I'm sitting in my room at the classy (see: somewhat gross) Leinster Inn getting the barest hint of wireless and attempting to update my family as to the happenings of my last few days here in London. Because of the fact that even this one-bar-wireless that I'm getting now is a shock to me (I don't generally get any signal at all) and because I've managed to injure myself already on this trip, my updates have been scarce. For that, I apologize!
Let's start out with the injury because presumably, if you are reading this, you are family. And presumably you'd rather know that I'm alright than about the 50million war museums we've seen in the last few days.
I'm alright! I've pulled my achilles heel tendon thinger a bit and mostly it just means that walking hurts like a bitch (er, sorry for the swear but really, I'm about to be 21 and I swear sometimes :D). I went down to Boots (see: U.K.'s CVS, sort of) the other day and bought two ankle braces, one that's sort of like an ace bandage but much softer and the other that's a bit like a sock. Frankly, the sock doesn't seem to be doing much, but I wear them both anyways just in case. In any right, I'm okay to be walking about a lot but stairs tend to hurt even more than walking and there are stairs pretty much everywhere in London. It sucks, but I'd rather be out seeing London in a bit of pain than be perfectly cushy in my hostel and seeing absolutely nothing.
So! Now that that's done, on to what I've been doing, if I have enough time. Class is in 20 minutes downstairs and I don't like walking around London with my laptop. It makes me nervous.
Well we left Salisbury (and our cushy hotel) on Sunday and had an impromptu walking tour with our tour guide Jeremy. Ended up doing some pub-hopping as well and getting a few drinks. I've discovered a beer that I actually like (Strongbow - it's more of a cider, really) and me being such a lightweight is actually a really good thing here. Because everything in England is expensive! Two pints and I'm done for the night.
Monday we went to Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery of art. The Abbey was absolutely amazing. Robert Burns had a plaque! I felt extremely Scottish :D
I have to admit that art doesn't tend to do much for me. The history part of this trip is much more interesting to me, because art doesn't really move me as much as it does for other people.
Monday night we met up with a long-time internet friend Sophie. She was so adorable and had the greatest accent ever. We met her at a tube station and I called her beforehand and she was running late and it was so cute. She was like "Oh, let's just be safe and say half-past seven!" and Marisa and I went "awww". It was great, we went to SoHo and to Chinatown to get some tasty Chinese food (chicken with cashews for me) and talked about England and America and how much Marisa, Sam and I love it here in England even though it's raining all of the time ever. We talked about our schooling and how different Oxford is from American Uni's. She's studying English there and she has five people in her year. Five! Can you even imagine? It's great.
Oh bugger, I've got to run to class now and I've completely lost my internet signal. I'll try to get some pictures and the next few days up ASAP!
OKAY! It's about ten past twelve now in the afternoon. Just got back from class, now. I really need to catch up on my reading as we've just discussed chapter two and I've not yet finished chapter one. Oh well, I suppose! Everyone's off to lunch and I had to go to the bathroom and now I'm not sure where everyone is. I'm not too upset as I'm not too hungry. Also, I completely forgot to brush my teeth this morning. Blech!
So, back to the plans. Tuesday we went to this really neat exhibit on Churchill (well it was actually a Churchill museum) and it was absolutely fascinating. I had no idea that he'd been in politics since 1900 and didn't become Prime Minister until much later. He was really quite brilliant, though he made several terrible political decisions. Quite the public speaker, though, really. We also trekked over to see Buckingham Palace which was quite lovely. Also saw some soldiers running and one throw up. That was less than lovely. It was really rainy but the palace was still very beautiful. I didn't see the Changing of the Guard, though. The group is going tomorrow and I can't decide if I want to go. On the one hand, it seems like it'd be a pretty important thing to see, you know? Like, I'm in London, I really ought to see the Changing of the Guard. On the other hand, I definitely need to do some laundry. I really don't have anymore clean clothes and I'm completely out of clean socks. Thankfully I've still got clean other-underthings. Otherwise that would be five times the gross. Such is life, really, when on a trip like this.
