Oops.

So look farther down, at the 27th. There is a new post there and I didn't know they'd be chronological like that, this is a post about my trip to Bath. Enjoy.

My British pet peeves.

1. People who get on the train at the tube station before allowing the people who are already on the train to get off.

2. People who walk to the spot directly in front of me at the tube station while I am waiting for my train. I was here first, a-hole.

3. People mispronouncing "Thames" and "Gloucester." I don't care if that's how it's spelled, it's not how you say it. Get used to it.

I'm a brilliant actress.

Sorry it's been a while, again. Still don't have internet, and it has come to my attention that they will be mailing us a router. So hopefully by Monday of next week. Great.

I went to Bath/Avebury/Glastonbury/Wells/Stonehenge last weekend, and I will put up a more detailed post about it later; I just want to upload pictures, and I like an idiot forgot to lug my laptop to the ICLC. Since the pics are on my computer I can't do anything with it until I get my laptop somewhere that I can access the internet. But all in all, it was fun and I learned about places I'd never have known about otherwise. Plus I saw some really awesome views.

Anyway, you may be wondering why I mention my acting prowess in the title of this post. Well, that's because today in Irish Lit I acted in a scene from Translations with my friend Alex. In this scene, we are both performing in English, but my character is not supposed to understand English. She only knows Gaelic. And because Friel, the playwright, was making a point, and a good one at that, the whole play is in English. Anyway. So the two characters in the scene are trying to communicate and it is sort of a love scene, pretty sweet actually. They are just talking back in forth in their own languages and they eventually come to some middle ground, I think. Look up the scene online or something. We did a pretty great job, if I do say so myself. Though we did stop right before the kiss at the end of the scene. It was fun at least.

In addition to this bit of acting, I also went to a very audience-participatory show last night, called The Masque of the Red Death. Yes, like the Edgar Allen Poe short story. In fact, the whole show was based on a bunch of Poe stories. It was in a big house, where usually there are a few smaller venues in the one place but this was the first time they used the whole space for one show. There were a bunch of rooms, and we were kind of set loose with each person wearing a mask that we were issued at the beginning. We had to go out in the house and find the action ourselves. I was scared at first, so I was hanging on my friend Kelly's arm through the first few minutes. We walked in and there was creepy music and very very dim lighting, then we moved on through the entrance, through a few rooms and finally we came to an opening. We set out looking for actors and boy did we find them. At one point we were in a room where a dinner scene was going on, and then some kind of orgy, and then someone got eaten. And at the end, the guy, a sort of older, corpulent fellow who had a beard and mustache and eyebrows that had wax in them making them go out from his face, grabbed my hand and dragged me along, separating me from my friends, through some other scene and took me to a wine celler room. He gave me a glass and said we were going to have a special drink, took out a decanter with a clear liquid and poured it into my glass. And you know what? IT TURNED RED WHEN IT WAS POURED. And he told me to drink it! Since it was clear he wasn't going to do anything until I drank, I took a sip of the wine, as it were. And he told me about the pestilence of the red death and what happened to people who got it, and then about a party, a masque, where only Prince Prospero's friends would be allowed to go to in order to escape the plague. And he invited me. And then he told me to finish my drink and leave, so I did. It continued like that for the rest of the time; I saw a few people murdered and a few fights/culminating scenes of Poe stories. All in all it was a pretty freaking awesome night.

I saw a bunch of rocks this weekend.

This weekend was our first trip sponsored by the school. We went to Bath, Stonehenge, and various other places, like Glastonbury Tor (520 feet in the air) and Avebury, another ancient henge that I think is just as old if not older than Stonehenge. One of them looked like a rock man:
And I also tried to climb a few, as did others in the group.

Then we went to Glastonbury, where there were the ruins of an abbey, and the possible original gravesite of King Arthur and Gueneviere. There's a tower on a hill there, called the Tor, that is supposedly the place where Arthur tried to rescue Gueneviere and failed--though there was supposedly water surrounding it at the time. It's 520 feet high, and we climbed the whole thing. The view was spectacular.

That night we stayed at the YMCA in Bath. Yah, like in the song. What? I didn't even know they had places to sleep. My bed was the most uncomfortable thing I've ever had to misfortune to sleep on.

