Days 18 and 19

Day 18 was rather slow. We had our British Life and Culture class for three hours in the morning and discussed Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It was an inspired discussion, and Susie delivered a wonderful biography of Woolf for our information. After that, we returned to the flat and sat around until we had to leave for the play we were required to see for British Life and Culture: Punk Rock at the Lyric Hammersmith. It's a play about the pressure-cooker environment British schoolchildren live in, especially as they are forced to choose the path their life must take at a comparatively early age. When they're sixteen, they take exams known as A-levels, and it's one's results on these exams that determine what school one goes to. However, these A-levels aren't general knowledge tests like the SAT or ACT; rather, they're on subjects: history, mathematics, literature, foreign languages, etc. Choosing what A-levels you want to take is effectively choosing a major. Those that take literature A-levels will be English majors, people subjected to the math A-levels will be a scientist of some sort, and so on and so forth. So British kids, at the age of sixteen, are expected to know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives, and there's no changing it once you're done. Anyway, like all plays about the foibles of the education system anywhere, it ended with a school shooting, which I'd predicted would happen from the first scene. Oh, well.

On Day 19, we had three hours of Art and Architecture. Barnaby (our professors requested that we call them by their first name, which I have to admit is a little weird for me) was a lot more interesting today, as he seemed a lot more enthusiastic about teaching us. We walked by Westminster Abbey, but didn't go in (as it apparently costs twelve pounds to do so), then to Covent Gardens, and finally to Saint Mary le Strand. Saint Mary le Strand, being a Baroque piece, is festooned with stone vases around the roof, and in 1802 one of the vases fell off and killed someone. After Art and Architecture, we had three hours of Shakespeare, which I love. Partly because our professor, Jean, is utterly mad and completely wonderful, and also because I just love Shakespeare. After that, Erin, Becca, and I went to a shop that was having a sale, and I got a trench coat for twenty-two pounds. I'm down to two hundred and nineteen pounds, but I don't care: A) I have a trench coat, and B) tomorrow we get our stipend and I'll be back up to having two hundred and ninety pounds.

In forty-five minutes, we have to leave for Henry IV Part 1 at the Globe. Standing up for three hours in the rain, yay.