Tuesday night we had a walking tour of the other side of the Thames, and it was so nice. We saw where the original Globe Theatre would have stood, and where the prostitutes walked to show off their wares to the nice side of London (it's known as The City, and is now one of the top business and banking centres in the world). Had a few pints throughout the night and walked about London. Not going to lie, by the end of the day my ankle was absolutely killing me. However, after a few pints while walking and visiting some historic pubs, coupled with two bottles back here in the bar of the hostel, walking up the stairs was much easier. I rather wish my roommate didn't go to sleep so early because I generally feel like she's getting a very poor impression of me. I'm not usually the type to go out and party so much, but there is something about the English atmosphere that makes it alright to have a drink at the pub. It's very welcoming and doesn't seem to be at all like the American bar scene. There it's got so much of a "hooking up" feel to it and here it's much more relaxed. It's about sitting and having a drink with your friends, not trying to score a date.
Yesterday was fairly busy. We didn't have class in the morning, instead we got to sleep in a bit (which was marvelous) and went to the Imperial War Museum. Not going to lie, at this point, I'm getting a little museum'd out. It certainly doesn't help that we're off to see the British Museum in about forty minutes, but oh well. I like museums, but when they're one after the other, it all just gets a bit duller. It's not as exciting as they were in the beginning of the week.
There was a very nice exhibit called The Children's War which really tore at the heartstrings. It fascinates me how our education is done in America, it really does. Because growing up you're definitely led to believe that America had it really tough during WWII. But compared to the British, our part in the war was a piece of cake. We got bombed once, in Pearl Harbor. During the Blitz there was a period of 57 nights of consecutive bombing. These people were being bombed every single night for two months straight. Children were being orphaned or evacuated or killed. Families were sleeping in cages that we would put our pets in now, in hopes to avoid a bomb. There were these terrible quotes from children that were evacuated that went back to find their homes and they'd been demolished. There was one quote that just ate me alive, it was about this poor child who was walking along the train platform and everyone else was finding their parents and he kept walking by this couple. They didn't recognize him. He didn't recognize them. And the final part of it was "I had never felt so alone." Can you even imagine that? Not recognizing your own parents. Or going back to your home to find that it'd been obliterated. It was so awful.
Then there was the Holocaust exhibit. It's always tough to see those, it really is. But it's always something that needs to be seen. I usually do alright up until the end with the American soliders' footage. That always gets to me, every time. Because it's just so incredibly brutal. And, like my History Prof. said, "The ending cry of that war was of course 'Never again' but of course that didn't stand up. 'Never again' except for Darfur" and then he listed several other countries suffering through a genocide. It really makes me so angry because we're in this stupid Iraq War which is doing absolutely nothing, we're "fighting" this abstract concept called "terrorism" (which has existed everywhere else in the world for decades - the IRA bombed London cars and the Tube in the 70's and they didn't launch an all-out War on Terror) -- while hundreds of thousands of people are being wiped out by other human beings. How can we stand for it?
Okay, no more politics for me. After the museum we made a mad dash back to the hostel because we'd bought tickets to see Equus! AKA - the play that Harry Potter is in! I didn't have tremendously high hopes but it was so much better than I ever thought it would be. It's a very adult play (Dan Radcliffe definitely gets naked, as does one of the females) centered around some very adult themes of sexuality and religion. But it was much sadder than I imagined. I knew that Dan Radcliffe's character - Alan - was extremely messed up in the head but it was so much more complicated than that.
This person had built himself a religion around horses, essentially. His mother was extremely religious and his father was extremely atheist, and his mother used to whisper him the passages of Job. He developed a certain fetishism towards religion, almost. It wasn't inherently sexual but he loved the dark aspects of the bible. He hung a gruesome picture of Jesus being chained and beaten in front of his bed so that it was the last thing he would see at night. His father replaced it with a picture of a horse looking straight on. It was fascinating, how from a simple experience as a 6 year old child on the beach - where some university student almost ran him over with a horse and then allowed him to ride the horse - transformed and became a very sexual thing to him. Right before the intermission it's essentially Alan riding a horse (all the horses are actually men with metal hooves in their feet and metal horse-heads on -- and this particular horse was played by the same fellow who played the Uni student) and it was extremely sexual. He wasn't like, having sex with the horse. But, well, let's just leave it at that, I suppose. It was disturbing, to be sure, but fascinating how this boys mind (he's 17) twisted everything around. Perhaps it's the psychology major in me, but I loved it all.
