Week 3

On Monday I decided to go to Primark to do some shopping. I decided to scope it out by myself, and walked down to Oxford Street. I was so surprised by how slowly everyone was walking! It was weird, I felt like I had to keep weaving in and out of people, and I wasn't even walking that fast. Also, everyone just stops and stands in the middle of the sidewalk. I know this probably happens in every city, but I just assumed people would be more considerate. I started off at Primark. Oh my gosh, it's overwhelming. It's like a Forever 21 but British style. Definitely cheap prices and cheap material. Interestingly, even though it's 4 stories, it's pretty much all the same things on each floor (as in, the same exact clothes). I  mostly wanted to scope it out, but I'll definitely be back. I wandered around to the rest of the stores, seeing what was on the first stretch. It was nice to actually go out by myself and explore. I prefer to be with a couple other people in the city, but I needed to break the ice in terms of doing things on my own. Don't worry Mom and Dad, I was being very safe and aware of everything! As the constable advised, I always make sure "to keep my wits about me."

On Monday the house received some really sad news: our house manager, Charlotte, will not be available the remainder of the semester because she has to go on medical leave. We don't know exactly what's wrong, but it sounds pretty serious. Charlotte is basically superwoman. She knows everything about everything in London, and was an invaluable resource. And the icing on the cake is she's the sweetest lady. We're all definitely going to miss her the rest of the semester!

We went to some bookshops with Media and Society on Tuesday, after learning about the print media in England. We didn't have time to go into any store except Waterstones, which is awesome. It's like a Barnes and Noble but better. Print is still a widely used medium here, which is really cool. Our teacher encourages us to read the newspaper while we're here. We get the Telegraph and the Guardian here at the house. I like to try and keep up, but the papers are seriously 40 pages long and each page is totally filled with stories. I know the idea is not to read every single story; doing so would take hours! It's pretty much the same kind of stories, though: being obsessed with other peoples' lives.

We went to the V&A Museum for Culture by Design. We compared pre-World War I design and Post War design. It was a lot of Jay referencing movements and types of designs and me having no idea what he was talking about. The class is interesting, but he seems almost to be trying too hard.

After class, a group of us went to Chilango's, a Chipotle-type restaurant. We definitely have to go back, it was delicious! Then we went to a performance at the Peacock Theater called Tango Fire. It was basically just people dancing the Argentine Tango for 2 hours. They were great performers and I can respect their talent, but it went on for way too long. It felt cheesy, especially because they had a Spanish Frank Sinatra who kept coming out and making everything even more campy. The target audience was clearly mid-age women. Not us. I just didn't really get the relevancy of us going to see this performance. Oh well, to each their own; it just definitely wasn't my cup of tea.