18 Jan

Rolled out of bed oh so reluctantly at 8 this morning and proceeded to get ready surprisingly quickly. Finding out you’re about 10 minutes late helps speed the process. Liane joined me at breakfast and afterwards she headed to the bus station while I walked over to the train station. The trains spoil me; I can get to the Strand Campus in just over 15 minutes versus at least 25 on the bus. I’m paranoid about making trains on time so I was there much earlier than necessary. A bunch of other JYAs showed up minutes later including Katie, Gregg, Tom, and Margaret. Katie had a Jewish class at Guy’s so she left us at Elephant and Castle (I love the name of that stop) while the rest of us continued across the bridge to London Blackfriars. The view from our bridge is not as impressive as the one from Waterloo, though you can see Tower Bridge quite clearly (though today the air was rather misty). A short hop on the Tube later we were at our campus. I went to my first 1^st World War Literature class.

I found out Brooke, another JYA at KCH, was in my class and chatted with her for a bit before we got started. The professor was rather dull and though he seems to know his material quite well, he’s anything but an inspiring lecturer. I also didn’t like how though he introduced the course, he didn’t introduce himself. I wish professors would make it a point to introduce themselves to their students. Anyway, the remaining minutes of the hour passed slowly and finally it was time to go to Sociolinguistics.

Through some scheduling fluke, we were assigned the wrong room and thus arrived nearly 7 minutes late to the class after stumbling about the building for a bit and popping into a couple of wrong classrooms. The professor’s name is Devyani Sharma and though clearly Indian, her accent is mostly British (though not as British as some of the other Indian’s I’ve heard). She seems pretty nice and pretty found of handouts as well. I felt grateful that I’d taken an introductory linguistics class before this because she jumped right in with some of the terminology we learned. The course today was mostly an overview of what we’ll be covering in the term (like my first class) and it looks like it’ll be fun.

She asked at one point if any of us were not from London or the UK and several of us raised our hands. By chance I ended up near the front of the classroom so she called on me to tell the class where I was from. I just said America, and more specifically North Carolina. She said, “Oh good, from the South,” and I thought great, she’ll expect a southern accent when I clearly don’t have one. At one point she talked about which regions of England pronounce the “r” in words like “far” and “cart” and she asked me to say it. I said it with the “r” although I’m not sure if everyone in the South does. She showed us a map of England that delineated which regions kept the “r” and which parts dropped it. Apparently, the dropped “r” is a newer form of pronunciation than keeping it, also known as the rhotic “r” which I thought was interesting. I’m sure Armitage would just see that as confirmation that the English are just lazy when it comes to speaking English. The class went by rather quickly since she’s a fast talker and we covered quite a bit for just 40 minutes. I think the some of the phonetics of the class might drive me crazy like they did in Ling 30A, but overall I think the class will be fun. At the very least, I know I’ll be learning something which is more than I can say for several of the other JYAs I’ve talked to. I guess that too many of them signed up for introductory classes, which are equivalent to our sophomore level classes. Oh well, too bad for them.

After Sociolinguistics it was back downstairs for another hour of 1^st WW lit, this time in seminar form. The professor was almost equally dull in seminar though it looks like there are some competent English scholars in the class, so the discussions should get fairly interesting.

After the seminar, I grabbed lunch at the Terazza where I ran into a bunch of JYAs on their way out. They finished with class at 12 while I finished at 1 so it looks like lunch will be a little tough to coordinate on Wednesdays. Eh, that’s fine.

From lunch I walked up to Covent Garden (I love how it’s not even a ten minute walk from my campus!) and looked around for a Dr. Martin’s store. After some wandering around I found one and while they had a pair of neat looking shoes for £50, I could not bring myself to buy them because a) I doubt they had them in my size and b) they were made of cloth and not leather. A pair of Dr. Martin’s boots must be made of leather to be authentic. I was pleased to see that the prices at least were fairly reasonable, if the selection was less than exemplary. I’m looking for some really funky designs since I already have a pair of black ones, so if anyone spies something cool (please, not pink or red or yellow) and shiny, please let me know. After that I wandered around Covent Garden some more until I stumbled upon a mini mall in the middle of it. On the ground floor I spied this little café stand that was selling stuff like smoothies, coffee, tea, all fair trade and organic stuff. My lunch was a pathetic little sandwich so I was hunkering for something more. When I saw how much they were promoting Innocent^® smoothies, I just had to buy something from them (besides, they’re totally fair trade, so I know I’m contributing to something good). I caved in and bought a £2.50 chocolate milkshake that was really good; not terribly sweet but chocolaty and quite refreshing. I also saw a poster in which Colin Firth allowed (fair trade) coffee to be poured all over him. It was funny.

With my delicious (and absurdly expensive, I know) drink in hand, I walked back out onto the streets and just wandered some more before heading to the Tube station and catching a train to Piccadilly, from which I connected to Elephant and Castle. At that station, it was a simple matter of waiting some minutes for a bus, and by 16.00 I was home. I considered hanging around for a bit to wait for sunset, but the sky was too overcast to hope for a good show. I checked mail when I got back and discovered a letter with a “Royal Mail” stamp and my name on it. Hooray! I had sent off for my student Oyster photocard about a week back and it had finally arrived. This little card means I can get a 30% discount on Oyster travelcards which, to put it mildly, is simply brilliant. The other JYAs came back about 10 minutes later and we made plans for dinner at six. As I was checking my bank account statement, I noticed a second deposit had been made yesterday in the amount of $500 from UNC. I was puzzled at this development since I had already received my refund check and wasn’t expecting anything else. Apparently, I had miscalculated how much I’d be getting back, so this deposit was legitimate. Student Oyster+ “And then I found FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS” really made my afternoon swell.

Dinner, however, was not as amusing: mushroom stroganoff? I don’t know what a stroganoff is! It was probably the worst vegetarian dish they’ve served so far so I contented myself with some bread, pasta, and a banana. The banana was good.

Post-dinner: Lainey decided that she simply had to take care of her laundry before going out to Sainsbury’s, so sure enough she packed all of her clothes into her bright red carry-on suitcase and prepared to haul it down the corridors to the laundry room. She had forgotten to bring a laundry bag (I fortunately remembered mine) and the thoughtof her dragging her bag down was just too funny to Gregg and I so I told her I would be taking pictures. Gregg and I waited outside our doors, cameras poised. I showed off Saket’s camera and in the zoom contest it beat his. His is smaller and easier to carry around, but I still think Saket’s camera is far superior. Lainey finally showed, luggage in hand, and we immediately started snapping pictures. Deciding to make the most of the scene, Lainey kindly posed for us:

She’s such a good sport.

That was pretty much the sum of the excitement for the evening (at least for me; I was still feeling a little sick so I declined an invitation by Kate to go to the bar). Yes, it’s the little things that really matter. I just kind of puttered around the room for the rest of the evening and turned in around 1.