On Thursday I met Maddy for lunch, the London Eye, and the Imperial War Museum. The London Eye was fun, but not as impressive as I'd hoped. I did get a very good view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, but the sun was starting behind them so I'm not sure how well the pictures I took will turn out.
The Imperial War Museum was interesting, but I could only stay there for about an hour because I still had to get to class. That night we had another show, The White Guard.
Awesome play. It's about this family of Russians in the Ukraine at the very end of World War I and in the middle of the Russian Revolution, and it had some really amazing sets and wonderful characters and a great story and set of themes. I loved it, so now it and Billy Elliot are my favorite things I've seen so far.
On Friday we went to Stonehenge and Bath. We got a coach and a tour guide and stopped at Stonehenge for an hour, where it started raining. I think it was raining the last time I was at Stonehenge as well. It was pretty cool, but I have been there before and it hasn't really changed much.
From there we went to Bath, which I enjoyed. It was still raining, and in fact rained the entire time, but I still enjoyed it. Our tour guide took us on a walking tour of Bath, showing us some of the main streets, the river Avon (which I hadn't realized went through Bath at all), the Bath Circus and the Royal Crescent with their impressive architecture, and then Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths. Bath Abbey had some absolutely gorgeous stained glass windows, and at the Roman Baths we were given audio guides that I found out today were narrated by my theatre teacher.
I enjoyed the Roman Baths, mostly for the omgRomans! factor. After we were done there, we had about an hour of free time, so Sarah and I went to the Jane Austen Centre. I wish we'd had more free time, because I enjoyed the mini-Jane Austen museum, but the Centre also had a tea room that advertised tea with Mr. Darcy, and I would have liked to do that.
We left Bath at about four for a three hour coach trip back to London, getting home in time for dinner. Some people stayed in Bath an extra day, but I decided not to, because I had three papers due this week and I wanted to use the weekend to write them. I did get two done and turned in already, and the third isn't due until Friday so I was going to do it tonight and tomorrow.
I had a bit of a weird experience (I'm not sure what to call it) with the papers, though. When I write papers, I like to take a draft to my teachers for their feedback, which I can then use to revise the paper and turn in an improved final draft. I'd intended to do that with these, but when I asked Martin if he'd be willing, he seemed very confused at the concept. He said he normally looked at student summaries of what their papers were about so he could tell them if they were on the right track or not, but looking at a complete draft was too much like marking it, and he would prefer I do the summary. I did, and he said my paper should be fine based on that, but I'm a bit eh. We don't have a writing center here, so my only source of feedback on a rough draft is my teachers (I don't want to ask fellow students, who are busy enough, this isn't their job, and most of them are not politics students, but my teacher (who is also the program director) said he doesn't really do things like that. I did do another read-through and make a few revisions before turning what I had in, but if I don't get as good a grade as I'd like, for the next assignment I might ask him to look at it anyway, even if it's not what he usually does. It's really an important part of the writing process for me, and has resulted in the great improvement of many of my drafts, and is really something I sort of took for granted at UPS, since the teachers there encourage that sort of thing. But it's not like I've never turned in a paper cold, so I suppose we'll just see how this goes.
This weekend I also finished Great Expectations! Finally! I "read" it in high school, which means I read the first part, did a bit of skimming of the rest with relying on SparkNotes, and read the final pages. This is partly because I didn't like the first part and partly because that week was when I was stage crew for 42nd Street and I was busy enough, but I still did fine on the test we had on it. This time I actually read the entire thing, and liked it somewhat better. I still don't precisely like it, but it wasn't as bad as I'd remembered, and I enjoyed it more once Pip because less of a little snot. I still didn't find it all that funny, though. There were a few moments where I cracked a smile, but really, I find Dickens's style more annoying than amusing.
Moving on! Monday night we saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and I was like finally! a playwright I recognize! Apart from the Shakespeare I've seen, I haven't heard of any of the people who have written the plays I've seen, but of course I've heard of Tennessee Williams, and have even read one of his other plays (A Streetcar Named Desire). I was rather eh about this play, though. There were things I really appreciated, like the character of Brick and the actor playing him, some of the really great lines, and James Earl Jones, but there were things I rather didn't appreciate, like how the first two acts had mostly two people, only one of whom did much talking. I found it sort of hard to pay attention with more monologue than dialogue. Still, it was all right. Not my favorite, but not my least favorite either.
Tomorrow we're going to the Houses of Parliament! To watch a debate! And it's going to be Budget Day, so the different parties are totally going to be all over each other about the budget!
British politics is hilarious. This is going to be so awesome.
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