Working for the Weekend

Okay, that's a total lie.  This is mostly going to be a working weekend for me, as all of a sudden the work has piled up.  (I have a presentation on Thursday on the monarchy in medieval England, reading for my Cloisters to Classroom class, background research on both my dissertation and my Identity and Power paper, and Latin exercises.  Whew!)  The week definitely was worth having to be a studybunny this weekend - and, as you'll see, I do have a few fun plans anyway.

The exploratory meeting of the American Girls' Dinner Club met this week; Katie, Claire Menagus (a friend from high school), Claire's flatmate, and Jess (the lone Brit) and I all had a lovely dinner at my house.  We're going to do it again next week, and make it an official sort-of-weekly thing for the American girls in town to catch up and gab.  (Anna and Christine, my other two Americans, weren't there, but they will be!)

The lecture I went to on Wednesday was pretty interesting, although by the end I was looking at my watch more than listening to the esteemed guy.  It was basically about how archeologists and historians look at sources in completely different ways and therefore often extract completely different conclusions from the same sources.  I thought of it sort of as a Venn diagram, where you have two circles that overlap slightly; one circle for the historians, one for the archeologists, and a bit in the middle where they discover the same things.  After the lecture, the usual crowd of class kids went out for drinks.  It's so great to have class friends - and we're more than class friends now, I think; we're actually friends friends.  A few of us girls went shopping on Friday - that makes us real friends, right?

The date, by the way, went very well.  His name is Jon, and I'm seeing him again tonight.  And tomorrow.  (Tomorrow is the annual Apple Fair at Borough Market - we're double dating with Amy and her boyfriend Harry, who is Jon's flatmate.  Pretty cute, huh?)

On the agenda for today is cleaning - it's my week to do the flat - grocery shopping, coffee with Christine, and reading till my eyes fall out.

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.

And Another Weekend Approaches

This week - in contrast to last week, in which I had tons of down time - has been a whirlwind!  I'll start where I left off.

Got dinner and drinks with my new friend Dan on Saturday night; we went to Embankment, which is right near Charing Cross and not far from Covent Garden.  We found a cute Italian place right near the station for dinner, and then wandered up north a bit for drinks.  We kind of had a disaster, though; I don't know if our waitress was new or what, but when she tried to refill my wine glass she poured from too high and totally missed!  She was mortified, and I couldn't stop laughing.  Oops.

On Sunday I dragged myself out of bed to hear Christine sing at the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More, a Catholic church near South Kensington.  (Christine feels like it should be spelled "moste," and I agree!  It's like saying "The Very Incredibly Superduperly Reverend.")  The music was so beautiful!  Totally made up for waking up early after a late night.  Later in the day I had an audition at St. Bride's Margaret Street, a very high church Anglican place near Oxford Circus.  The audition went pretty well, and the director was as nice as he could be, but I won't get put on their substitute list; he said my voice is too light and my sightreading isn't up to par.  After a year of not singing, I wasn't too surprised - or disappointed, actually.

This week classes have been in full swing.  I'm starting to understand why, even though I only have seven hours of class a week, they say this is a full-time 40 hour/week course.  I have so much reading already!  It's all really interesting, but they work on a different system over here and I'm having some trouble getting used to it.  Instead of buying five (or ten or fifteen) books and reading them over the course of the term, you're expected to plan yourself in a library (or two or three) for hours and hours each week and just read the assigned books!  It makes taking notes a little more difficult, but I can't afford to photocopy every reading.  The classes - not so much Latin, which is still dragging - are very substantive, and each student brings something different to the discussion; it's ideal.

Last night I went to the opera with Katie, an American friend.  We saw The Barber of Seville at the English National Opera; it was good, but not great.  The singers were mostly very impressive, but sometimes they were drowned out by the orchestra.  Also, they had adapted the libretto for English, and added some very English humor, which was absolutely enhancing in one way, but sort of detrimental in another.  We did manage to get great seats in the top balcony for only £16 each, though, so we didn't feel too bad about leaving after intermission.

I got a call from my friend Amy - really Harry's friend Amy, but I've co-opted her - during the opera, and went out to meet up with her and some of her friends at a student night at a King's College bar.  It was tons o' fun... and who did I run into there?  Christine!  Smallest world ever.

Sarah's visiting this weekend - maybe I'll be able to convince her to guest write an entry!

  

Time on My Hands

I had my third and last class today; it's called Identity and Power: 500-1300, and it's taught by a charismatic Italian professor.  There are nine of us, which, apparently, is a lot for a master's course.  (Four students were just added to Cloister to Classroom, bringing our total up to 8.  That's still smaller than 90% of my Columbia courses, though, so I don't mind so much.  Seems small to me!)  We did some preliminary reading in class about medieval identity and discussed them as a group, talking about royal identity and how it's created and defined.  Very cool!  We don't have readings for the first week which is a bummer, both because I'm very interested in the material and because I could use the time filler.  (I only have seven hours of class a week - how bizarre!  And - maybe this is just because I'm used to Columbia - the readings don't seem to be too intense.)

Speaking of time fillers, I've been looking for babysitting jobs.  I have an interview tomorrow with a family that has a three year old daughter - wish me luck!  They'd want me three afternoons a week, which works well for my schedule and my wallet.  If it doesn't work out I've been in email contact with a few other families; two websites, gumtree and craigslist, have been instrumental in finding babysitting ads.  (What did you all do before the internet?  Crazy!)

