My homecoming

I could hardly believe that it's been 10 days since my last blog entry. Wow, time goes by really really really quickly. This past week has been insane, not the least because tract came up Wednesday.
This recap I'm about to give is gonna be brief because I have lots and lots of work to do in these next two weeks before I leave. Tell me if you think this seems like a fair amount of work for a STUDY ABROAD program: four 2000+ word papers, 2 presentations, and five final exams. That's right. All that due within the next 2 weeks. I'll get it all done but I'm not exactly how. I present the minorities one tomorrow so that's out of the way, and I can spend all afternoon in the library researching for the politics paper. The Irish lit one may be a little difficult due to the fact I haven't read all of the books I was supposed to, but the professor handed out research material, saving us hours doing that on our own in the library. As for the project on Yeats, I need to present that on Thursday so I'll spend my time on Tuesday and Wednesday working on that.
Thursday night we had our thanksgiving feast at our flat. It turned out to be pretty fun. Everyone cooked something, including Tractenberg and my kosher chicken. There was also mashed potatoes, a vegetarian stuffing, and pumpkin, berry, and apple pie for dessert. All delicious.
Friday we went to Cheltenham. I bought two return tickets from megabus.com for 4.50 two weeks ago for Saturday, but we needed to change the date of departure to Friday because there was a party at London met that I had planned to go to with elkind. I call megabus hoping for a smooth change in dates and they tell me they can't change the date. I was peeved, and decided to simply change the dates on the E-mail ticket. Surely noone would care or notice. Of course, Friday morning the scheme didn't work because the routing number had the date in it, so we had to buy national express tickets for 15 quid each. Oy. But at least we had a nice bus with a bathroom and digital clock.
We arrive in Cheltenham to Will's enthusiastic greetings. Having not seen Will in over 2 years, I was first struck by his change in size; he had beefed up a bit. Other than that, he looked pretty much exactly the same. Cheltenham, England is a better town than Cheltenham, PA. No knock against my hometown, but the C in England is an actual town, unlike my suburbian home, with a long shopping promenade, open-air street markets, kitchy pubs, and T.K. Maxx. The people there are really friendly too. Will took us to his house and introduced us to his housemates. We then hit the pubs and in the end we went to AFC, American Fried Chicken, for some grub. I had a starchy veggieburger with shredded lettuce and mayonaise. Yum.
The next morning, after teary fairwells, tract and I headed back to London via megabus.com. This time my forged ticket worked because the driver couldn't figure out how the routing number I presented included the proper dates yet did not show up on his list of routing numbers. So after waiting on hold with the megabus people for around 10 minutes, he just let us on the bus with no questions asked. Our British friends we're at the same time impressed and a little bitter with Tract and my American smugness.
Ok I've spent way more time on this entry than I thought I would. Tract left this morning before I went to my last comedy class of the semester. We watched some goofy british comedian from the 70s with foam pickaxes in his head and 2 sitcoms, fawlty towers and the office. All good.
Now Leo Jaimie Joan, joan's friend and I listened to Howard Stern's interview with Weseley Willis. Gotta hit the books. But fist gotta nap. Boy am I tired!

