Been Missin' Ya. Miss Kissin' Ya...

Yesterday was the first day of classes.  I took a lovely 30 minute walk over to campus to be there for my 10am American Culture and Society: 1900-1945 course in room 1B04.  Their numbering systems for rooms is kookoo for coco puffs (which, over here, has a monkey as its mascot?) and that means 1st Basement Room 04.  Weird, right?  Anyway, that class was insane.  Not insane as in it was amazingly awesome, but insane as in I wrote 5.5 pages of solid notes in a 1 hour lecture.  Apparently, when they say "lecture" around here, they are not playing around.  So, my professor, who spent the summer working on a collection of essays about Oprah Winfrey, basically sat next to her laptop the whole time reading from her notes and the powerpoint.  Anytime she paused students shook their writing hands.  It was interesting to note the self-segregation in the classroom.  All the Americans were next to each other and most of the British students sat squashed together in the front row, exclaiming about how they were in a "real classroom" now.  Mind you, I had thought the room a downgrade from what I'm used to.  Because it was in the basement, there were no windows.  The walls were cinderblocks painted white, and the desks were small chairs, like a movie theatre but without arm separators and with a wooden plank drawn across as a writing surface.  Thumbs down.  Anyway, lecture was fine.  We then went into seminar, which was much more like what I'm used to class being; more of a discussion with the professor pointing out important themes.  Both were over by twelve.  

People have been asking me about wardrobe over here (not really that many--just Amy).  Anyway, classwise, people dress the same.  I would even say I was more dressed up for class than my professor who was wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and a black zip up hoodie.  Students(and young folk, in general) are more adventurous with clothing, I think.  Sometimes it seems that they sacrifice flattering clothes in favor of trends.  But, on the whole, they are willing to take chances with prints in a way that I haven't really seen in America.  Anyway, the idea that British students dress up more for classes would be, as far as I can tell, false.

After class, I walked down Whitehall to buy some postcards on the cheap and then crossed Westminster Bridge and walked home Bankside, which means I was walking along the Thames.  I was really craving a warm panini and a cookie for some reason, so I decided I would stop into a restaurant on the way to the halls.  Well, I saw a pub that had a good-lookin' brie and mango chutney sandwich so I stepped inside and sat down.  Well, I didn't know where to order and I couldn't really tell at the time that it was a pub so I was kind of waiting for someone to come to me.  For those of you who don't know, at English pubs, you're supposed to go up and place your order and then they'll bring it to you at your table.  Well, I failed so I quietly got up and walked outside again.  I kept walking and thought I'd go to Caffè Nero, which is this kind of Starbucks-y place with sandwiches and stuff only the line was so long, and I didn't see any paninis.  So, I ended up going to Pret-a-Manger, which is basically the exact same as Caffè Nero.  I got a falafel wrap and a piece of rectangular chocolate cake.  For Wash U peeps, it was Center Court ripoff sized, but CC cake is better.

I stopped at the post office to get stamps for the postcards, then came home and ate while reading.  I later checked my e-mail and saw that there were some free screenings I could attend, so around 4:30 I went back out to return to campus to see a screening of Bette Davis' The Letter (1940) with the score composed by Max Steiner, of course.  I wanted especially to go to this screening because it was for the class I wanted to take while I was here but couldn't: Music and Film.  (I've already taken History of the Film Score.)  Anyway, I doubly wanted to go when I found out that this course is being taught by Richard Dyer who wrote a book I read for my Race and Ethnicity on American Television course in freshman year called White.  Anyway, the movie was O-kay.  I think that I liked Dark Victory and some of her others better--I can say this because I went to the Bette Davis film festival at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) at the beginning of the summer.  I did enjoy seeing, however, that Herbert Marshall, from Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble In Paradise (1932) that I watched and wrote a paper on in History of American Cinema was in the film.

I came back to the halls and ate some grapes and cheese before heading over to Guy's Bar with some of my flatmates to see some free comedy.  We arrived at 8:05 for an 8:00 show, so we obviously didn't get any seats.  It would have been okay except the show didn't start until 8:45 at the earliest.  The first comedienne did musical comedy by accompanying herself with a ukelele.  She was okay, but not my favorite (though her ability to turn Angela Lansbury and Disney's classic "Beauty and the Beast" song into "Beauty and Her Yeast" was relatively impressive).  The guy who went on after had his moments, but his delivery was off, and you could tell he was horribly nervous.  After a fifteen minute break, the headliner came on and he was pretty funny, I thought.  Neil, Vicky, and Mary left shortly into his act but Laura America and I stayed on.  After about five minutes, though, I could see her face in a twist because she wasn't into it, so I took one for the team and said we should go.  

