day 5

Please see *edit to last post.

Today began with a lovely breakfast of pastries I got from the market yesterday. It’s so good now to wake up warm and eat good food. I got on the tube alone this morning because I hadn’t made any plans with my friends. But it was nothing terrible because once you learn the how to do the underground it’s not really that scary, even when there are a bunch of people on it. The bus system isn’t that scary either because there are very clear signs all over the place telling you where to go. And riding in the double-deckers is fun!

Anyway, I went to the library really fast this morning and got the book I need to read for class. In class today we talked about unconscious awareness, which covers things like deaf people’s brains still perceiving sound, even if they don’t. It was half interesting half way over my head. I can’t imagine what the few people in my class who haven’t ever taken a psychology course think about all this totally new psychological information. At least I have the small advantage of knowing what things like PTSD mean (posttraumatic stress disorder) and what cognitive-behavioral therapy involves (changing a person’s behavior by changing their views).

After the lecture part of the class we had the seminar, which was a recorded tv show about a guy who used all the tricks mediums use in séances to convince people they’re telling the truth. We had to look objectively at what we was doing and see if there was anything to what he was saying, which was interesting. He had me going for a bit, but then we stopped to dissect the tricks and it turned out he was just very clever.

After that I went up to some of the people in my class and asked them what they were doing after class. It turned out that all of them are in the same program and they all live in the second dorm they have the international students stay at, which is further from campus but has nicer rooms. They said they wanted to get lunch so I went with them and we ate at this sandwich place where I had a roast beef melt. Super good.

Then I was on Oxford street, the biggest shopping street in London, with four girls (of course they were all girls, it’s me after all), so we went into a bunch of stores that had no guy clothes at all. There was Top Shop (which I have never heard of but is super popular with those who have), but I’m used to shopping with girls, so it was no bad thing.

My psyc friends are all in the same program, which isn’t mine, and they were going to the tower of London that afternoon, and I wasn’t going to the London Eye (the giant ferris-wheel on the Thames [pronounced the Tems]) so I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I had the bright idea to walk the distance from the Tower to the Eye. It turned out to be one of the longest walks of my life. And I was wearing my leather shoes (not the boots thank goodness!) so that didn’t make things much better, even though I have new Dr. Shoals in them. I walked and walked and walked for a little over two hours. With my school bag. In the very uncharacteristically warm London summer we’re having. I did cross the Millennium Bridge, the one destroyed in the Half-Blood Prince movie, which was a lot of fun. I want to go back there and have someone take a picture of me holding on for dear life.

I did see lots of interesting things on the South bank though. There were a lot of street performers and vendors selling random things. I passed by the Globe where I will be seeing Henry VIII later this trip, and all sorts of people. I think I heard Americans more than anyone else, but maybe that’s because Americans are louder than everyone else.



So I got to the Eye and it was around 4:00. That meant I still had two hours to kill before I met the Westminster group at 6:00. So I went back across the river towards Parliament and found some steps to sit on, as I didn’t feel like walking anymore to find a park. I read my school book for an hour and a half, but don’t think I got that much done, because I was too busy looking at all the people around me. I was sitting near the entrance to a boat tour queue (line), which had all kinds of tourist loading onto it. There were also some very interesting Brits running little stands across from me, yelling out deals in cheep theater tickets, river boat tours, and ice cream. There was also an occasional pigeon that would come close to me, and I didn’t want to move because I wanted to see just how close they would come to me, which turned out to be quite close. The rats with wings have no fear, but you have nothing to worry about unless there is bread in your immediate area, which fortunately in my case, there wasn’t.

I read and listened to Big Ben chime every 15 minutes. Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: The clock tower we all know as Big Ben is not actually called Big Ben. That’s the name of the biggest bell inside the tower, so people say Big Ben is chiming, but they mean the bell. It is actually called the Clock Tower of Westminster, but who has time to say all that?

Finally it was time to meet my group. I walked back across the bridge, met up with my friends, worked through some confusion where I was not on the list of people who were participating but it turned out I was on another list that was more accurate, and got in line for the London Eye. The Eye is over 400 ft tall and when you get to the top you can see over all of London. It’s like going up in the Eiffel Tower (which I have done), but it’s still not as tall. We got into our compartment with, I think, too many other people, and proceeded to take a million pictures of London. It was really cool being able to look out all over everything. I kind of unnerves me that there were no mountains to be seen. Growing up in the mountains, I like to see at least a little grey hill in the distance, but it was all just flat city. But no matter.



We got off the Eye and started our pub walk along the south bank. I thought this was going to be a short little walk, but no it turned out to be the EXACT same walk I just took!! Another million and a half miles, just in the opposite direction. We went to several pubs along the south bank of the river and ended at one that was very close to London Bridge, which is very close to where I started my walk that afternoon. For those of you, like me, who were confused about this, let me put you straight so you, unlike me, won’t have to be embarrassed when you make the mistake: London Bridge is not the pretty bridge with the two blue towers and all the gold. That’s Tower Bridge. It’s right next to the Tower of London. London Bridge is a very boring concrete bridge a little further down from there. Glad I could clear this up for you.

But choosing to stop at this pub turned out to be a bit of a mistake. It was super busy in there and we’re just poor Americans who don’t know how pubs work. Apparently if you want to order food, you have to have a table first, else the servers will be confused, even though they give you a number to put on your table. Also, this, and several other pubs, aren’t used to patrons coming in and paying separately. They all just have one bill and they through in the pounds to cover it. So we all come into this very busy pub and start to try to order some food. But we didn’t have a table, so the waitress started getting all angry at us. So we found a table, and I ordered a coke. While the waitress was getting my coke, another one came up and asked me what I wanted. I said I was getting a coke, so she went off and started making me one. The first came back with the coke and asked me what I wanted to eat. I told her and she started ringing me up on her register. The second came back with a coke and started ringing me up on her register. I told her the first one had me already, then she really got angry because she had wasted all this time when she could have been getting money from someone else.

So that was all terrible and frustrating. I don’t even remember what I ordered, but it was some kind of fish nuggets with chips. Didn’t sound like that on the menu. So don’t go to the Anchor Pub in London. They’re mean there.

We had to wait so long on some of our friend’s food that the kitchen in the pub closed before they could cook it. At least the chef came out and apologized and gave her her money back, but that didn’t fix the problem that she was hungry. But she’s really nice anyway, so she didn’t complain about it. We got on the tube at 10:30, when most of the transport in London is shut down, and finally got back to the dorm. My feet and legs were just killing me, but it had still been a good day despite the bad parts.

British word of the day: Jumper = a sweater