. But the coolest part was they built a mini trench exhibit, and you can walk through it and its dark and noisy and smells kind of like what a trench would smell I think. It was amazing. I got lost before I went in, so I went through on my own, and it was totally creepy. Then on the WWII side you could go through a London Blitz exhibit. It was kind of corny, but also very interesting. Definitely worthwhile, and they don’t charge for that either. Woot!

Some of Wednesday evening was spent working on the presentation for Friday and most of Thursday was as well. Thursday is also usually my day off, but we had a make-up history class because we missed a couple classes right at the beginning of the semester. We sat in class and listened to a lecture that was rather boring and then watched a semi-interesting movie on the Battle of Britain. It was incredibly old, and I think that is why it was only mildly interesting. Friday I had history….again. And it was presentation day. Me and Alison were ready to go, had our paper written and printed out, I had my computer with the presentation. And then our professor SKIPPED us. We didn’t get to present. We were like WTF. When class was over we went up to him and were like…ummm you skipped us, we were supposed to present. He said, oh sorry….I thought you weren’t ready. Umm no. We spoke to him Thursday after class about having the cord for our power point presentation the next day. What part of that says we aren’t ready to present? So now we have to wait a whole week to present again, because he won’t let us do it on Monday or Thursday (we have another make-up class). I’m incredibly annoyed.

Now as you can see, its no longer Friday night, but Saturday afternoon, and that’s because I fell asleep before I finished my novel. And the reason I went to bed so early is because I haven’t slept well at all this week and because I’m getting a cold thanks to all my lovely roommates, and because today is try-out day! There were 54 girls sent the reminder email, and I’m sure not everyone will turn up, but that’s still a lot of girls and I’ve never had to actually try out before. Anyhow, I went to bed early, and woke up late, and got 12 hours of sleep last night. It was fantastic. Totally makes up for the lack of sleep I’ve had all week. And try-outs are this evening, so after they’re over around 8pm I plan on taking a shower, eating, and crawling back into bed, because with my cold I’m sure to be exhausted. Especially since I haven’t played in a while, and I’m sure it’ll kick my ass. So wish me luck for this evening!!

Cheers!