Back to School

Monday, July 16th, 2007
London, England

So, my "holiday" ended yesterday. I am no longer backpacking around Europe, without having to worry about spending any time on school.

I woke up far to early this morning, to take the tube to the University for orientation. Orientation took a couple of hours, and we got a ridiculous amount of papers, found out about day and weekend trips that the school is sponsoring, heard all about safety and security, etc. Then we headed off to our classes for the first time.

I am taking Jack the Ripper's London: Myth, Reality, and the Victorian Metropolis. It seems like it will be a great course, but it will be very demanding. The instructor said that, since it is a full semester course, crammed into three weeks, it is going to be "pretty rigorous." We have to do a twenty-five minute group presentation with power point, write a research paper on one of four topics, and we will have a written final exam at the end of the three weeks. We are taking three field trips, one of which I will be missing due to my meeting with the Lord Mayor on Thursday. The syllabus had a list of some fourteen recommended reading books, a few of which are mandatory.

After class, the head of the program threw another pub bash, this time with plenty of free food and drink, really close to campus. I went for a couple of hours, before realizing it was almost four PM and I had a lot to do before businesses started closing down.
After the pub, I headed to the library (Actually two libraries) to avoid buying as many books as I could. I found seven of the books I needed at the library, checked them out, threw them in a bag, and headed to H&M, where I FINALLY purchased an umbrella!!

I came back, cooked pasta yet again (five straight nights now), went on the computer for a bit, went running with Leah for well over an hour, went to Sainsbury's so she could get some groceries, and then we had a laundry party.

Four of us combined our laundry and spent FOUR hours washing and drying. There was a serious lack of machines and these machines were rickety and slow. But we kept ourselves occupied with conversation, European chocolate, and popcorn. I read form one of my "Jack the Ripper" novels, and we all talked about movies and nonfictional books that we liked and did not like. It was a good time, but had we known that it was going to take us four hours to do our laundry, we would have started before ten PM!!

At 2, I folded my laundry, got online, read for a bit, then crashed for a solid five hours before waking up for day two of school!!