1 Feb

Ugh, I really don’t like getting fewer than six hours of sleep, but alas. I did have some hot chocolate at breakfast though which was pretty good and warmed me up nicely. I finally decided to cave and just buy the text for my 1^st WW Lit class because I was having trouble finding all the poetry online. It took me a while to find the book and I just made it to class on time.

The lecture was quite boring though I managed to take some good notes. From there it was straight to Sociolinguistics, which is probably my most fun class. The professor is just so funny. We talked about social variation today and how in order to define the dialect of an area you have to look at many factors and look at people beyond the traditional NORM = Non-mobile, older, rural male. At one point we talked about glottal stops and how different pronounce the word “got.” We Americans don’t use the glottal stop (which is kind of like a silent “t,” it’s like saying “got” but dropping the “t”) while nearly all the Brits do. There are only two Americans and one other non-Brit in the class, so we become the exception to the rule. There was a bit where we briefly looked at other phonological differences like the pronunciation of “cot” and “caught.” I pronounce both the same way, while the other American who is from New York (not the city though, that would be fun) distinguishes between the two. This difference seemed to please the professor quite a bit and I’m glad that we’re from different parts of the States for the sake of this class. We also got our mid-semester assignments today and it looks fairly straightforward. That’s right: mid-semester. I’m technically 1/3 the way through with my classes and it’s only the first week of February! Hooray! It’s a little hard to believe that my classes will only meet about 7 more times this semester…

After class I grabbed a sandwich for lunch and headed north to Baker Street in search of a Spanish Rail office. The office was a little baffling with no sign and a locked door, so I left that place in search of the official Spanish Tourism Office. My luck was much better there. I had to first contact them through intercom and though I didn’t have the requisite appointment, they let me in anyway. The door was still code-locked and when my repeated attempts at opening it didn’t work, a well-dressed guy standing nearby took pity on me and let me in. I met a couple of older men who spoke good English though one sounded kind of Spanish on the way up the elevator. Turns out they were also going to the office though they had an appointment with one of the officials there. I was helped there by a friendly man who gave me tons of brochures and maps on the cities we’ll be visiting. He was immensely helpful, answered all my questions patiently and thoroughly, and gave me some tips on visiting certain sites. I needed a bag to carry all my goodies home.

At the bus stop, I saw a gentleman with an elaborately curled moustache that you just don’t see anymore. You know what I’m talking about; they curl out several centimeters away from the mouth. I thought it was great and just so traditionally British. What was weird though is I caught a bus before he did, and after some time on the bus, I briefly thought back on how he looked when suddenly I saw him outside the window! It was a strange coincidence. I got home around 4:15 and just relaxed until dinner.

Dinner was entertaining as always and the food was pretty good. The first thing I did after getting back to the dorm after dinner was collect my laundry and take care of it. I figure I can do two loads a month which will cost me about £3.20 total. It’s far more than I’d like to pay, but I’d rather wear clean clothes, you know? Drying them was a bit of an adventure since they were all damp coming out of the dryer (it was a huge load and I only had it drying for 32 minutes because I’m cheap). I hung clothes all around my room and rotated them on the radiator for hours which worked really well, except my window started fogging up with all the moisture so I had to crack it open a bit. My room smelled a little like a laundromat for the rest of the night. It was a little painstaking but pretty funny. After and rather during laundry I really didn’t do much; I read a lot for my Court Cultures class, then talked online with my parents for a bit before going to sleep.