Deadlines and Freelancers

No I’m not talking about my journalism career, I’m talking about war. War during the era of Pax Britannica, where Britain reigned supreme as world super power, invading and colonizing countries. Now you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about war. And there’s a simple answer to this: history class. We started class on Tuesday and I’m taking London theatre, British history and Art history. I’m really excited about my classes because not only do they sound interesting, but the professors believe that learning comes from experiencing, so the majority of our classes take place outside of a classroom.

For our theater class, we meet once a week in class and then attend a play the next night. The professor is a sweet little lady who used to be a professional actor and director so she knows what she’s talking about. Wednesday night we went to our first play, and what a great way to kick off our theater experiences. The play was “The Merry Wives of Windsor” held at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater!

The Globe

Our professor wanted us to get the full experience of what it was like to go see a play in Shakespeare’s time so we had “groundling” tickets which meant we stood in the area in front of the stage (think the pit at a concert). While this did hurt our feet towards the end, I felt like we had a better experience because we were able to see everything up close.

Where we stood as groundlings

I went in to the play a little worried because I’ve seen some bad Shakespeare before where it’s so hard to understand but luckily this play was unlike any others. We didn’t have any problem understanding the actors (I wonder if this was because it was British people speaking it instead of Americans) and the play was absolutely hysterical. In a nutshell, the play is about these 2 best friends who are being seduced by the same man and decide to play a trick on him. Sounds like a modern Rom Com eh? It was one of Shakespeare’s comedies that I hadn’t read, but now I really want to read it. It was such an amazing experience to be in the country where Shakespeare originated and seeing one of his plays at his Globe theater (yes I know it’s a reconstruction but it still counts for something). It’s still not real to me that I’ve had all these great opportunities.

My next class, British history, is held twice a week and we’ll be visiting a couple museums during it. The teacher is quite a funny bloke. He has no reservations about what he says and often has us rolling in laughter. He likes to poke fun at America (“If you’re sick just don’t come to class, here in Britain we don’t work while we’re on our death beds like you Americans.” “You can all buy me a drink, this isn’t like America where you have to wait til you’re ninety eight to drink”) and he makes history interesting because he tells it like a story and uses videos too. Today he told us that many of the words we use today (like deadline and freelance) came from British war terms, which I never knew.

And then my only class on Wednesdays is my art history class where for most classes we’ll be visiting art museums in London. We’ll be going to the National Portrait Gallery, The Tate Modern and many other museums. Our teacher is actually American but she moved to London a few years ago because she liked it much more. She told us that all the museums in London are free and still thinks its ridiculous that you have to pay to get into American museums. I completely agree.

On a totally different note, me and Sarah discovered a little piece of heaven today. And that place is Primark on Oxford St. Just when we thought we couldn’t love London anymore, we walked into what is basically Forever 21 (my favorite store) times 100 million. There wasn’t a single piece of clothing in there that I didn’t think was cute. And everything was so cheap! It was so crowded though that we ended up trying our clothes on in the middle of the store instead of waiting 30 minutes in line for the fitting room. After these shenanigans, we went upstairs to discover the shoe section. I never knew what it felt like to be in love until I saw the shoes. Every type of shoe you could ever imagine in every color you could ever want. In the end, I made it out with a pair of shorts, tights, a jacket and socks for only 21 pounds. I. Love. This. City.

Sorry Mom and Dad, I’m never coming home!