I made myself some tea because my heater isn't on yet.  (Not until the winter, though I'm not really sure when that starts.)  I sat in the kitchen with Jen and Adam, who had also gone to the show but who had gone early and gotten seats, chewin' the fat for a while.  Jen and I ended up talking about Obama/McCain (since Laura America is a staunch McCain/Palin supporter--though I didn't know they existed and was shocked, and I am clearly not), British politics, driving laws, and lowering the American drinking age to 18.  Then we each went to bed.  She and Adam are, thus far, my faves.  

For some reason I have no classes on Tuesdays, so I was making a plan to go to Windsor, but that fell through when I saw it was supposed to rain today.  (Besides, Adam--a Windsorian--wasn't really making it seem like it'd be the greatest ever.  But I think I'll go in a week or two anyway.)  So I did laundry this morning, which felt good since I was out of socks, which was screwing up my mojo.  In case you didn't know, I like to wear crazy socks: argyles, Christmas, flamingos, etc.  Sadly, though, the machine doesn't give change and I thought that if it costs 20p I'd be able to put in two 10p pieces and make it work.  False.  It only accepts 20p, 50p, £1 or £2 pieces.  So I ended up losing 20p today, which was bollocks.  OH well. 

Afterwards, I had some spicy lentil soup before Vicky and I decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington.  We were supposed to go on Sunday but I had a panic attack about not having a book for class the next day and I had reading to do.  Plus I just failed.  Anyway, that museum was ridiculous.  SO much to look at that after about 3.5 hours of looking around we decided we'd have to come back another day to see the rest.  It has a ridiculous amount of things to look at.  We started one the 4th floor and had plans to work our way down.  The format of many of those rooms was interesting in that they often recreated rooms (including the ceiling!) 

so that you could almost feel what it was like to have lived there.  They've got wool paintings of Napoleon, musical instruments, early advertising posters, the works!  I was really excited to see some of the stuff they had for Gilbert & Sullivan.  My pops was in the Mikado when they did it at his high school, so I took pictures of the things they had 

that were associated with it.  They had set designs, ads, costume designs and the whole shebang in the section about how the English were in love with Japan for a while when Gilbert and Sullivan were at work.  I even listened to "If You Want to Know Who We Are;" it was all too legit.  Too legit to quit. (This is my favorite number from the show, if you wanted to know.  And you did.)  Anyway, at one point, Vicky and I were walking through one of the sculpture sections on this bridge bit 

and if you looked over the railing, it was totally reminiscent of the end of Citizen Kane.  Apparently, at the V&A they make copies of original statues all the time.  They were originally done because travel was difficult, but now they are the lasting models of originals that have been lost or damaged.  It was really cool to see all this stuff.  In the music room they had harps designed by Marie Antoinette's people!  Her People!  Also, this is really random, but there was this guy, Walpole, who was one of the first people to collect stained glass.  So he paid some Italian guy to go around the continent collecting it for him.  How baller is that?  He wanted to collect something, so he paid someone 

to do it for him.  Anyways, before ended our three hour tour we wanted to be sure to get to the fashion area where they had clothes from the 1730s and onward.  Check out the kicks they rocked 1730-40 style!  Vicky and I agreed that the shoes didn't look like they were meant to be worn outside.  Terribly unsturdy things, you know.  The real reason we went to the exhibit, though, was to see the Diana Ross and the Supremes Exhibit (as told by Mary Wilson) we had heard while in the musical instruments room, which is just above the fashion gallery.  Sadly, though we couldn't figure out how to 

get inside, but the exhibit goes until 19 October.  So, fear not, blogulators, she will be "comin' to see about you" before you know it.  I was going to put up some pictures from that exhibit, but why not do it when I've got more than two that are merely from the outside?  Anyway, in the fashion exhibit, I am terribly disappointed to say that they had a pink terrycloth Juice Couture sweatsuit.  C'est dégueulasse.   They also had Franco Moschino's "little black dress."  What a cheeky take, eh?  

Oh?  About the rain?  Well, it didn't rain at all until five minutes before Vicky and I left the halls.  It poured for like 2 minutes and then stopped.  This weather is silly!  Tomorrow brings my first film class--Huzzah!