Inside Student Blogs

Greetings, one and all.  I have slogged through some five hundred photographs and narrowed them down to ninety.  You’ll only be seeing fifteen, though.  At least for now.  I’m planning some themed uploads as opposed to just I-Takes-The-Pretty-Pictures uploads.

Oh, and then class started, and I wanted to shoot myself in the face.  I’m taking UK Media and Politics and History of London on Tuesdays, which are incredibly interesting.  The tutor (not called professors here, not unless they know everything) for both is Julian Putkowski, who is a charming, engaging, brilliant, and hilarious man.  I’m so glad to be taking two classes with him, but he assigns between 50 and 300 pages of reading a week.  Per class.  I did nothing but read Tuesday and Wednesday night, and I’m not going to stop reading until I’ve finished all of it, because I don’t want to worry about it.

I’m also taking Creative Writing Workshop, British Youth Culture from 1950 to the Present, and Theatre in London: An Introduction.  All my tutors are great, they really know their stuff, and the ones that aren’t particularly funny are still quite engaging.  Fortunately, I don’t have much reading to do for my other classes, so it’s manageable.

For my theatre class, I have to see a play every week, and this week we all saw Pieces of Vincent, which is a little reminiscent of the film Crash.  I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the greatest play I’ve seen, and the more I think about it, the more I see its shortcomings.

I also went out with a couple of people and explored three bookshops in and around the Centre.  First was the London Review Bookshop, which was tidy and small—I didn’t find it particularly exciting.  Foyle’s, though, was amazing.  It’s an entire city block and has five storeys (including the basement) full of books.  Oh, it was heaven.  I’m going back again on Wednesday.  Lastly, I checked out Skoob (‘books’ backwards, eh? eh?), which is a small used bookshop that’s caving in on itself but a veritable treasure trove of used books.  I found a first edition Macaulay text , which I’m considering getting for my history professor back home.

And lastly, of course, I walked along the Thames!  I started at Battersea Bridge and followed the Thames Path for about three hours, expecting to make it eventually to The City (central London), but suddenly realised I was in Hounslow.  This is about 17.1 kilometres (close to 11 miles) from where I started.  I eventually found a bus that took me to the tube which took me home, but oh dear lord was that a misadventure.  It was quite fun, though.  I’ll try the other direction next.

Feel free to ask me any questions on any subject—study abroad-related or otherwise.  I will (potentially) answer everything to the best of my ability.

Tune in next week for these exciting adventures: Whatever Michael Couldn’t Squeeze into His Last Post, Lovely London Libraries, Do the Charleston, and much, much more!

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