The next day we went to the Roman Baths, which was pretty awesome. There was an audio tour for everyone, and Bill Bryson (my favorite man ever) had his own little comments on it for various places in the baths. It was great, to think of how long ago they were built and that they're still standing.

I also drank the water, which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Or as bad as it looks in this photo. I actually chugged most of it, as I felt bad for wasting it otherwise. Plus we had to leave.

After that I went to the Jane Austen Centre with Nicki, which was cool, though there wasn't much there that belonged to Jane herself. I still enjoyed it though, and learned some things about her. Don't ask me what they are, I can't remember them. But I did get this naughty book called "Pride and Promiscuity: Jane Austen's Lost Sex Scenes" and it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Then we went to Stonehenge. That was pretty awesome; they are a lot bigger than I thought they'd be. We weren't there for very long, but then again we were just looking at a bunch of rocks. I kind of regret not imagining what it was like when they were built more though, like putting myself back 5,000 years.

All in all, great trip.

Flat pictures.

Okay, so I finally got wireless internet in the ICLC, so I can upload my pictures of my flat to show you all.

This is my front door, from the top of the stairs on the street.

This is my kitchen, when you walk through the front door. The door is on the right in the second picture.

This is my room and my bed. That's Kelly at her bed! Mine's the messy one in the pic on the right.

Down the hall we go. Notice in the pic on the right that we have two fridges. By the way, that's Rachel in that same picture.

Here's our living room/TV area, where we watch all the movies we rent at Blockbuster. And our drying racks, since we have a washer but no dryer.

This is most of our bathroom. We have a shower next to where I was standing when I took the picture, it's just a stall really. Nothing too exciting.

And meet Henry, our vacuum. We have yet to use him. I think I would feel bad, really.

And now you all know what my flat looks like. If I left anything out let me know!

When lying is okay.

I was on my way home from ICLC last night, planning on making some delicious pasta, when I saw this guy kind of looking at me. Well, it was more like he was staring. So I move away and kind of turn, hoping he'll leave me alone. But instead he comes up to me and asks me how to get to somewhere. Now, English was clearly not his first language, so I couldn't understand what he was trying to say. He brought me over to the tube map and pointed out his destination, and I told him what line he was looking for. He thanked me and I was about to walk away, thinking our interaction was finished.

Nope.

He asked me where I was from. It didn't help that I had just read something in ICLC about how al-Qaida is targetting Americans in other parts of the world, including Europe. So I tried to prevaricate, saying I was from Bayswater, near Notting Hill. But then he said, no, where originally. What country?

My answer?

"Canada."

It was a strange interaction. He then asked me if I was Muslim, to which I responded in the negative, and how long I'd be staying here. So I lied some more. I said I was here for three months visiting family, and tried to end the conversation. Luckily his train came and I was free. It was a little unsettling, especially since I was by myself and the station wasn't that crowded. There were a handful of people around, but nothing like when I'm going to school in the morning or when I'm off to Duckworth. But don't you all worry, I can handle myself! I am Canadian, after all.

Playing catch-up.

Sorry I haven't written in a few days but like I said, I don't have internet yet. Though I did get an hour of wireless in the pub kitty corner to my flat, but I had to pay for it.

Anyway, on ThursdayI finally got to see Katy. She came to my flat and spent the night, watching movies such as Much Ado About Nothing since we're reading it in Shakespeare next. Oh, that Keanu Reeves. Every time I read Don John's part in the play I can't help but hear him saying it.

Friday Katy and I and her friend went to the Tower of London which was pretty great. I saw where Anne Boleyn and six others were executed, and I saw their graves in a chapel. Plus I saw some really old and really cool things like an actual scaffold and Henry VIII's armor. And the loo. It was a hole in the floor that led to the outside haha. That was one of my favorite pictures I took.

Oh, and I got lost in London again. But not by myself, and not really lost as we had a map that handily guided us to our flat. Thank goodness I decided to buy that little saviour. But Kelly, Caitlin and I decided to try to figure out the bus system since we were out past midnight and the tube stopped running around midnight. But because we didn't really know what we were doing, we decided we'd take the tube to Edgware Road, closer to our flat than where we were at Great Portland Street, and get a bus from there. This was a mistake, as we could not find any buses to our neighborhood at all. So we walked. And it took us about an hour. But we made it home and we got some great quotes from Kelly along the way. For example: "This is different from New York. The city? It sleeps." And: "We're in Paddington. You know, Paddington Bear... it's where he's from..." Priceless.