EHYA Banquette

I just got back from my gig at the European High Yield Association's annual charity ball, and, to say the least, it was a blast. I got this job kind of on a whim. My friends at Ithaca told me about a flyer they saw looking for a few college-aged interns to help run a major corporate function that pays 50 quid, which is around $100, as well as dinner and a cabride home to help out setting up, passing out literature, etc. To be quite honost, it seemed too good to be true. I was only half-right -- it was too good, but it was also quite true! I ended up doing less than half the work I originally expected, and still got paid the same I was told.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into originally. I arrived 4:20, 10 minutes earlier than I was supposed to. I wanted to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible, so I borrowed a tux from the Ithaca program's director Bill and a silver tie from my flatmate Leo. I even wore my brand new SpecSavers glasses to add an extra degree of spiff.
It worked. I even got a positive comment on my hair, something that happens as often as Bush pronounces "nuclear" correctly, white made me giddy.
So allow me to introduce the cast of characters. First, there's Robin Myers, the woman who planned this whole event. She's a perrenially late American with a Sephardic look to her, with shoulder length black hair that waves and flows out in every direction. It would look crazy, but there's enough style to it that it "works."
Second, there was the Toast Master Tony. Describing Tony should be easier than it seems due to his distinctive trademark look, but my American-upbringings handicap hinders my ability to rightfully describe such a describable character. Allow me to explain -- this man is your typical British Toast Master. He was a jolly fat man of average height in his 70s with blinding white hair, a well-crafted goatee and narrow pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. He strutted around the hall like he owned the place in a white tux with white bow-tie, garnished with a red-orange jacket and oversized pocketwatch hanging out of his pocket.
Now, the interns. The first person who I met was Patricia. She kind of reminded me of Alex Mack's character in 10 Things I Hate About You's older sister. Sorry I forget her name, and double sorry for the horribly vague comparison. If you know who I'm talking about then kudos. Anyway she was busy highlighting some xeroxed text and was in no humor to honor my attempts at conversation. Sitting in the green velvet chair to her right was Martin, who I did not even know was an intern until later, because he looked a bit shady and didn't say anything when I asked if anyone had seen Robin.
The next girl to walk in was the other NYU girl (the first was Pat), Laura. Laura was much better. She introduced herself as a misanthrope, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that she was the one who I got along with the best. We had nice conversations about our schools, lives, and London experiences. She was the one who liked my hair. Gnarly.
Charles was next. A taller blonde French kid who is studying at LSE, he was friendly but a bit of a tool. He was more than happy to walk around and help out as much as possible, but he had a funny gelled curl in the front of his head that just screamed "I'm trying too hard." He was also the only one of the 3 guys to actually wear a bowtie.
The last intern to meet was Ophelia, a Chinese post-grad studying for her masters in accounting. I really liked Ophelia. She was the most friendly and the most willing to engage in the everyday small talk that I love. She was also the best at pretending she understood what you're saying.
Ok, those are the characters. Here is what happened.
All in all, it was a giant money-spending orgy, with rich white guys in tuxes making lame jokes and spending thousands of pounds on champaign auctions. Some guy even spent 450 pounds on a power tool!
And all I did, along with the 5 other interns -- all college kids -- was lay out the name tags that were all ready in alphabetical order in alphabetical order, walk around and look busy, help stupid rich people who are too important to figure out on their own where to sit where to sit, look busy, eat dinner and listen to the toastmaster's stupid jokes, look busy, bring out the auction prizes, clap for the auction winners, laugh on the inside that some ignorant bloke spent 2900 pounds on a case of wine, draw raffle tickets, clap for the raffle winners, look busy for a bit longer, then have a glass of wine. It was quite a busy night, believe me. Money well earnt. After a while more of watching these rich white guys in tuxes turn into drunk rich white guys in tuxes, our taxi came and we went home. A night well spent I do say.

Dublin!

This past weekend the London Center took us on a subsidized trip to Dublin. It was an awesome experience. Ireland has loads of history and culture and Dublin is the literally and symbollic center of it all. We arrived Friday afternoon from our Aer Lingus flight and got on the bus to our hotel. I love the Irish accent. And the Irish people -- they are just so friendly. Earlier today before our flight home my friend Iris and I were going through the Irish National Gallery and a small, older Irishman started talking to us about the Vermeer painting we were looking at. He ended up giving us his own guided tour of the museum and then invited us to see his own paintings that he was selling along with all the other artists around Merrion Square. I was glad to finally meet a leprechan.
Anyway, after we checked into our hotel on Friday we headed over to the Temple Bar area of central Dublin for dinner. We settled on a pub called The Auld Dublin and I had the best fish n chips I've had since I've been here. Still wasn't as good as Friendly's but it was mighty close. A quick sidenote on English fish n chips: I know the traditional and most favored way to eat fish and chips is to douse the cod and chips with salt and vinegar. I have given this approach several stabs, and every time it had been just ok. The ketchup and tartar sauce is just better. Bottom line.
Anyway, after dinner it was about time for our musical pub crawl. We followed around 2 professional Dublin musicians from pub to pub and listened to them talk about traditional Irish music, then play their guitar, fiddle, and drum to our delight. Towards the end they explained that in traditional Irish culture there would be pub "lock-downs" and anyone who wanted could come up and play a tune of their own. So, after my flatmate Sari played guitar to a Foofighters song, my friend Jamie and I went up and I sang Jimmy Cliff's River of Babylon while Jamie played guitar. It was quite fun.
I slept in the next morning but got up in time to go on our leader Bill's tour of the Sandycove part of Dublin to see James Joyce's Tower museum. This was where the first scene in Ulysses took place. I was pretty exhausted after that so I hopped a train back to the hotel and took a shower and nap for the next 2 hours. Around 3 I got up to go to the world famous Guinness factory. Guinness pretty much controls Dublin, and for good reason--it's a damn good beer. The factory tour was kinda dissapointing. I was expecting a Hershey's World style tour, where we would hop in a ride car shaped like a Guinness pint glass and ride through the Guinness making process. Instead, it was a self-guided tour that culminated in a "free" pint. There were 7 floors of Guinness related facts and fun, including info on the life of Arthur Guinness and how it's not really made from the water of the Liffy (thank God). There was also a part where we stared at a videoscreen set in a wooden cask showing how a traditional cask is made. Bizarre. We grew tired of the strange self-guided tour and opted to head straight to the Gravity Bar to claim our free Guinness. It was poured perfectly, with a shamrock sketched with the drizzle on the top of the head. And it was quite tasty. I would have bought another but did not feel like spending money yet.
After a quick nap at the hotel we walked to a nearby Irish pub where they were playing traditional Irish music. From then on the party just kept getting better, as I was able to get the authentic Irish experience of friends, Guinness, and music.
This morning I woke up at 8:30 in time for the hotel's Irish breakfast. It was ok, but all I wanted to do afterwards was go back to sleep. We decided it would be best to take a quick nap before heading out to Dublin center one last time. We woke up and watched Ninja Turtles on the TV, then took a train to the city center, where I went to the National Gallery. Probably the most memorable part of the Gallery, besides meeting the Leprachan, was walking through the Yeats Museum. I need to do a project on Irish culture for my Irish lit. class so I figured it would be best to do a powerpoint presentation on early 20th century Irish artists, such as Jack B. Yeats and Lavery. Good stuff.
Even though I doubt I'll ever make it back to Ireland, it definately left a good impression on me. I found many comparisons of Ireland to Israel-- they are both extremely rich in culture, and also had been or are involved in a greusomely bloody religious conflict due, in part, to British imperialism. Because of this I have a newfound appreciation and love for the small country and would highly recommend anyone visitng Europe check it out.

