Classes began last week, and even with the commitments required of them I still have a lot of free time every day. Classes only meet once a week for two or three hours, so education here is much less emphatic on the time you spend in the classroom, and requires more work to be done independently. I am taking two seminars for my major and two lectures as electives.

For one of these courses, we attend an hour long lecture each week, and immediately head out to a museum, gallery, or landmark in London. Last week we went to the Museum of London, a social history museum that looks at collective experiences in the city. The museum recreated a Victorian marketplace, which was really cool to walk through, though I couldn't shirk the sense of it being a recreation and not totally authentic. (This is an idea that I'll return to when I get to writing about my visit to the Harry Potter Studio Tour.)

In the Swingin' Sixties collection, I noticed a sign that seemed like a rant about protein (of all things). Apparently Stanley Green protested against the consumption of protein for thirty years on Oxford Street. I have no idea why someone would protest against protein. (There's a possibility for a pun there...protest/protein...any ideas?)

The sign really struck me because I could definitely imagine it in Burlington. It seems like the kind of thing that only someone from Burlington would protest. For any locals, it might remind you of the "Cut Consumption, Not Foreskin!" house on Pearl Street.

The visit raised many questions about the value of art as an aspect of culture. This kind of discussion put me in the right state of mind for a long walk. So I made lunch and took off aimlessly. I ended up taking Charing Cross Road to visit a few second-hand bookshops I've been wanting to go to. I sat in one of them for a half hour reading an enormous tome containing the poet Philip Larkin's letters.

I would have bought it if it wasn't so huge!

If you have not read anything by Philip Larkin, read what's on his Poetry Foundation page and go from there. Here's a poem I've been thinking about as I decide what to do with all my free time:

Days

What are days for?

Days are where we live.   

They come, they wake us   

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:   

Where can we live but days?

Terse, trenchant, optimistic at first glance, but always intimating the inevitability of tedium and death. In my circumstances, I read this as a calling to live within every day-to make the most of what I do while I am here.

So I left the bookshop empty-handed and continued on to St. James's Park and Green Park, two spaces I had visited briefly before, but had not spent a lot of time exploring. St. James's Park is full of birds-many varieties of geese, thrushes, warblers, and ducks. You won't find a single flower in Green Park and there's a great story behind it. You might remember I mentioned Whitehall, where Charles I was beheaded; the next Charles, the Second, was asked by his wife to give a flower from the park to the most beautiful woman in London. When she discovered that he had selected one of his mistresses, the Queen ordered all the flowers in the park to be removed. This might just be an urban myth, but still you will not see a single flower in Green Park!

I passed through to Hyde Park, which is so enormous it seemed like I was not in the city, only the distant presence high-rises to remind me I was.

Hyde Park at dusk

My next turn led me to a completely different locale: Oxford Street. I cannot overstate how much there is going on along Oxford Street: bus-chasing, saxophone-playing, shopping, shouting, lanterns hanging above the pavement, people walking for all conceivable reasons. Seeing all this, it occurred to me that I had walked for a few hours and had not spoken a word. It is easy to pass through a city in silence. Everybody is going about their days-there is no reason to speak to a stranger.

The next day, I went to my history class on London since 1960. In our seminar, everyone introduced themselves by talking about their neighborhood in the city. An obvious pattern emerged: all the Americans said they lived in Zone 1, and all the locals said they lived in Zones 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8. To further illustrate how expensive it is to live in Central London, I'm including this article that my friend Delaney sent me: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477291/London-rents-high-cheaper-live-BARCELONA-commute-heres-.html

It was a great opportunity to hear about some other parts of London that have cultures and histories of their own, about which I know nothing. It really dawned on me that being able to walk to class in London is a great privilege. I had never given this much thought, my own home campus being about fifteen-minutes long in diameter.

Later that day, I made Chicken Tikka Masala, which was the same process as the Lamb Curry I made last week. This time I used brown Basmati rice instead of white rice. The white rice absorbs the flavor of the dish, but the Basmati added its own flavor and I really liked that.

Friday night a few of us went to the Barbican to see the RSC's production of "Henry IV, Part I." I saw it last summer, but it was so good and the tickets were cheap enough, so I decided to go again. It was worth it just to see it from a different angle. The first time I was in the left stalls, and this time I was in the back of the balcony. The Barbican is a bit weird, I think. It's in a really elusive location, and the space itself just feels too vast. On a related note, I just found out that tickets at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon are £5 for students if you book in advance! Sounds like a future day-trip to me!

On Saturday, API took an excursion to the Harry Potter Studio Tour. Thinking about Harry Potter makes me nostalgic, but I'm not a die-hard fan, so I felt like I was there to think about a cultural experience that I was part of, rather than to freak out. I think it's interesting that this space has been set aside for the purpose of bringing fans closer to the real experience of Harry Potter. Seeing children at the tour I remembered being that age myself, when my plastic Sting sword made me believe that I too was part of the Fellowship of the Ring.

I was amazed by how much work went into producing the movies. I really loved seeing the models for the sets. The conceptual designers for the series did really incredible work. Here are two examples to show the scale of this kind of work:

This model of Hogwarts was about a foot and a few inches tall by about three feet wide

This model was about twice my height!

This would be a dream job. Seeing all the conceptual sets made me think back to my childhood, when I was obsessed with arranging and rearranging Lego sets (usually Harry Potter Lego sets!). I haven't done that kind of hands on construction since I was in elementary school, and it did make me wonder where that passion went. I got thinking that living in a city has already brought my interest with exteriors and interiors back into my life. I'm always looking at buildings when I walk, often glancing into windows as I pass by-without even thinking of it! It's kind of a habit to just look inside buildings as I walk by. So there's hope-not that I will ever work as a conceptual designer for a movie (because I do not study architecture or film production), but that I haven't completely abandoned my childhood passions as I have grown older.

At the gift shop, I thumbed through a copy of the first book and started reading. Here's the first page, if you want to read along:

Later, I went out to a pub in Covent Garden with a few awesome API friends. We were desperate for some food, and we went around to a bunch of different pubs in the area, but none of them were serving food-at 9pm on a Saturday! Having worked in restaurants, it makes me happy that so many places let their kitchen staff enjoy their Saturday nights. But, I still wanted food. We found a pub around the corner that was serving food late, so we split a platter of fish and chips and had another round of drinks.

All the pubs I have been to have a great vibe at night, on any day of the week. Cafes here are great too. I sat in one the other day, ordered a coffee, and stayed there reading for hours! In America, there's usually a pressure - at least I have felt it - to order more the longer you stay.

I have class in a few hours, and then I have tomorrow off. Since I don't have class on Tuesdays, they will be my adventure days (I hope). Tomorrow I am taking the tube to Richmond Park in SW London. It's the largest park in London, and is a reserve space for deer. I will definitely take some pictures while I'm there.

In the next few weeks I will be traveling a bit-something that would be really difficult if I didn't have a planner (great investment). In a few weekends I'm visiting my mate from SMC, Shannon, who is studying in Bath.The next week I have no classes for study week, so I'm not sure what I'll do with that time yet. Then at the end of the month I am traveling to Berlin for a few days with my friend Delaney, who teaches in Madrid.

Yes, this is a lot of travel. We'll see if it all works out! I hope so-but regardless, I know I can expect to learn a lot as I venture off!

In the meantime, there is so much happening in London-I am lucky to be here!