We discussed 5 articles that had been my assigned reading for the week, and they were all about the public sphere in today's world with social media and the Internet playing a huge role. It was so interesting to see all the theories we've been discussing come into play in today's society. I had time halfway through to come upstairs and analyze my own Facebook and Twitter feeds and look at how many of the posts were about personal/private matters as opposed to matters concerning the general public or matters of public interest, and lemme tell ya, hardly ANY were really worthwhile. Makes you wonder about the point of it all, really.
Our outing was to the London Transport Museum (another outing we had replaced because of duplicates with my other classes) and we met up with Kelly and her teacher Judy (since their class is like ours, with just one student, and they were going there anyway).
I wrote a blog post for class about the outing and about my reflections of the class as a whole here: http://londonpublicsphere.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/week-seven-outing-london-transport.html ...so read that instead of me writing it twice :)
To sum it up, though, I was SO SAD to say goodbye to Nina after how incredible this summer has been having her class all to myself. She was SO affirming and encouraging throughout the outing, telling me repeatedly how glad she was that I didn't drop the class and how I'm a "real gem" and have been such an incredible student. I've never felt more appreciated, respected, and valued from a teacher. She became so much more than a professor to me over the past two months and I loved our time together so much. I want to soak up more and more of her wisdom and knowledge! Hearing her tell me that I'm brilliant and did incredible work this semester just blew me away and humbled me like no other, especially coming from her. It was a big love fest essentially, as Judy was just as complimentary of Kelly, and we were just as appreciative of them as our awesome teachers! We hugged goodbye at the museum gift shop after the outing and I definitely teared up. Best experience of the summer by far, and I'm so grateful that I had that class. SO thankful.
I spent quite a while browsing through the gift shop after Nina left, and found some cool things for people I still needed gifts for, which was awesome. Of course, when I left to walk home, it started to torrentially pour, and my umbrella flipped inside out about 5 times on the way. It was pretty awesome, lemme tell ya. I even tripped and almost fell flat on my face at one point too, so that was cool. Gotta love being by yourself and having no one to laugh with you when you make a total fool out of yourself!
I grabbed a sandwich on my way home for lunch, and ate when I got back to the house. I worked on writing some of my final papers and such for the afternoon. Made dinner at the house later on, had our group meeting and did our course/program evaluations, and then stayed in for the rest of the evening.
Thursday- no classes!
So weird that all of our classes are over and all that's left is final papers. Where has the time gone?
I woke up at 8 am to bombard Kyle with birthday love since that was when it turned his birthday in his time zone, and talked to him for a bit, and then went back to sleep for a few more hours since I had nowhere I had to be. When I finally woke up, I made lunch and worked more on my papers and got a bunch of random stuff done all day.
At around 6 ish, I left to go head towards the movie theatre where we had our group film night. It was raining like crazy again, and it wasn't the most pleasant of walks to the Soho area. I was trying to find a quick and easy place to eat on my own before the movie, but I wasn't super hungry and really just wanted a quick Pret sandwich. Of course, it was the first time in the entire time I've been here that I didn't see ten million Prets on every street...but I finally found one near the theatre and grabbed a sandwich really quick. Met up with the group at the theatre at 6:45 ish, and got our tickets to see "The Hunter."
I had watched the trailer for it and wasn't too excited about seeing it, but it ended up being a really well-made and intriguing movie. It was pretty intense and I was glued to the screen the whole time, and it made me cry too! Definitely a movie worth seeing, but not one I would need to see again. It was cool to see a movie at a London movie theatre too, since I hadn't done that yet! They have SO MANY commercials and previews before the movie started...like at least 30 minutes of them. Too much.
I came back from the movie and went to bed pretty early.
Friday-
Woke up early to head to St. Pauls again- there was a group of people who had wanted to go to the top of the cathedral when we went with class a few weeks ago that didn't get the chance to, so they were doing it today. Amanda and I wanted to go to the Twinings tea shop on Fleet Street afterward, so it made sense that I went with them and just waited for them to be done. It was a gorgeous morning, but got pretty chilly and really windy in the shade, but I stayed on the steps of the cathedral while they all went up, and then wandered around a bit to take a bunch of pictures of St. Pauls that I hadn't taken when we went the first time.
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| there's the group there! |
One of my mom's coworkers has been reading this (Hi!) and recommended some new places for us to try to eat at, which was awesome since I've definitely been stuck in a Pret rut when I'm on the go. We ended up walking all the way from Fleet Street over to Brunswick Center to the only Yo! Sushi we knew of, and definitely worked up an appetite in the process.
It was such a cool place- a conveyor belt wrapped around the bar area and had color coordinated dishes that indicated the prices, and you just grabbed what you wanted and ordered other things from the waiter as well. I grabbed edamame from the belt, and ordered a veg noodle dish and dumplings too- best meal ever. So, so good.
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| YUM YUM YUM |
I was pretty tired after all of our adventures, so Amanda and I came back to the flat. A horrible migraine promptly hit and decided to make my day suck, so I spent a lot of time trying to nap and rest and get rid of it, with no luck at all. Slept for a while but really needed to be productive, so I just decided to suck it up and catch up on my blog and get work done. Everyone else is out at a bar celebrating two birthdays of people in our group and I wish I was there...but sometimes you gotta just take it easy. Oh well.
Off to bed, hopefully my head doesn't hate me so much in the morning!
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