Saturday was also a pretty crazy day, as I went to my very first football match. And let me tell you, they are serious about their football here. I was only at a Division II game, and each teams' fans had their own insult cheers and songs rooting their team on, and there was a steady stream of these throughout the game. It was great. Go Queens Park Rangers! (They won 2-0.)

But back to the nitty-gritty. Today was my first real day at my work placement (internship for those of you not keeping up with the translations). And no, I didn't make them all tea or get food or run errands. I read manuscripts all day. That's right, I made actual decisions and probably broke some poor fool's heart who thought he could write. Already I'm making a difference. Though I'm pretty sure it was just work that Caroline didn't want to do herself, but still. And if you think rush hour in your car is bad, you should see the masses of people heading toward the tube between 5 and 6 pm. I had to stand next to some bloke who smelled really awful. It's no picnic.

Anyway, I'm going to go home and eat dinner. Because I can cook now. Even if it is just pasta. It's a step up from last semester, just ask my mother.

More class.

Today I had Shakespeare and Drama and the London Theatre (DLT). They were both extremely long, but at least we had breaks in the middle. I think the Shakespeare class will bore me out of my mind and be the worst of the three, but I was expecting that. At least we get to see all the plays--we got our first tickets today in class. Wednesday night we see The Tempest.

DLT seems like its going to be really great, actually. We don't do any reading, we just go out and see the plays, then discuss them. I'm supposed to write 5 theater reviews for the semester and do one presentation about a play called Scarborough. But I'm pretty sure I'll have a good time going to see everything. Tuesday night we see Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead. And they are supposed to be pretty freaky. I'll let you know how it is.

LOST

I just wanted to meet Katy at King's Cross St. Pancras! I forgot my phone (of course--Murphy's Law [Sod's Law]), and had no way of getting in contact with anyone except for the famous London phonebooths. WHICH DON'T WORK PROPERLY. I managed to get in contact with Kelly at my flat by calling my own phone, the only number I memorized, and then went out to look for Katy. Big mistake. It was super crowded because it was next to King's Cross station (you know, like in Harry Potter), not to mention it was CLOSED. That's right, they weren't letting anyone inside the station because there were too many people inside. So like a pack of nomads, everyone carrying various amounts of luggage, we all trekked down to the Euston Square Station, about ten minutes' walk from King's Cross St. Pancras. Now as many of you know, I'm probably the worst person to be sent away down the busy city street looking for something. Inevitably, I followed the crowd to Euston Station.

Did you know Euston Station isn't the same thing as Euston Square Station? I didn't. Like an idiot, here I am wandering around and circling this building for about ten minutes looking for the Circle Line for the underground, only finding the Northern and Victoria lines. Great. Finally I asked someone at some stand inside where the Circle Line was and he told me I had to walk down the street a ways before I would get to it. So I finally make it to the station, get on the tube, angry as ever because I didn't get to see my friend and I got lost by myself in London! Grrr.

A real adventure, albeit one I'd rather never experience again.

Side notes.

I guess you would call this a round-up?

There is a man who sings and plays a tiny guitar on the Circle Line, and he always sings happy songs and tries to get the other riders to sing along. I smiled the whole time he was on and he told me it was nice to see someone smile for a change. :)

One thing I've noticed about the British is they are not ashamed of PDA. I've seen more kissing (snogging) in public in the past week than I think I've seen in my entire life. It's quite irritating to listen to.

We have to read The Tempest by tomorrow for the Shakespeare class. This we learned yesterday. It's a good thing the play is so short; I read it last night.

Katy is coming to visit tonight!!! :)

Hooray for Duckworth.

After getting lost on my way to the tube station this morning, I finally managed to get to the train on my way to my interview at Duckworth publishing this morning. It's really not fun to run down the street in heels.

