Out of the Weekend and Into the Week

First of all, a formal apology for the title; it was not intended to be so lame, I'm this way naturally.

Greenwich this Saturday began with visiting the Painted Hall, which was absolutely amazing. It was this great giant hall and almost every inch of it was covered with beautifully articulated paint. We also visited the Observatory and did the whole standing in two hemispheres at once. We also looked at a museum thing about how they discovered an accurate way to measure longitude so that sailors would stop getting lost at sea. Pretty interesting, but that was the place at which we spent waaaay to much time. Once we split up, Erin and I went to the Queen's house (Anne of Denmark, I believe, James I's wife) but it wasn't a refurbished home, it was just full of a collection of nautical paintings. We also wandered through the Maritime Museum, full of all sorts of stuff about ships. Anna would have loved it.

Yesterday I went to church for the first time over here and I give it mixed reviews. On the one hand, I was so relieved and happy to be somewhere so familiar that I cried during the opening hymn and passing the sacrament. It felt so good to be doing something that is the same as at home. I brought on a wave of homesickness that I haven't really had to deal with yet. On the other hand, church stressed me out a bit in terms of the responsibilities they might give me and all the activities they want us to do. Sorry guys, I'm not interested in three or four activities a week - I'm busy having a great time in London thanks. Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

For my Poli Sci class today, we went to Reuters, which is a giant news conglomerate here in London. It was a really cool field trip - I learned a ton about the global media industry. Like, this company that we visited makes the majority of their revenue through selling information. In general, and especially in the states, newspaper readers are less and less interested in international news. So because it's so expensive to fund foreign correspondents, they're cutting down and instead buying their stories from companies like Reuters. They also do tons of business news, stocks and prices and stuff. I'm so lucky to be part of such a cool program that arranges stuff like this for us.

Tonight we went to Fragments, which was a group of short plays be Samuel Beckett. Weird stuff. I think I figured out parts what I was supposed to, but on the whole, I don't really know why people clapped forever at the end. Once again, there's a gap for me between what the product is and why the creator was famous.

Well, we're reading Timon of Athens for my Shakespeare class (pretty stupid, if anyone's wondering) and I still have 50 more pages to read before tomorrow. I miss you all so much.

Good luck with school!