So I lied about Tuesdays being busy. Wednesdays take the "fullness" cake. It doesn't really hit me until after both classes, at 6, though, because I love both classes.
In European history, we learned about World War One. I love history, and after a solid 10 years of learning about the 19th century, I have a pretty firm grasp of American events. However, World War One is always a bit fuzzy for me, I think because it was pretty pointless and ended up totally different than people expected. My teacher talked about the conflict for a bit and we watched some animations about the stalemate. She has a strange style of teaching where almost every time she is about to tell us information she asks "does anyone remember anything about [insert event here]?" Sometimes I know what she's alluding to, but it gets a bit irritating when she does it every few minutes, and often I don't know what she's asking. That's why I'm taking the class! But she's clearly very knowledgeable, and she's a very cute and sweet older lady. Out outing was to the National Army Museum, which has a permanent exhibit on both World Wars. They had a lot of interactive stuff, and it was really cool to see real postcards, life size tanks and guns, and see pictures from the time. Perhaps another reason I'm not as familiar with WWI is that there wasn't television or extensive media coverage. Seeing the real experiences of soldiers really put the war into perspective. The war with massive weaponry and new technology was supposed to be the "war to end all wars," but it still lasted 4 long, grueling years. I think what gets me about the war is that it was really supposed to be between Austria-Hungary and Serbia but the majority of the war was fought in France, and then Germany had to surrender and take blame for the war...I wandered around the museum a bit, then took the tube back with Jordan, grabbed lunch at the flat and headed to art.
In art, each of us (or groups) talked about a painting we had chosen from our previous visit to the National Gallery. Then we walked over to the British Museum and saw an exhibit on Ancient Greece (which we had actually seen with Media and Society but Rachel explained it much better). Then we hiked over to the National Gallery again and looked at more Renaissance paintings (or Ren-AY-sance) as Rachel pronounces it. I even caught myself saying it, which is so weird. It's still so cool to me to see real paintings by Michelangelo and Raphael in real life. I think I forget that things exist outside of the computer sometimes...
We had to rush back to the house for a quick dinner, because we had our weekly group meeting at 6:30. We just got our money and schedules and went back. I Skyped (pretty successfully!) with Jay, then worked on some homework.
On Thursday I didn't have class in the morning, so I got up and went to Sainsbury's and got some souvenirs! Then I read more of the Hunger Games for class, then went to class! I just love my teacher, Steve. I can tell how much he loves films and talking about it, so it makes me excited to talk about them too. While putting his own opinion in his lectures, he presents the reasons a movie is a good or bad adaptation objectively and it totally makes sense. After class, we had some time before we had to meet for our movie, so Fiona and I naturally went to Waitrose to get more groceries. My weekly food stipend goes very quickly here...whoops!
Our film this week was Zero Dark Thirty. I was really nervous going into it, because I knew it was violent, and obviously the subject matter is very serious and intense. I don't want to say I ENJOYED it, because seeing people being shot and tortured isn't pleasant, but it was a very well done movie. It wasn't as gruesome as I imagined, but this almost made it worse because it left more up to the imagination. I couldn't follow at some parts because I didn't have much background about Al Qaeda, but the movie was much better than I anticipated. After the movie, Kate, Fiona, Kelsey and I went to Pizza Express for dinner. We ended up being there for about 2 hours because, while the servers were nice, they definitely weren't as attentive as I'm used to, and we had to flag them down and ask for the bill when we realized they weren't bringing it to us 20 minutes after we finished eating.
Sorry for the post light on pictures! I know text is kind of boring...But tomorrow I'm going to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter studio tour and Platform 9 3/4! I'm SO EXCITED!
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