Shanah Tovah!

Happy New Year! We celebrated Rosh Hashanah tonight with a yummy dinner cooked by Dalila, complete with round challah, apples, honey, and good friends. It was so nice to have a real meal cooked in her huge Goldsmith's kitchen. Goldsmith's is another London university that Penn kids can go to - it's a little farther south of the city (like a 45 min bus ride from us at UCL) but has its own neighborhood charm going on. Think Market Street between 40th and 43rd, without the liquor stores and with better architecture.

Saturday was another day at Portobello Road, and this time we had traditional bangers (sausage) and mash at S & M Cafe, under the overpass on Portobello. We discovered even more vintage clothing and shoes and bags and jewelry - it really is an amazing market. Saturday night we walked down to the hopping Leicester Square and had expensive ice cream at an outdoor cafe. It was worth it for the people watching, and we figured we enjoyed the ice cream way more than going to a pub and having 1.5 pints of beer, right?

Sami and me on the top of the double decker bus on the way back from Portobello. A tip: DON'T take the bus on Saturday going down Oxford Street. It took forever and a day.

This is from Friday but I forgot to put it up. This is me straddling the Prime Meridian! Weird angle so my legs look odd... but you get the idea.

A model of an Evergreen brand cargo ship at the National Maritime Museum. Thought of Evergreen Trucking ;)

Sunday we relaxed in Regent's Park and played cards, of course. The park was packed with people reading and playing frisbee and canoodling on the grass - we are so lucky to have it right near our campus! I wish the weather would stay like this forever - low 60s and sunny during the day, and around 48-50 at night. It really is perfect, and so easy to dress comfortably for the weather. I've even been good about jogging every other day or so. The British kids on our hall make fun of us for jogging which is SO weird. It's called exercise! They're like, why don't you just go to the pub or something? (Just try to say that in a British accent - it's so much better). They don't understand why we actually want to work out. We have become pretty friendly with a few kids on the hall, and are learning some more British lingo. Freshmen are freshers, gash is a really bad derogatory word for the female genitalia that you should never say, wanker is still wanker (and awesome), "give me a shot" means like, "hit me up on the celly yo" or something... and then the usual ones like holiday for vacation, lift for elevator, takeaway for takeout. And the 1st floor is the Ground Floor here, and our 2nd floor is their 1st floor, and so on. When I think of more I'll impart my wisdom, but that's all I can remember for now.

Today was the first day of class, too - how could I forget! Brandon and I went to the Bartlett office an hour before our first requested class was supposed to start, because for the past week we had received NO emails from the office telling us which classes we got into, or where the class would be held. Honestly, what is the administrator doing if it's not that? We went and she was like, oh, yes, I was going to email you later today. That would help a TON... Anyway she told us where the classes were and we were on our way.

Our first class was Urban Form and Formation. It's an elective for the Urban Planning/Architectural Studies kids here (the way it works in the UK is less liberal arts and way more specialized - you take almost every class in your department from your first year on, and you really only take electives within your own department. very different - i like the way we do it at home much better!) and there were about 25 people in the class. The professor was this younger Irish guy who was very nervous and had shaky hands the whole time. He had longish hair and a beard and reminded me of someone from the Harry Potter movie -- like a really friendly Professor Snape, maybe? Anyway, he was super nice and excited about the class, especially this one book that the whole course is based on. There are four assignments for the class, spaced through the semester, and it's pretty much impossible not to get an A (I think), seeing as an A here is anywhere from 70% to 100%. We'll see what I'm saying come finals. The class should be interesting - a lot about public space and, duh, urban form... similar to what you'd see in an URBS class at Penn about the built environment/public space.

Our second class was a bit bigger, with about 35 people. It's a 3rd year requirement class, so very different tone than the other. It's called Urban and Environmental Politics. The teacher is this middle-aged Asian woman with okay English that you definitely have to get used to listening to. She took about 15 minutes figuring out the powerpoint projector after being 10 minutes late to class... then proceeded to explain every single detail of our two assessments for the course. Literally, she read exactly what was on our handout! So weird. She seems to like class participation, though, so that should make things entertaining. We had to split up into groups for the first assignment (not due until December 8th, but apparently she thought we should form groups TODAY), and we read an article about the Heathrow expansion controversy in our groups. We were assigned one side of the argument (residents, business, gov't, environ groups, etc.) and had to come up with some ideas/tenents of the argument. I was writing them down for our group and of course when it came time to present, I was the one who had to go up to talk about it. Little did I know, I was getting myself into a 30 minute panel/role playing debate thing in front of the whole class with five other people! It actually turned out to be fine and for some reason I wasn't the slightest bit nervous about it. I and two other guys were the clear actors of the group and basically entertained the class (or at least I thought so) with our sleazy arguments and sweet-talking. Then the prof switched our roles and we jumped right into our new arguments. It was pretty funny and much better than listening to her lecture... at least I didn't feel like I was falling asleep. Anyway, what an interesting way to start the first class! And now everyone knows me, haha.

Starting class is nice - I feel like I'm settling in much more to a routine of being in SCHOOL and don't feel weird for not going out at night! More class tomorrow - field trip for Art History! Sorry there aren't more pictures... I think there is a picture of our Rosh Hashanah feast somewhere that I will have to put up.