I am definitely not a history person at all - I do enjoy it and appreciate it, but it unfortunately doesn't interest me near as much as other subjects. Well, Dr. Julian Putkowski is changing that view of mine. Throughout the class he will be telling the entire story of London from start to finish. He's like a ball of energy! He was all over the room discussing the formation of the landmass, William the Conqueror, the Romans, etc whistling and physically acting out every portion of his person to the full extreme. Another very successful and exciting class with Sir Julian :)
Most of the my professors have provided hefty size packets of reading material, but for this class we are required to get a textbook or fight over the few copies in the library. Therefore, after class, a new friend of mine, Madeline (from Chicago, huge hockey fan, hilarious) went on the search for this old street that involved lots of turns (according to Julian) but that apparently wasn't hard to find. Well, after 37 minutes of looking for this very close and easy to find street we decided to try another day. We then got on the #19 bus (red, double decker) not having a clue how far we were from the tube station. The #19 bus is the one that has a stop directly on our residence hall's street. So we started talking away and about 15 minutes in began not familiarizing with a single stop, street, or anything in the area. We very quickly realized we were going north, NOT south - shit! Kindly asked the bus driver our best bet, and he said we could get off and wait for a train on the other side of the road, but who knows how long we'd have to wait. Or we could ride this til the end and simply hop on a bus continuing the route at the bus station when we arrived which he claimed would be quicker so we did exactly...took the scenic route. We saw all sorts of areas of London - in fact, everyone located on the #19 bus's route of travel. We saw good and bad areas and everything from pretty scary local quick shops and alley ways to private schools and flats lined with luxury cars. We soon realized we were in Arsenal - a city/burrough/not real sure that is completely outside of London and famous for it's football (soccer) team. So yeah, we saw that, got off at the large and not so welcoming bus station and within seconds the #19 going SOUTH and back towards the city was there. We laughed about our directionally challenged attributes and the very funny sight seeing tour that had just commenced. Rather than the usually 40-45 minutes it takes us to get home, it literally took us right over 2 hours! But hey, who can say they road the top deck of a famous red, double decker bus in London? And not only that, who also road the entire #19 route?
After such an adventure we decided to celebrate. TimeOut London is people's, as they call it, bible, over here - in other words, "the magazine" to read. Having that time on our hands on the bus we went through one and the up and coming restaurant was actually a Thai restaurant not far from our dorm, so we went. A few streets and a good walk away was a quite fancy and beautiful restaurant situated off a cobblestone alleyway. The food was amazing! I got chicken pad thai which could without a doubt compete with Spartanburg's Monsoon pad thai and a very very delicious glass of wine. I can't pronounce what Madeline ordered. After that we saw the movie, "The King's Speech." It came out Friday and has been sold out every day! Between Colin Firth and it being a true, royal English story it's no wonder the movie has been making such a fuss all over London. We surprisingly were able to get tickets before dinner and headed to the show. As you know, history isn't my strong suit, but when in London, you can't not see a highly regarded and well talked about British film. It was so so so good, a million times better than I thought! There were only about 10 people when the previews started, and apparently all films in theaters have 20 minutes of advertisements and then it begins. Well, once those 20 minutes were close to an end every single seat in the theater was filled and for good reason. It was such a great story and almost more of a comedy than a historical film - it was great! The story of George VI gave me a much better standing of the royal history timeline and of the country, plus, it was hilarious which was an added bonus.
Finally back to my shithole (excuse the French) of a room and after some skyping off to bed! What. A. Day.
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