It's a good thing I did end up doing a trial trip yesterday, because I never would have found this place otherwise. The directions I was given were so horrible, I was wandering around for at least 20 minutes looking for this place. The directions Rachelle, my internship (work placement!) adviser, gave me told me to turn left on a road that only went right, and directed me down an alley that turned out to be a dead end. I finally found it after stopping in a wine shop and asking some French guy where Duckworth Publishing was. He said it was on the second floor, above the shop we were in, first door on the left in the alley previously mentioned. It really would have helped had I been told that the place WASN'T LABELED ON THE STREET. The only indication that it was there was on the buzzer next to the door, one of about seven buttons.

Anyway, I got there this morning with two minutes to spare. And it was the shortest interview I think I will ever have in my life. Caroline, she's my on-site supervisor, basically just kind of introduced herself and the company, then told me in basic terms what I would be doing. She didn't really go into detail. She was pleased to see that I have experience in InDesign (shout out to The Ithacan), though she followed that with "We don't actually use InDesign, we use Quark. But I've been told that they're really similar!" Hm. Let's hope she's right. I have no idea myself, seeing as I've never used Quark before. Eh, I'll learn. That's what this is about, right?

And Caroline also mentioned I'd be around for their sales meeting, which is apparently something that only happens twice a year. It's supposed to be very good to be a part of if I want to get into publishing. It really does sound like I'll be doing a lot of things, and not just grunt work. I'm going to help Caroline with putting together the next catalogue of books, and I'll be reading some and writing book reports for them. The newest book they have is about sex and robots and they're trying to think of ways to promote it. Hooray for Duckworth, and hooray for English majors. (I'M NOT GOING TO BECOME A TEACHER!!!!)

Wait, I have to go to class?

Today was my first day with classes. Well, with a class. Irish Literature was at 10:30 this morning, two hours ago by my time, and I think I'm really going to like it. The lecturer, Lee White, seems like an awesome guy (bloke) and I know and like most of the people in the class. We'll have a good time. Plus, we're going to go to Dublin in April so that will be fantastic, though I'm planning on going on my birthday weekend as well (but not to Dublin, somewhere else in Ireland). Tomorrow I don't have class, but I do have my interview for my internship (oops, work placement--they're different things here) at 11am; Duckworth Publishing, here I come. We'll see if I can find the place... somewhere in the postal district of EC1. No, don't worry, it'll be great. And for those of you who know about my handicap with directions, I have a map and a step-by-step set of directions written down on paper! And the tube is amazing, SO easy to navigate. Much better than NYC, and better than the T. In my opinion. I'll let you know how that goes, in any case.

My address.

So some people have asked me for my mailing address. If you'd like to send me something for whatever reason, here is where you should send it:

Tahleen Ovian
c/o Ithaca College London Center
35 Harrington Gardens
London SW7 4JU
England

That's ICLC's address, obviously, so don't send it to my flat. Not that you know that address anyway. But I'll definitely get it if you send it to the Center.

Scratch that.

Okay, so sorry I took so long to post again, but I don't have internet in my flat yet. In fact, I can't even plug in my computer because the adapter we bought for it doesn't FIT. Fantastic.

So, we aren't living in that flat I mentioned earlier. Nope, when we were in the agent's office, ready to sign the lease and holding it in our hands, we figured it would be too expensive after one of my roommates had a brief fit of hysteria. So forget Warwick Gardens, everyone. Like Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, we're living in Notting Hill!

Okay, so not exactly, but we're a street away from the district and the park from the movie is nearby. We're also a few streets away from Portobello Market, supposedly one of the best areas for shopping in the entire city. Our flat is in the basement of a hotel, but it's nice and cozy, I think. Once I get an adapter for my computer I'll upload pictures so you all can see how nice it is. Even though it's fairly small.

We moved in on Saturday, or at least we moved all of our suitcases from the hotel we were staying at to the flat. We sent Rachel ahead in a taxi, which really put us to the test. Did I mention Rachel is the only member of our group that has any kind of sense of direction? Luckily, we got there without a hitch and Rachel had already brought our suitcases to the appropriate rooms. So we unpacked and headed back to the hotel for the night, because a) I didn't have sheets at that point in time and b) free breakfast.

