We had about an hour of lecture, a break to go grab breakfast, and then no outing, but instead we watched the Prime Minister's questions online! The Prime Minister's questions is a weekly, 30-minute really energetic and amusing interrogation of the PM. Basically, people ask him questions and he avoids them very skillfully while everyone hoots and hollers and makes a ton of noise and gets very worked up. It was interesting to watch and definitely VERY different than politics in the US!
We got our papers back and got information about our final essays that will be written in class- it's the only class I'm really anxious about in terms of the final. I got a B on the paper, which was a little disappointing after all the work that I put into it, and even more so because everyone else wrote theirs the night before and got the same grades or better. Oh well. His comments were that my quotations were too long and I didn't include the page numbers in my citations...so if that's why I got a B, I at least feel good that my argument and writing was good, and it was just little things that docked my grade down.
We got out of class super early since we didn't have our outing, and I've spent the day doing readings and writing papers and getting stuff done for all my classes and just overall being productive!
When Amanda got back from her class, we went to the grocery store to get food for the week, and came home and made dinner (an omelette with lots of peppers for me, and fresh fruit). Have been working on writing my final paper for Media and Society all evening, too.
Tuesday- Media and Society
We talked about film and talked more about our final papers and watched two different movies for our class time, and then were off on our outing. We went on a walk around Soho that was pretty random, but we saw a bunch of record shops, saw where 20th Century Fox is located, went to the Radha Krishna Temple, went down a street where brothels used to be very popular, saw the Palladium, went to a record shop, and just explored the area basically.
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| Palladium |
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| our professor leading us through the streets of Soho |
I'm constantly being surprised by how many new things I keep discovering that are right around where I've been living all summer- London has so much more to offer than I'll ever be able to see and explore fully.
After Soho, we had time before Culture By Design, so a few of us came back to Madison House to eat and kill time before class. I made a quick lunch and then we were back off to the FSU building for class.
We had a guest speaker instead of a normal lecture- the Film Adaptations professor (who is also BFF with our professor) came to talk to us about TV shows and the contrasts between similar types of shows in the UK and US and such. He was a really awesome professor, and I loved his lecture. We watched the teasers (intro scene before the opening credits) of a variety of pilots of TV shows from here and from the States, and it was really cool to see the differences and similarities between them.
After watching the clips, we got in groups and had to plan/write the teaser of our own cop drama show. At first, we had no idea what to make ours about, but we eventually came up with a pretty cool idea about a cop show set in suburbia. Our basic idea was a parallel between kids playing chase/cops and robbers on a playground and that scene switching to a real life chase between a good guy and bad guy in a neighborhood and then back to the kids, etc, as the two scenes echoed each other, ending in a shot being fired by the real good/bad guy right as one of the kids pretends to shoot another kid, and then the kids turning around because it turns out the real chase is on the street near where they are playing, etc.
It was really cool to hear the other groups' ideas and to discuss what was hard about writing the teaser, etc. I really liked that we actually got to do it for ourselves instead of just watching real TV shows, and it was a really fun last class.
We got out pretty early since we didn't have an outing, which was nice. Came back to the flat and had time to kill again before we went to see Matilda!
We had to be at the theatre at around 6:30 pm, and it was just nearby in Covent Garden area, so we all walked there together to meet Rusty. We got our tickets from him and took pictures as a group before heading in to the theatre.
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| Our whole group with Rusty and his daughters! |
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| seriously, how cool is this?! |
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| Liz, Kelly, me, Nora |
The show was absolutely wonderful- the kids did SUCH a good job and the girl that played Matilda was excellent! It was so fun seeing the story come to life and to catch all the things geared at adults that would have gone over the kids' heads. The songs were so good and the set was just incredible the whole time, I loved it. Such a great show! Ahhh.
Came back to the house afterward and crashed! Tuesdays are always SO LONG.