Tomorrow's going to be nuts - I have a lunch before the interview, a coffee after, and dinner with my friend Oli.  I'll report back over the weekend!  Now, off to do some reading.  I think I'll start with "The Rule of St. Benedict."

Sunny with a Chance of Showers

It actually poured yesterday, but no matter.

Anyway, I'm finally here!  I arrived Tuesday morning.  My flight was smooth; in fact, we got in early.  I made it to my new flat by 11:30am and settled right in.

Karma is a wonderful thing: finding somewhere to live was a chaotic experience, so the place I finally ended up is lovely.  It's on a quiet road a short walk from the West Kensington tube stop, and the building fronts a leafy courtyard. The neighborhood is right next to post South Kensington and near the ritzy Kensington High Street, but it's a little grittier and has lots of character.  All the rooms in the flat are off one main hallway; there are four bedrooms (split among five housemates), a huge living room, a big kitchen with a dining area (and a dishwasher!), and two full bathrooms.  I've only met two of my housemates, Jess and Gianni, but I'm sure I'll run into the others sooner or later.

Classes began today.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have Beginner's Latin from 9-10am.  The class is largish - maybe 15-17 students - but we're all MA students, which makes me more comfortable for some reason.  The teacher is a young Italian woman and is very enthused about Latin; the students range in age from early 20s to late 40s.  We only did introductory stuff today; the real work will begin Friday.  Straight afterward I had From Cloister to Classroom, a course on monastic scholarship.  There were four history students there, although the professor said some English interlopers might be joining us next week.  We'd had some reading to prepare for today, so the class was pretty meaty; we discussed different types of scholasticism and read some extra texts.  Tomorrow my third and final course, Identity and Power 400-1200, meets at 10am.

Lots of early classes - but hopefully I'll start to find some babysitting work, maybe in the afternoons, and my days will fill up.

Last night Christine Buras and I tried to go to an Indian restaurant that was highly recommended, but got totally lost in East London.  We walked in the wrong direction - twice - and carved a big circle around Whitechapel.  (I kept imagining that Jack the Ripper, who haunted Whitechapel, was going to jump around the corner.)  An hour and a half after we met at the tube, we finally gave up and picked the first Indian place we found; it turned out to be an amazing restaurant.  Who knows, maybe we'll go back there again - on purpose!

Clear as Mud

The past week I've been home has been both incredibly frustrating and wonderfully clarifying, in terms of what I'll be doing for the near future.

Here's what I don't know for sure: when I'll leave the states. My passport - and visa - should arrive today or tomorrow, allowing me to fly to London on Saturday night. Until it comes, though, I'll be on tenterhooks. My accomodation plans have also been turned topsy-turvey; Emilia and Jess weren't able to find us a decent three-bedroom flat in the area we wanted. Tentatively (although this will be figured out for sure later this morning) I'll be living in a room in Jess' current flat in West Kensington, which is being vacated this weekend. I'll be subletting it for four months, giving me a base from which to locate a studio apartment for myself for the last six months of my stay in London. Cross you fingers for me that this all works out!

Luckily, I do know more about my course. There are 10 MA students in Medieval Studies, and each of my graduate level classes will include 4-6 of my peers. I'll be taking Beginner's Latin, which will be supplemented later in the semester with a class on reading medieval Latin; Identity and Power, 400-1200; and From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic Scholasticism. If I have the time I'll also audit Old French, although from what my professor said I probably won't because of the workload of the aformentioned three classes plus preparation for my dissertation.

That's all I know - or not - for now. Hopefully the next time I write I'll be in London!

Take Two

When I was in middle school, the theme - or inspiration, if you will - of one of NCS' Writer's Day cathedral services was "Take One."  Curled up in piles around the cathedral, our skirts tucked around our knees and our bare feet pressed against the relieving coolness of the marble floors, floppy bluebooks and number two pencils in hand, we girls wrote stories and poems and scribbles about Take One.  Most entries, I believe, touched on movies or the theater.  One memorable finalist story had to do with the sign over a bowl of Halloween candy.  I can't remember what I submitted; it's likely that, as I'd done before and would sheepishly do again, I didn't turn in my bluebook and, instead, crumpled my scratchings in my hand, embarrassed by what I had committed to the page.

Many of you read my Parisian blog - the account of my exultant, breathtaking, whirlwind seven months in Paris as a student and explorer.  (For the curious or nostalgic, here it is: B is for Betsy.)  That, my friends, was Take One.  This is Take Two.

For those of you who haven't been in the loop, welcome; let me catch you up.  In late January 2008 I decided to begin looking into graduate programs in England.  It was contrary enough to everything I had said I wanted that it took me nearly a month to tell family and friends that I had, in fact, applied to four Master's courses at various universities in the United Kingdom.  Four months - and one very frustrating application complication - later, I was admitted as a MA student to University College London in Medieval Studies.

I don't know much about the program; I haven't received information beyond what is listed online.  I do know, though, that I am thrilled to go back to school to study what has always interested me most.  Obviously, I'm also over the moon about being in London for a year.

My accommodations are still up in the air, though I know I'll be living with two other girls, Emilia and Jess.  Emilia and  I did several choir exchanges ten years ago, and reconnected via Facebook.  She responded to the desperate "Help!" message I emailed out a few weeks ago; it turns out that she and her friend Jessica were looking for a third for their new apartment - sorry, flat.  We're hunting in northwest London, relatively close to UCL's campus, and we're trying to be close to Paddington.  I'll let you know what we - well, they - find!

So.  Take Two.  A second European city, a second degree, a second amazing experience.  Wish me luck!