MP's and the Royal Concertgebouw

On November 29, we got to meet and talk with an MP (Member of Parliament). Jeremy Corbyn is the representative for Islington North which is a small borough within Greater London. A county is broken up into boroughs. So, in the county of Greater London, he represents the section called Islington North. He was very nice but tended to drone on and on. But I'm not trying to complain; I realize what a great opportunity it was for us to be able to meet an MP and get a tour of the Houses of Parliament. It was amazing to be able to sit there and talk to an MP and get to see all of the Parliament. While wandering around I would just get overwhelmed by where I was and who I was listening to. It was great!

On Friday, November 30 I worked on a little homework and then my science class met at the Science Museum and we wandered around for a while. After looking at a bunch of the things we had studied (which was really neat!) we explored a little by ourselves. I looked around a medical exhibit which did a brief history of medicine. It was really interesting to see all the advances that have been made and how ingenious people had to be. After that we headed over to a pub where we sat around and talked for a while.

Then we all headed back to the Janet Poole House to get ready to go see the Royal Concertgebouw. They performed Schumann's Manfred Overture, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. I thought it was a spectacular performance, especially compared to the London Symphony Orchestra concert we went to at the beginning of the term.

Saturday, 1 December, I just worked on papers and then on Sunday I went to EveryNation church with Laura and David like normal. The rest of the day I worked on papers again.

On Monday, David, Laura, Mary, Heather, Andrew, and I had our own little Christmas party. Laura, Mary, and Heather had just discovered mulled wine (I had already had it in Germany) and so they wanted to try it. So we had mulled wine, Christmas crackers (the kind with horrible corny jokes and little prizes in them), and after that we watched 'Love Actually'. It was a lot of fun to just hang out together. We had a ton of fun with the Christmas crackers. There were a lot of very random, yet useful prizes in them. One of the prizes was fingernail clippers; another was a pen and later on I got 3 little star-shaped erasers. The jokes were horrible corny English jokes. We thought they were really funny while someone who had just arrived in England might not get them. :-)

I had been worried about doing my paper, since the library is only open from 9am to 9pm every day except for Sunday, when it isn't open at all.... But Andrew let me use his computer that night since he said he didn't need it. All of my friends were so kind! Whenever one of them didn't need their computer, they would let me use it. Since I had my portable hard drive, I didn't have to save anything on my computer or mess with sending myself emails with papers in them and crazy things like that.

On Tuesday we had class and then Laura and I went to our last Queen Mary Connect Group. There weren't many people there that week, but it was still great to be there. And they actually gave us goodbye presents! I was very surprised and happy. I didn't think we had made that much of a difference, but it was nice to know that they would miss us. :-)

Wednesday we had class and I worked on papers...of course. And that night Mary let me use her computer to finish my WWII paper. On Thursday we all met at 6pm to turn in our WWII papers like our teacher had asked us to but he never showed up. I mean, that's not really surprising because he's pretty scatterbrained and would usually get to class late and stuff like that, but we were kind of irritated that he asked us to come in at an odd time to turn them in and then didn't even show up.

But it was fun because we all just hung out together in the basement of the Winston House for a while and then after about an hour gave up on him and people sort of went there separate ways. We didn't really have a goodbye party or any sort of real closure of the semester, which a lot of people thought we should have had. But I didn't really mind at that point because I was hungry... I ended up going with Heather, Laura, Mary, and Christina to have dinner in the crypt at St. Martin's In the Fields. Afterwards, we took pictures of the huge tree in Trafalgar Square. Norway has given England a gigantic Christmas tree since 1947 in gratitude for their support during World War II. We also took pictures as we walked up St. Martin's Lane, Monmouth Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and past Neal's Yard back towards Tottenham Court Road and home. I took a picture of the theatre we saw Carmen in.

The next day I went to Oxford. And I'll tell you about it in my next post! :-)

Being Back in America:
Another thing that I noticed coming back to America is that, although we so much more space here, people have much less personal space. In England, you made concerted efforts not to come into physical contact with anyone. During rush hour on the Central Line, however, this practice was given up for a couple of hours each day when everyone crammed on and we were stuck like sardines in a can. That would be a horrible time to have anything bad happen on the line. But, most of the time, people have a relatively large amount of personal space. Coming back, especially at school, people stand much closer to each other when talking and just in general. I have managed to get pretty used to that by now though.