BACON...

It's what I had for breakfast. Along with some strawberry yogurt.

The football match (I've already been corrected multiple times for calling it a "game") on Tuesday was fantastic. So much fun. I would guess the crowd was about 85% male, about the same percentage was drinking, and LOUD. I wish I could post some of the chants they had going on, but I at least TRY to keep this PG, and their songs were anything but. Some of them were OK, like the taunt "you're not singing anymore" or, simply, "come on you spurs!" (Tottenham Hotspurs, AKA the Spurs), but a lot were vulgar. And I have literal sailors for uncles! The game ended in a tie, which was good for Sunderland because they're lower in rankings, but which may as well have been a loss for Tottenham judging by the crowd's response afterwards. Also, we were sitting in the Tottenham section right next to the away team section, so we had front-row views of all the rude commentary that fans from both teams were hurling at each other. Awesome :)

Crowded

Still crowded

Leaving the stadium was almost as exciting as the match itself. According to the flashing sign up at the end of the field, there were 35,843 people in a stadium that can hold 36,310. So less than 500 empty seats in a 36,000 seat stadium. LOTS OF PEOPLE. Meaning lots of congestion outside the stadium, too. We took our time leaving, went into the spirit shop (or the boys did, I didn't), John topped up his Oyster card in a convenience store (which is a really nice thing. Being able to top up BEFORE you get into the tube station can save a LOT of time), we walked slowly, all that nonsense. So when we walked the mile and a half to the nearest tube station we expected the crowd to have thinned out. We thought wrong. There was a line coming out of the underground station all the way up onto the pavement. So that means at least two whole floors worth of line. This was at around 10:45, and we decided that there was too much chance that we wouldn't make it back to Bloomsbury by the time the tube shut down, so we nixed it and found a bus. Which worked like a charm; dropped us off right by Russell Square. Win.

Wednesday was good. Barnaby's class was really nice; we went to Hyde Park and walked around looking at statues by the Serpentine (the river in the park), and then went back to the V&A to see an exhibit about camera-less photography. Really, really cool stuff. There were 5 (maybe?) different artists being exhibited, and they used very different techniques to do their stuff, so some of them were really abstract, and others were really geometrical, and others had very definite subjects. Kinda ran the gamut. My favorites were sort of ethereal; they looked like human shadows. I kept wishing I could take pictures of the pieces, but that was a big No-No because of the nature of art done on not-completely-developed photo paper. So no pictures to show you. Take my word for it that they were cool.

Jean's class was cool, too. We acted out bits of Hamlet to get a feel for how difficult staging parts of it can be. We did a chunk of the final scene, and I was Hamlet, and we talked about where we, as directors, would place the actors on stage, and how the type of stage would impact how a scene could be shown, and how difficult performing it in the Globe would have been for Shakespeare. Interesting discussion, and it was good to be out of our seats and DOING stuff because Jean's class can be exhausting. 6 hours of class in a day is exhausting. Especially when we have so much down time otherwise. I maintain that I'm going to have an AWFUL time of readjusting to doing real work when I get back to Hendrix. Having time to just wander around museums all day, and stroll about town, and nip into pubs whenever I want is such a lovely, lovely luxury. I may turn into a gold digger after this semester. I've seen the light! I'll just find a nice sugar daddy to keep me in the style to which I've become accustomed over the last 2.5 months....

Wednesday night was pub quiz! Hayes and I went over early to grab food before quiz time because neither of us had been food shopping recently, and we were having a lovely time eating when guess who walked in?!Dr. King! He didn't let me down this week (I gave him so much shit for not showing up last week that he probably just didn't want to listen to me bitching for another week), and Hayes owes me 10pence because he didn't think the good professor would show. Anyway, he showed up and LED US TO VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep, that's right, we were the Pub Quiz Champions this week! And have the bottle of champagne to prove it. It was especially sweet because we beat our British friends' team. Bragging rights, baby! Good day, good night.