The saddest part though was the end. He was in the hospital because he'd blinded six horses in a violent rage and the system wanted to send him to jail for it. Basically he'd tried to sleep with one of the girls at the stable whom he was very attracted to (and wanted to sleep with him as well) but he couldn't do it. She took him back to the stable and even though they'd closed the door, Equus (who was his God, sort of the Lord of horses, I suppose - and who lived inside all horses) was still watching. With the normal person in a Christian religion we believe that God is always watching us -- but it's also very convenient to forget that God is always watching us when we're having sexytimes. However, to him, it was like having sex in a church. It was deplorable. And God was always watching, and God was not forgiving. He couldn't handle it. He grabbed the hoof pick and threatened the girl and then stabbed the horses eyes, to get them to stop watching. It's strange because you're sitting in the audience watching this boy run around the stage absolutely naked, and it isn't about the sex anymore. Naked isn't sexy, it's vulnerable. This boy is in so much pain and he just *feels* so much, I nearly started to cry and I'm rather shocked that I didn't. Can you imagine what you would feel like if you destroyed your own God? And your God, who is not forgiving, was with you at all times. Haunted you, hurt you. It's unfathomable, and I'm thankful that it is. I would never wish that.
The problem that the psychologist had was the boys passion. In his short life, he had felt more passion than the psychologist had in his long one. The psychologist admitted to being jealous of the passion that the boy felt. It was misplaced, to be sure, but it was strong and alive. The psychologist said, towards the end, "I can take away your pain but I cannot give you your passion back". It was incredibly sad to me because part of me knew that his pain had taken control of the boy. The psychologist in the beginning said "Everyone gets their own pain to call their own. You can't look at someone else's pain and call it your own, you need something that is just yours. He has found his." I agreed with him, but I also think that we need someone to help us through our pain. We need our pain to be at a manageable level, and his simply wasn't.
Alas, that's been my life until now. I've lost the internet signal so I'll have to wait to actually post this until later. Ta! for now!
Miss you, love you, etc.!
EDIT: Okay, I'm sitting on the second floor landing now. It's about 1am our time (8pm your time) and I don't need to wake up tomorrow, so I figured I'd get some pictures up and edit my post to talk about today.
Well! Today, then. Woke up, had some class (as I mentioned), came up here and wrote the majority of this entry. Ended up having to rush off to the train station (ouch) and then made our way to the British Museum. Marisa and I didn't hang around too much but we did see some really neat Greek artifacts. Then Marisa and I went shopping and I bought a really nice Robertson scarf from a Scottish shoppe in our traditional plaid (made from real Scottish wool!). It's really quite nice, not going to lie. I also bought The Libertines first CD and a Mighty Boosh DVD because they're hella expensive in the States. Then it was back to a pub on the Thames where I got a childrens' portion of sausage and mash (aka, a sausage with some gravy in some mashed potatoes) and a pint of Strongbow.
After that was Othello in the Globe! It was absolutely fantastic, it really was. I didn't particularly recognize any of the actors from anything specific, though all of them looked familiar. I had never seen or read Othello, just had a vague idea of what the plot was. It was quite good. And it was really amazing having the actors be so close to you. We had good "seats" right next to the stage. By "seats" I mean that we were definitely the plebes of the crowd, getting the traditional Globe experience that is standing for three hours. There was a short intermission where we got to sit but for the most part it was really uncomfortable / painful. I enjoyed the play but not all of the standing. By the end of it my ankle was absolutely killing me :-/ BUT! Probably the best part about it was that they had a real band playing with them with real oldentime-looking instruments. And the end, which is a completely tragic ending with lots of people ending up dead, was followed by essentially a cast dance party. The band played, we all clapped along, and everyone was boogying up on stage to the beat in a finely choreographed dance. It was pretty funny, really. "Life sucks, everyone's dead, you know what that means? Dance party!!!"
And then we came back to the hostel! Tomorrow is some people going to see the Changing of the Guards (I've decided against it myself -- I know it's traditional and British and la di dah but when I eventually move here I'll go see it every bloody day, okay? XD) and then touring St. Paul's Cathedral which looks really pretty from the other side of the Thames. After that is, I believe, the Tower of London which ought to be very neat. And then I really hope our guide Jeremy will take us to Filthy McNasty's, an out-of-the-way pub where The Libertines used to play. I'll be really really happy about that if he does :D Now I probably ought to get to bed. I don't want to wake up too late tomorrow, it will throw my whole day off. Then again, if we *do* end up going to Filthy McNasty's I might want to be able to stay up late. We'll see, I suppose ;D
There's this really cute boy that keeps going by. I think he must live on the second floor, as I am sitting on his landing. Alas!
Oh yes, apparently I lied to you when I told you I'd be putting pictures in this entry. No pictures yet! I hope I find some wireless in Paris. I don't feel like paying for my interwebs!
<3 Megh
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