Day 1 of classes

Today I went to the Media and Politics class. I'm not enrolled in it, but we can visit any class we want this week before making our final decisions on classes, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Our director told us that our professors are characters, and she definitely wasn't lying. My professor walks in wearing a three piece green tweed suit, with a blue and white striped shirt, pink bow tie, and pink suspenders. So classy. He was really funny and interesting, and the class sounds great. I'm not a big politics person, so I'm a little hesitant to switch into the class. I'm definitely glad I went, though, because it was an educational class. We had class for about an hour and a half, and our professor talked about the differences between American and British politics. I found that on the surface, they are pretty similar, but the nuances are very different. For example, I didn't realize that there isn't a physical document of a constitution in Britain. Everything is kind of just made up and then continued through tradition. I guess that's why in America we DO have a written constitution; we wanted to break away from the British way of government.

For our outing for politics, we walked about 10 minutes to the British Library. There we went to an AWESOME exhibit, in which we could see the MAGNA CARTA. SO COOL. I love being in such a large city that has cool original documents (sorry Richmond). The exhibit also had other awesome primary sources, including the original Bible printed by Gutenberg, had written notes by William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill, and even a Beatles section. It was mostly lyrics written on things such as place mats, but they had a card John Lennon gave to his son Julian on his first birthday with the lyrics of "Hard Day's Night" written on it. So far I'm loving the outings for these classes.

I definitely was NOT supposed to take this picture, but it's handwritten lyrics to "Yesterday"!!

After we were done looking at the exhibit, we were free to leave. I went back to the house and checked out my books for the semester. Then my roommate and my friend Kate went grocery shopping. We chose to go at 1, which we soon found out was the absolute WORST time to go to Sainsburys. Not only is the store not super big, but it was PACKED. I could barely move around, and since I didn't know where everything was, I was so overwhelmed. They had a pretty good (and cheap) selection of gluten free/dairy free stuff though! Even though it was a stressful experience, it ended up being great: I only spent 14.50 pounds and got a lot of stuff! The most expensive thing I bought was 2 pounds. So definitely going back there for groceries!

After shopping, I just hung out in my room and skyped Paige and got to see Kat and Laura. I miss you guys so much!! It was so weird that they were just waking up as I had already done so much.

I went with a group of girls for dinner to Hummus Bros. SO. DELICIOUS. You get a base of hummus and then choose your topping. I got fava beans, which were kind of like pinto beans. I was also able to get gluten free bread with it, and it was less than 6 pounds! Then we spent the rest of the evening in one of the flats just talking. I really like everyone on the trip, so it's great to get to know them better. 

I have two classes tomorrow, and then we're all going as a group to this show called Fuerzabruta Roundhouse. I have NO idea what it's about, but apparently it's performing arts. We've been told we might get wet and we'll be standing for 80 minutes. Should be a very full and interesting day!