So tonight we went to Imperial College Union Pub. You heard me right; they have a pub on their campus, and I may or may not be writing this post a little bit intoxicated. The pub was in the basement of a academic building, so imagine having a bar with a dance floor in the bottom of Lowell Thomas. Drinks were about half price from regular London prices and people were finally around our age; I think we finally found our niche for a chill night or a pregame. The music sounded like someone was scrolling through their American ipod so we were completely ok with listening to Rhianna, the Charlies Angles soundtrack, Pitbull, and some American house techno that the Brits seemed to eat up. While we were there, I managed to see Liz Shawn AND Fiona O'Connell; what is the chance of me running into two Long Island natives in the same pub in London? I mean, I guess if they're studing abroad we're kind of told where to go for cheap drinks and friendly Brits, but still.
As far as classes go, yesterday I had my first British life and culture class with the exclusive Marist crew. Our professor is a doctorate of English but somehow ended up doing British communications. The class seems very interesting and we're going to be taking a lot of field trips around London to be integrated into the 'Britishness'. This 'Britishness' is a term he coined that he wants us to start thinking about, assessing and creating our own thoughts and ideas about. BUT, he also expressed that the Brits can't even define what Britishness is. Now, I can be really rude from what I have obversed so far about my own excursions. Let's take my grocery shopping to Whole foods today. It seems in my past week in London that the Brits do things a lot more independantly than Americans do: they walk down the street by themselves, they bike ride everywhere, they don't feel the need to blow their car horn every minute to express their anger (I've actually only heard ONE car horn since I've been here, and the car was actually getting cut off. ONE. The streets are so quiet. And people drive sooo slowly. The bike riders bike faster than the cars sometimes). Another thing I've observed is that the Brits are very very observed. When you're walking down the street for example: If I'm walking down the street in NYC, if I pass someone, I look them dircetly in the eye, no matter what. This makes me aware of who is around me, let's me see who is paying attention. I've noticed that people deliberately look away from you in London. They don't want to know you're looking at them. They are very to themselves and reserved. All of this is relating back to the term Britishness, which I'm sure well go more in depth with in our next class. The government controls a lot more than they do in America and I'm very curious to see how its affecting the people.
In my Islam class, I already got into an argument with a girl...whoops. We were talking about how the US has an influence as a world superpower over cultural acceptance in Islam. I clearly had different views than her stating that US is no longer is world superpower and she debated that economics shouldn't play a role in cultural acceptance. Uh, well as a cultural melting pot don't you think it's just a little important that we recgonize that the US isn't a world superpower so we can educate people about Islam so the media doesn't give skewed views about the religion? Isn't that the point of the class? I clearly didn't say any of that though, didn't wanting to sound like a bitch in the first class. Whatever. We're going to the V&A museum to look at Islamic Art and fashion and I'm so excited learn about Islam.
And finally my music class. My professor rocks. She has awesome field trips lined up for us. Our first one is next Wednesday; we're going to an orchestra concert at around 10pm at a concert hall geared towards people in the younger years. Drinks will be served. You can sit right up by the players. Fuck yeah. She's also one who got her PhD in something and seems to be doing something completely different. There seems to be a pattern. I think we have about 4-5 field trips lined up in the class.
Tomorrow we have the FIE welcome reception where the first 2 drinks are free and there are raffles. Anyway, seeing as it's barely midnight here,I'm boarding drunk, and Yasins passed out lisenting to Beyonce on her bed and can't remind me of exciting things to write about...I probably forgot some important things I wanted to write about so I'll write about it in my next post.
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