A very interesting Tuesday

A very strange thing happened on Tuesday morning: Mo's lecture and outing lined up! His lecture was coherent and I understood everything he talked about. This week we learned about the British radio. I learned that Britain was really strict about radio broadcasting in its early days. While America chose the commercial exploitation route, using advertisements and sponsored programs, radio was banned for a long time in Britain. Eventually, there became a limited monopoly owned by radio set receiver manufacturers-to fund their production, they would charge a "license to listen" fee when someone bought a radio. Then, the BBC regulated what was actually broadcast over the radio, which meant there were only about 4 radio stations until the 1950s. During the 50s-60s, the regulations loosened a bit and commercials were allowed, but there were still only about 5 legitimate radio stations, but even then, it was mostly talking because music was seen as low culture. It wasn't until 1990 that radio became completely unregulated. I thought this was so interesting, since radio was such a huge part of American life during the 20th century. T.V. was used to broadcast music and more "low culture," but still not to the same degree as in America. Definitely an informative lecture.

For our outing, we went to the London Greek Radio, which is just what it sounds like-a local radio station run by a group of Greeks. Who knew there were 400,000 Greeks in just London? We were given a tour by the DJs of the facility, and we even got to go on air! Everyone at the station was really friendly and happy to have us there. It was a really cool experience, because with big radio stations, you don't usually get to have such an intimate tour. But the REALLY cool thing is, even though they seem like a small station, they have a really large listenership. Good going, Mo!

Our culture by design outing was just as interesting: a shopping mall. This may sound silly, but I miss the mall. It's such an American thing, and there just aren't malls in the city of London. As we walked around the mall, everyone kept commenting on how "at home" they felt. We are such Americans. In particular, Jay wanted us to look at "The Village" part of the mall, aka the designer area. We were told to pay attention to how each store displays their values; how do they show you the company from walking into the store? We went into stores like Miu Miu, De Beers, Dior, Prada, and Burberry in groups of 3. Immediately when we walked into the stores we felt out of place. The associates would greet us, without a smile, and look us up and down before asking if we needed help finding anything. They would then follow us around the store, pretending to fix displays while keeping an eye on us. I've been in designer stores before just to say I have, but I hadn't been paying as close attention to how I was treated. The stores all feel like museums, and I'm afraid to touch anything. We had a really strange experience going into Ted Baker: the alarm went off as we ENTERED the store...so the associate, very condescendingly, asked us to leave the store and come back in individually to find out who set off the alarm. The alarm didn't go off when we did that. Right, because if I had stolen something I would come BACK into the store. It was so weird. Then of course she followed us around the store until we left. Definitely an interesting shopping experience!

Tuesday night we booked Italy things!! Ah! I'm so excited to go to Italy for spring break! We fly into Pisa on Friday, then take a bus to Florence. On Saturday, we're going to Venice for the day. Then we spend Sunday-Tuesday afternoon in Florence, and take a train to Rome Tuesday afternoon. We stay there til Friday evening. Italy was on the top of my list for places to go while in Europe, so I'm unbelievably stoked. 

Wednesday was pretty low key: we learned about WW2 in history and watched a documentary. For art, people presented their midterms and then we went to the Tate Britain. I miss going to the National Gallery, it was so close! The Tate Britain has really cool art, though. We looked at the "sublime" paintings of nature: viewing nature as chaotic and frightening. Not really my taste, but it's still always neat to see famous paintings in real life!