The next day my friend/roommate Nicki and I decided to go straight to our flat from the hotel that morning, while Rachel, Kelly and Caitlin (the latter two are twins) walked around for a while waiting for the ICLC to open. When Nicki and I got off at our tube stop, some guy approached us and asked us if we were looking for a hostel. I thought that was weird, but I guess it was because we were carrying some luggage. But I didn't think people recruited for hostels like that. I still think of that dumb movie every time I hear the word--thank God I've never seen it.

Anyway, enough about the flat. That's not all I've been doing. For one thing, museums here are mostly free. So far I've checked out the Natural History Museum and the British Museum, where I saw dead people and got to hold a little man made of some kind of metal.

On Saturday, Bill Sheasgreen, the director of ICLC, took us on a walking tour of the city. We started in Westminster near Big Ben, and continued until we got to the Tower of London. Bill knows basically everything there is to know about England and English history, so it was really cool to hear him talk about all the buildings and sites and stuff. Unfortunately for you, my memory is not as good as his and I can't really remember any specifics. But at least I can say I've seen most of the tourist attractions in London, even if it was only from afar. We saw the Globe Theatre, some outdoor food market where I bought falafel for lunch, the London Eye, a lot of the political places, and various other things. Also unfortunately for you, I forgot to bring my camera.

Remember that time I had to go outside in the rain without a jacket because no one told me we were going outside for a tour of the neighborhood during orientation? Well, I blame that and ICLC for the cold I have now. Thanks, ICLC. At least the chemist (or as Americans would say, pharmacist) told me what I should take for my cough and cold. And they are working.

A side note: If you are going to go shopping in a grocery store far away from where you live, don't buy lots of really heavy things. Or a duvet. It's really hard to carry all that from tube to tube, station to station, street to street.

Anyway, thats all for now. Let me know if I've forgotten anything.

A small detail I forgot to mention.

Remember how our train was canceled on Tuesday? Yah, we learned something that day.

Some Brits aren't afraid to curse at the top of their lungs.

New name.

As you can see, I changed the name of my blog. Why? Because I felt like it.

And because everyone I told made a face or laughed at me.

The Flat Hunt

Well, I'm here. After a six-hour overnight flight (during which I didn't sleep), we landed at Heathrow around 6:45 a.m. and took a bus to our hotel, where we dropped off our luggage, and made our way down the street to the London Center for our first-day orientation. During one of the sections, we took a tour of the area around the ICLC--it's too bad they didn't tell us we were going outside beforehand. Because it was, of course, raining. And I had no jacket or umbrella. Fantastic.

So here I am, hair a complete disaster, wet and cold, and we all have to find flats. Yes. We didn't have housing before we got here. So, bedraggled and exhausted (remember, we didn't sleep), four of my friends and I are trekking around the city after making appointments. We stupidly scheduled them close together and far away from each other. Our first appointment was at 3, but the guy who was showing us the place had another showing with a different (and late) group of IC students. We had an appointment at 3:45 quite a distance from where we were, and to top it all off he showed us an apartment he KNEW was too small for five people, wasting our time. And thus making us have to literally RUN to our next appointment--run to the tube, run from the station, down streets and across them at the risk of our own lives (pedestrians do not have the right of way here and the cars will not stop for anything). We did make it, looked at the place, and told the guy we'd get back to him.

Then we decided to take a different route back.

If you are ever in London, don't go to the Kensington/Olympia station. It's the end of the line, and apparently there are a lot of delays. Well. We ended up missing our next appointment at 5, after the train we were on had to be canceled due to someone getting sick or something.

In the end, we did end up getting that apartment we ran to. So we are all set, after a day of wet and cold and exhaustion from no sleep and more physical activity than at least I am used to.

The final hour

Well, if I forgot to do anything it's pretty much too late now. I have one hour before I leave for the airport. Waiting for a few hours for something big to happen kind of makes the big-ness of the event less... big. I feel really mellow. And I know that right before I leave I'll remember seven or eight different things I need to do and then get to Logan a half hour later than we planned to. Anyway, here goes nothing.

The last night at home

So, as my title indicates, I leave for London tomorrow evening around 7:45. I'm mostly packed; my mother was shocked I fit most of my clothes in one suitcase. She didn't believe me when I said I could fit five pairs of jeans plus everything else--guess I showed her. All I'm worried about is forgetting something important. Like my passport or something. I just want to get into the UK. And then after that, all I have to worry about is finding a flat--no sweat, right?