Londoner

I've well and truly settled into my life here; I've got a routine and I love it.  Seven hours of class a week, twelve of babysitting, and about fifteen of homework.  I've even figured out the rabbit warren that is the Senate House library (no mean feat!) and checked books out from both it and the UCL library.  (I'm still not a fan of this system, in which all books are expected to be read from the library, but I've finally resigned myself to it.)

I've started thinking about subjects for the two papers I have to write, too.  I think I'm going to look at the myth of Charlemagne in the centuries after his death for my Identity and Power class; the writers who postdated Charlemagne's reign saw him as a new David and a second Constantine, and I'd like to examine how and why.  For Cloisters to Classroom I think I'll be treating medieval interpretations of the Song of Songs.  If you haven't read it, you absolutely should - it's beautifully written.  The thing is, though, it's pretty risqué, and medieval scholars had some trouble turning it into a nice, clean, Christian allegory.  I also went to David, the head of the Medieval Studies course, to discuss preliminary dissertation topics.  He was totally into my idea of exploring how eleventh- and twelfth-century theologians read and interpreted the Pauline Epistles, so I felt like an academic rockstar.  That feeling lasted about five minutes, though; he gave me a few books for "background reading" and told me to come back in a week, so now I'm a little overwhelmed.

I've been getting to know London well enough over the past few weeks that it's really starting to feel like home.  I walk to and from babysitting, so I'm familiarizing myself with west London, and I carry my A-Z (the map book that even true Londoners use) with me everywhere.  We've mostly been going out in the east side, so I've been broadening my knowledge of London geography that way, too.  Went to Katie's for dinner on Tuesday - she lives near Barbican - and to Anna's on Thursday - she's in Fulham.  Did a bit of clubbing on Thursday night with Amy and two of her friends in Kensington, and travelled to London Bridge today for coffee with Harry.  I feel like such an adventurer!

It's strange: even when I was happy living in Paris, I never wanted to live there for the rest of my life.  I can absolutely imagine staying in London forever and being perfectly happy.  Harry suggested it was a language thing, which it might be, but I think I fit better with the culture here than I did in Paris.  Everyone's friendly and open here; it's louder and more in-your-face than Paris but less stressed than New York, and it has the same sort of dual community that Washington, DC does in that some people here consider themselves absolutely Londoners while others will always say they're from elsewhere.  I love it.