Thursday was a slooowwwww, slogging kinda day. Didn't want to wake up, didn't want to go to class, it was rainy and wet and cold and windy. Finished up with our class discussion of Riddley Walker (still don't like it), and stopped for fish and chips on the way back to the flat. It was a sweet victory, because the boys were there ahead of me, and had already ordered and were waiting for their food, when I walked in. But the guy who's always there when I go took my order and got it together within about 45 seconds, and I was out of there. Small victory, but a sweet one. Did a whole lotta nothing last night. Watched some Friends, had dinner with Hayes and Chase at a place called Cagney's, went to bed before midnight.

Had some really fun dreams last night about hanging out with the cast of Friends, did a lot of dancing. Everyone's been teasing me because I keep saying that I want to go out and be social and MEET people because we've only got a few weeks left and I still have to meet Prince Charming (duh), but I think that I just genuinely need to be doing more than just hanging out every night. Watching Friends is fun, but I need society. And everyone's kinda burnt out except me, it seems like. Well, Ruthie might not be, but she was sick last week, and this weekend, she's in Florence with her Mom. So I'm stuck. Anyway, I think that dream was my subconscious letting me dance with strangers since my friends here won't facilitate me doing that. So either I can go out by myself (not such a fun option), or I can dream about having fun. Boo to that. I think tomorrow I'll get their butts in gear...

Anyway, I digress. Woke up this morning (actually morning) and spent a few hours lolling about. Emailed professors at Hendrix about the major and got some other stuff sorted out for Odyssey (part of our graduation requirement at Hendrix is to fulfill 3 "Odyssey"s by the time we graduate. So we can do that by taking classes, by doing community service, having internships, doing research, all kinds of ways. Over spring break, for example, I'm going to Napa, CA with my friend Hagan to research using locally grown food in cuisine and taking a cooking class. All of which is being paid for by Hendrix. So Odyssey is SWEET).

Then I dallied around some more. Then went to the Tate Britain to pick out my next piece for Barnaby's class. We're doing more presentations about particular pieces of art, only this time the focus is on art from 1900 on. So I made a list of possible pieces I could present on and then poked around a bit in the museum. They're in the process of moving a lot of things around, and mixing up the galleries, so it was mostly modern art that was on display this time. I did, however, find the last piece that I presented on, "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose," in a different room than it was when I presented it, and was astonished to see how much different the painting seemed in different light. The lighting it's in now was MUCH better, brighter, and I noticed colors in it this time that I hadn't even suspected when I presented. I'm in love with that painting. It's gorgeous. And seeing it in a (literal) different light only served to reaffirm my love of it.

Finally left the gallery, and had a crazy trip back on the tube. Three different lines are closing because of construction work this weekend, and something like 4 others have portions that will be closed for the weekend, so I think everyone and their mother was trying to get in last minute travel on those lines before they close. I made a friend on one of the legs of the trip who helped me get from where we were wedged on one side of the car out and onto the platform through the door on the opposite side of the car. We were crammed in enough that it took a lot of effort and squeezing between strangers to succeed. He was nice (ugh, I hope he wasn't Prince Charming because I lost him in the crowd once we both got out!).

Went grocery shopping after the hectic tube ride and made a really yummy salad for dinner. Salads have been my best self-prepared meals. Most well-rounded and generally satisfying. This one was spinach salad with some chopped up brie, and tomato-and-mozzarella tortellini on top. GOOOOOD. And I bought some red grape juice to have with it, and bananas for dessert. I'm feeling well-balanced.

Since dinner, I've been working on a Jean paper (or, really, I read up to the part that I'm supposed to be writing about but haven't actually started writing because I "needed" to blog. It's been a few days, and I DID make a resolution to do better, after all!). I figure, I'll be productive tonight, and then tomorrow, come hell or high water, I'll go out and be social. Just had a brief conversation with Erin about that, and she's agreed to go dancing with me tomorrow. YES. So I've got that to propel me through writing this Jean paper. Dancing tomorrow will be my reward for good writing tonight :)