Touring London

Sunday morning I met my two lovely new friends from Brussels at Waterloo station, Julie and Erika. We had quite an adventurous past two days together, as we went all around the city and saw lots of cool tourist attractions and museums that I haven't seen before. After dropping bags off at my flat, we took a bus to Baker street of Sherlock Holmes fame, then walked around the beautiful Reagents Park. We then rode the 82 bus from Baker Street to Buckingham Palace. No changing of the guards, but it was still fun to watch the royal guards march back and forth. They look so silly--I wonder how they can take themselves so seriously. So after hanging out around the Palace we walked to the Royal stables then the horse guards, where the stiff Royal guards sit atop the impossibly patient black horses. We then walked past Downing street to the Parliament building and all the exciting hoopla that goes along with that fun. We went to the Westminster Abby too, but ironically it was closed to the public on Sunday. Interesting to note, there was something filming outside of the Abby...not sure what it was, but we saw a camera crew in the back and people pretending to walk up the street in business clothes and briefcases. So if anyone sees a commercial or movie that takes place outside of Westminster Abby, look for me. I'm probably in it.
Anyway, we walked from there to Victoria station where we hopped a tube to the Tate Modern. It was quite a cool museum, saw lots of Picasso. I especially appreciated the Karel Appel and the rest of the CoBrA (Coppenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) group who try to paint like children. After the Tate we walked across the Millenium bridge to St. Paul's Cathedral, where we sat down for a quick listening of the string orchestra playing Mozart.
After the music we tubed it to Covent Garden and walked to Trafalgar Square. We took some nice pictures on the lions around Nelson's pillar and of Julie trying to climb up onto the lions before bussing through Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus back home. It was a long day, we were all tired, so after making a delicious tuna and pasta dinner, we called it a night.
Today, after class I met up with the girls at Harrod's department store for lunch. They had already ate so we went to a Benjy's across the street and had coffee and sandwiches. We took the tube from there to Victoria, where I talked to STA about my ticket home (just incase you still don't know--I am coming home for a few weeks winterbreak...the 12 of December to be exact) and they worked out their busride to Austria. After Victoria we tubed to Holborn to see the British Museum. I had never before visited the museum, but after 1 visit I fell in love. I spent 2 hours just looking at the ancient Egyptian artifacts dating back over 3000 years. They were quite fascinating. I also spent some time looking at Roman replicas of Greek sculptures from the 2 and 3 centuries BC. It inspired me to do some research on the Jews from those time periods, specifically the effects their flee from Egypt had on its empire.
The museum closed so we decided to head home. We get back, I take a shower and the girls want to make dinner, so they do with my mexican food ingredients. After my shower the rice is mostly cooked and the beans and salsa is ready, so I grate some cheese and we are ready to go. We have delicious bean and cheese burritos and cap off a full day with night at the pub with Pete, Gak, and Schloss' friend's brother who I met in Brugges and is coincidentally living in London, Jonny Ringo. From there we take a night walk to the Marble Arch busstop where the girls have to go to tomorrow morning at 3 AM so they know where to go, pick up some 16p pastries from Sainsbury's, then head home for bed. And that's where they are now, and I'm here, in the living room, recounting my exciting first experiences as a tourguide. G'night.