So it has been a long time since my last update. That means this will be a long one. I apologize.
Last Wednesday (21st) I used my day off to travel into London once again. This time I got a group together, because there is a special deal that if you have a group of four people traveling together for the day, you can get 4 train tickets for the price of 2! Ridiculous. We wound up with five (all Americans, sadly): Stu, Leah, Sarah, John and myself. The plan: go see the natural history museum, get some food, and do a little shopping (not my choice, but I was only a part of the group, so whatever).
The natural museum is free to visit, but I wanted to go on a weekday because it is apparently SWAMPED on weekends with kids, families and tourists. A nondescript Wednesday was perfect though. The building is absolutely astounding (see pics). It had little animal gargoyle things on the outside, and was made entirely of heavy stone. It was very impressive, and once you were inside you totally lost track of where you were. The museum had exhibits on everything from evolution (they
really like Darwin... surprise!), to rocks, to space, to bugs. It was enormous.
That being said, it wasn't nearly as cool as the Tower of London or Windsor. Natural museums can be impressive, but there is a sense that to some degree they are all fundamentally the same. We had our fill after a couple hours, and knowing that we could return for free at any time made our exit.
Nobody had eaten lunch so we were starving. We had wandered on the tube over to High Street Kensington for the shoppers in the group, and were trying to find reasonably priced food... which was naturally very difficult in the shopping area. Eventually we stumbled across a restaurant where you could get personal pizzas for 5 pounds apiece (it was a special, the menu showed them typically costing between 5.5 pounds and 10 pounds, so it was pretty nice). After eating we wandered with the shoppers, and eventually made our exit so Leah could get back to campus for a choir thing. It was a fun day; I got to people a little better and I saw some cool stuff. Nothing epic though.
Oh! I forgot to mention.... The night before the natural history museum experience (Tuesday the 20th), I saw a sign for a debate society event. The debate society was going to be debating the motion of whether or not the English should sanction Israel for the events of recent weeks. I figured it would be interesting and decided to join the audience. It is interesting that there is such a pro-Palestinian leaning in the UK when there is such a pro-Israel stance at home.
The debate was in a large lecture theater and was
packed. It was naturally very heated. The opposition (pro-Israel) was entirely outdebated and clearly lost. Even if the odds weren't stacked against them they just didn't do very well. Add to that the fact that the audience was yelling and totally breaking debate rules and they didn't stand a chance. It was very interesting.
Skip ahead now... Wednesday was Natural History, Thursday and Friday were work/class days. Nothing special. Friday night however, all 6 of us at Royal Holloway through Arcadia departed campus on a bus for Swansea, Wales. We were going to have a homestay for the weekend with various Welsh families. When we arrived in Swansea there was another bus with Arcadia students from King's University. In a very disorganized fashion we were divided up and sent with random Welsh people.
Jake (the Bucknell student studying at Royal Holloway through Arcadia) and I had earlier been given information that said we were staying with a Lynda McNaught. She was supposed to be a single woman, with no children and no pets, according to the information we were given. Jake and I were also supposed to be the only people staying with her. Well, when we met her she was with a man that she introduced as Matthew, and there was another student, Ben from King's University, coming along as well. We were a little confused, but nothing too bad. As we were pulling out of the parking lot the woman organizing students and families shouted to stop us and shoved another guy, Viral (pronounced Veer-il) from King's into the (now very crowded) car with us. Clearly organization was lax for this experience! We then found out that Lynda had been expecting four girls... whoops.
When we got to their house we were in for more suprises! There was a girl that looked to be about our age, Kirsty, a guy that looked a little older than us, Jason, a baby, Caitlin, and a dog, Pip. All we got was their names, so we were very confused about everyone's relation to one another. There was also a Slovakian exchange student named "Adam," but they explained his presence (he is there for 6 months). We talked for a little while, and then headed off to bed. Before going to sleep the four of us (who all shared a room) tried to sort out who everyone was! By the end of the weekend we figured this out: Matthew, a Scotsman, and Lynda have married over 20 years. Kirsty is a daughter that they adopted when she was ~10. We think Jason, who didn't actually live with them, is Matthew's son, but not Lynda's. Caitlin, the baby, is Kirsty's. The dog, Pip, is only 5 months old, but was rescued by Kirsty from an abusive owner. Now she doesn't want the dog, but wants to be sure it goes to a good home.
Phew! It is all very complicated.
To keep things as short as possible I'll try to be brief about what we did. Saturday all the people on homestays got together to be guided by one lady and her very funny 6 year old nephew. We saw the marina in Swansea, tried some local foods, went to a museum that was state of the art, but pretty empty to be honest. Eventually we were set free to do our own thing. A group of us took a bus to the "Mumbles" which is a scenic spot on the outskirts of Swansea (which is on the coast). Very nice, we had a good time.
That night we ate dinner at our hosts'. It was a very big dinner, and it was nice not to cook or pay, but it wasn't anything specifically Welsh. After dinner we sat around talking some more. Matthew was a real character. Eventually they convinced Jake and I to go downtown, to Wine Street, but Ben and Viral opted to stay in. Jake and I were able to convince Matthew to come along, and he was more than happy to oblige. The street was absolutely
nuts. I don't know if I've ever seen such a drunken display anywhere before. The street was just club after club and people were stumbling every which way. We stayed for a little while, but it was loud and not all that much fun (Matthew was having a ball though!). Then we caught a cab home and went to bed.
The next day we just took the dog out to be walked and caught the bus back to Royal Holloway. Since then I've been catching up on things like groceries and laundry.
Finally: in yet another attempt to reach out to the seemingly uninviting natives I have sent emails out to the university's juggling club and "James Bond appreciation society" (I found them after a good 20 minutes scouring the university's poorly crafted website). I immediately got a message saying the juggling address was not valid, but I sent an inquiry to the student union to see if there is any other way to contact the club. I'm waiting for real responses on all fronts. We'll see!
The end. You made it! Congratulations...
