Sunday was St. Patrick's Day, and I got back in time from Amsterdam to join in the festivities. There was a festival in Trafalgar Square, which Meagan, Fiona and I went to check out. It was PACKED with people, all wearing green, some with face paint, and in varying degrees of drunkenness. We pushed our way through the crowds to get food and drink-fish and chips and cider for me. There was a large stage and bands changed about every half hour. It rained off and on (until it started to pour around 3), but it was still really fun to listen to live music and be in the company of others. We saw the difference between British and American police when some boys got in the fountains. The police just walked around asking them to leave, but didn't really take much action. I know if it had happened in America, the security would have physically removed the boys from the fountain. Definitely funny. We stayed for a couple hours, until the cold and rain shooed us away. That night, a large group of us headed to Porterhouse, one of our favorite bars. It was pretty fun, and also very busy. As usual, there was live music there, which is always great. I've never seen so many ginger people in one place! Definitely a fun St. Patrick's Day this year! The Brits know how to celebrate.
Trafalgar Sqaure!
The boys in the fountain
On Monday, I wrote my Culture By Design paper-how does De Beers (a designer I chose) communicate its values to shoppers through their store. That evening, I had a really cool opportunity to go to Parliament. It was the outing for the Media and Politics class, but it was free and the teacher said I could tag along. Little did I know that not only would the Prime Minister, David Cameron, be there, but that I would witness the settling of the huge debate about press regulation. There was a huge scandal with phone-hacking, which led Parliament to create an independent regulator which controls the press. I unfortunately hadn't been keeping up with the story before going to Parliament, so I was a bit confused watching. But it was still really cool to sit and hear the MPs talk. I saw history being made!
On Tuesday, we went to Notting Hill for media and society. This area is most famously featured in the Hugh Grant movie "Notting Hill," but it's been used a lot for movie filming and is just a really cool, diverse area. We're learning about film in the class now, so this was definitely fitting. Mo took us to Notting Hill, but then just left us with our tour guide, Andy. Andy took us around the area, pointing out areas that have been used in movies. There is a big market on Portobello Road on the weekends, which I'll definitely have to go back and check out. It was just a really neat area that's changed a lot over the years. You go from extremely wealthy areas to council flats within a block. I loved the colored buildings!
Parts of Spice World was filmed here!!
The Travel Book Shop in Notting Hill movie
Original Banksy
For CBD, we watched Django Unchained. We were learning about stereotypes in the media, so this was obviously a good movie to talk about that. I like Tarantino's plots (or lack thereof) and dialogue, but I usually don't watch his movies because they're so gory. Django wasn't any different, but I still really liked it. It was so funny, but still really left an impact. He did a lot of research to make it accurate, but also purposely made historical inaccuracies. This was really interesting to see. For instance, there's a scene with the KKK (which is actually probably the funniest scene in the entire movie), but the movie is supposed to take place before the Civil War, when the KKK didn't exist. I'm really glad we got to watch the movie in class! Sometimes I forget I get college credit to do such awesome things!
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