Recent events in England

Just to confuse your conception time, I'm going to give a quick rundown of my past week, and then hopefully give another post describing my big trip.

This week was the start of final exams at Royal Holloway. These are the tests for which students have apparently been studying for a grand total of 4, now 4+ weeks. I had a final on Wednesday and a final on Friday. I started studying... last weekend? With my computer issues and all, it was late. And for the Friday test I started studying on Thursday. And you know what? The tests didn't seem all that bad. They are only two essay questions and two hours long. And you get to choose the two essays from a choice of 9-10. Maybe I'll be terribly surprised by the grades, but hopefully not.

In other news, I went to Brighton yesterday. Arcadia was leading a "day trip" that I had paid for way back in January when I got to England. So I was up at 6 am to leave my room at 7, catch a train at 7:23, to get into London to catch the Arcadia coach at 9. It was a hassle to say the least. Then the bus left late and the ride took way too long (like over two hours), getting us to Brighton around 11:30. Then we were told we had to be back on the bus to return at 3:50! My reaction... nope. My friend Leah from Royal Holloway had taken a train out to Brighton to meet us and spend the day, so I just ditched Arcadia and bought a train ticket home, letting me stay until I wanted to go home.

In Brighton there is not a ton to do. I got to see the Royal Pavilion because the Arcadia trip included admission there, but I wasn't really into it. After traveling in Europe for a period of time, it grows increasingly difficult to be impressed by senseless displays of wealth. Although it did have a really sweet chandelier. It was a dragon... never mind, you'd have to see it to appreciate it. Unfortunately pictures weren't allowed. Sorry. I guess another thing to note about the Royal Pavilion is that it does not match England in any way, shape or form. Apparently built by George IV, before he was king, it looks like the Taj Mahal and the inside is decorated with things like dragons and other not-England things. Very strange.

(This is the spot where I was planning on inserting a couple pictures I took while in Brighton, but I can not remove them from my camera. Do not, and I repeat, do not, ever purchase a Kodak camera. The software, and even the hardware, functioned shakily with my laptop before my virus. Now that I've had to start over again... I can neither get my pictures off the camera by using Kodak Easyshare, nor by going directly to the camera via My Computer... grrrrrr. There is a reason they are about to fold. Sorry George Eastman.)

After the pavilion we spent the day wandering the beach (pebble, not sand) exploring as much of the pier as we dared, and chowing down on overpriced hot dogs and chips. I suppose Brighton also offers the opportunity to do various arcade games and amusement rides on the pier, but that wasn't really what we wanted/could afford to do, so we just wandered. But it was pleasant, and the weather was beautiful. And the ride back to Egham on the train? Less than half the time than if I had gone back with Arcadia ;-)

Finally: today (apologies for the stream of consciousness that dominates my posts, by the way). After months and months of waiting, I heard from the senior citizen center that I had passed my background check while I was traveling. This is because despite approaching them all the way back in January they were running a background check on me that included snail mailing forms and questions to my references... in the United States. Ugh. In any case, after passing my background check I went in to volunteer for the first time today. They apparently never get volunteers, and didn't really know what to do with me. So they said to just walk around and chat with the residents. The residents are generally in great need of care. Many suffer from various degrees of dimentia, many have trouble walking, that sort of thing. I went on a walk outside with one woman who was completely mobile and quite talkative, but did not have any grasp on the current reality. Some of her sentences would start on one topic and apparently change two or three times by the end, referring to things that weren't there and people I didn't know. At first it was difficult to converse with her, but then it actually became really easy because you could say absolutely anything and get a heartfelt and enthusiastic reply!

A lot of it was obviously very sad, and I wish I could help more, but hopefully just showing an interest and being around to talk to helps in some small way.