Author: Jane Myrick

Sir Isaac Newton. The man. The myth. The apple-infused legend. Despite attending Isaac Newton Magnet School for middle school, until registering for HC 407: Isaac Newton: Opticks, Colour, Gravity and Navigation (my other course here in London), I knew very little about the man after whom my old school was named. That changed after yesterday’s class discussion about Isaac Newton by James Gleick. None of us realized that, in addition to his revolutionary discoveries in calculus, gravity, etc., Newton dabbled in rather controversial subjects, like alchemy, theology and even what we of the modern era call embezzlement. He had a pretty diverse resume!

We also did some experiments with prisms and bending light, since Newton explored ‘opticks’ and ‘colour’ as well. These activities were designed to prepare us for our visit to the Tower of London today, where we’ll get to see the Crown Jewels.

Following class yesterday morning, we

had a few hours of down time before a quick tube ride to Waterloo Station and the London Eye this afternoon. It was amazing!!! One turn around took about 3o minutes, and at the top, we were 443 feet up (a bit under the height of the Washington Monument)! We could see for miles in every direction, including a new take on the Parliament buildings and Big Ben!

It was quite hot yesterday, so after taking our ride on the London Eye, we split off into smaller groups and wandered along the refreshingly breezy Thames through Jubilee Gardens before crossing the river toward Covent Garden, a trendy district ripe with street performers, pubs and shops. We found the East India Company shop inside a marketplace from the 1830s, which sold a tea called ‘Boston Tea Party’, designed to ‘revive one after revolutionary activity’! Interestingly, The East India Company was founded under Queen Elizabeth I to search for spices believed to cure the plague, but ended up bringing goods like sugar, coffee and tea to England. That’s right, tea! Tea has only been a part of English culture for a few hundred years! How would Brits be today without access to a good cuppa?

From Covent Garden, we meandered into Leicester Square, aka Theatreland. The area evokes a New York City/Times Square vibe, as it’s packed with glittering lights and signboards, people speaking in all languages and dialects, massive posters for upcoming events and more street performers (including a phenomenal beat boxer). To contrast this modernity, there’s also a statue of William Shakespeare in the middle of the square, surrounded by a fenced-in grassy area where many families were having picnics.

We continued west to Trafalgar Square, where the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery are located (both are places that we’ll visit as a group later). It was here that I truly noticed that the classic architectural style we in the US associate with places of importance, such as the White House, the Abraham Lincoln Memorial, etc., runs rampant amongst even ordinary residences in London. Despite the high-tech skyscrapers and contemporaneity, this really is a city steeped in history.

We concluded our explorations as the sun set in St. James’s Park, a lush haven set just behind the Horse Guards Parade Ground and just in front of Buckingham Palace. It was a lot of fun taking a break from walking (we got in about 12 miles after our trip on the Eye alone) and relax on a bench, watching the passers-by.

St. James’s Park Tube Station was our portal home tonight, and once we returned to Scape, we made dinner in the communal kitchen and had a study party to prepare for today’s English Lit lesson on Beowulf, continued from Monday.

Today was ripe with introductions! Firstly, to my main class during my time in London, ENG 204H: Survey of British Literature (Beginnings to 1660), and secondly, to the western portion of the city and the riverfront.

In addition to exploring and experiencing a new culture while abroad, I get to learn more in two subjects with which I have little to no knowledge:

medieval to early modern literature and physics. My English lit class met for the first time this morning, and we began with several fun, interactive activities to establish a foundation for us to build upon as we read works like Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, etc. One of these activities involved finding examples of kennings, which, in Old English poetry, are compounds of two words that together offer a metaphorical description/synonym of an ordinary word. Some of them are hilarious! A friend joked that we should bring them back… “You have beautiful head-gems (eyes)!” Also, make fog or mist seem more exciting by calling it ‘cloud-murk’!

After a break for lunch, we all met as a group to walk to the Tower of London. There, we got on a double-decker, open-top bus with a great tour guide, who spun tales and pointed out significant/interesting/funny places around the western portion of the city. I was most excited to see Big Ben up close, and I later found out that the name ‘Big Ben’ actually refers to

the 13 ton bell inside the tower, not the building itself! Our route took us all along the Thames and the many famous landmarks in that part of London, most of which we’ll be visiting on foot later. Tomorrow, we’re taking a turn on the London Eye!

After a good night’s sleep, I’m rested and ready to take on the day! Currently, I’m enjoying some coffee (because, well, tea isn’t really my cup of tea) and taking in the view of the city. I feel entirely comfortable and at home and yet distinctly foreign and unfamiliar.

One of the main things I’ve noted since arriving in the city is that overarching idea of contradictions: everything from the dialects used in print versus in the streets, to the official and unofficial rules of the road, it seems as though two very different takes on London coexist harmoniously. Even the buildings themselves are a pleasant hodgepodge of sleek, modern high-rises and squat, historic brick churches or cottages.

On the drive from Heathrow to our housing, it became very clear that, similar to California, drivers here pay little to no attention to the many, many street signs (another odd juxtaposition). Our cab driver took a creative route through town that involved several u-turns and short-cuts through alleys to avoid traffic, and during that ride we passed by everything from Buckingham Palace to Alfred Hitchcock’s house to Westminster Abbey. While we (that is, Katie, Hayden and I, who had flights that arrived around the same time yesterday) ogled at the sights, to our driver, it was no big deal to pass a palace on a daily commute!

We all went out to dinner last night to Nando’s, and this was our first mass-exposure to British accents, which vary extremely in understandability, yet all share a heavy use of slang, idioms and a casual tone. Afterwards, we walked to a nearby grocery store, Sainsbury’s, where I noticed that the labelling of nutrition facts was far more polite than both how locals speak and how our food is labeled in the States. It’s very odd seeing the prices of things labelled in pound sterling/pounds/quid, because everything looks cheap!

Yesterday was full of excitement, so I was ready to get to sleep when I got back last night, which was roughly the same time as when I would normally go to bed back home; in other words, the adjustment to London time was way easier than I’d expected! Hurrah!

I’ll update this post with a few more pictures later this evening, as we’re going to visit our classroom and take a barge along the Thames this afternoon!

Update:

Our barge was actually through the canals of Little Venice, which was

beautiful! Some of the highlights of our boat excursion were seeing the second largest garden in London (in the yard of a sultan, whose property acreage was just slightly less than that of the Queen’s at Buckingham Palace), getting to know each other post-jetlag, and, of course, people-watching as walkers and runners passed by on the shore. After our tour, we took the tube to Paddington Station, which is the

closest stop to our classroom. Although we couldn’t get into the building since it’s closed on Sunday, we located our college campus and were then set loose to roam the city. I went with several friends who also wanted to explore this area of town, and together we found a cute marketplace to try fish and chips for the first time (yum!). A

famous double decker red bus was our ride home this evening, which was really fun!

Today’s entry is brought to you, dear reader, over American, Canadian and British airwaves! Specifically, those of PDX (Portland, OR, International

Airport), YVR (Vancouver, BC, International Airport) and Scape East (my dorm/home away from home). I love air travel and being in airports – there’s a unique, indescribable charge to the atmosphere, and airports are one of very few places that are designed for only temporary occupation. It’s a bustling hive of perpetual going. People often talk of ‘enjoying the journey’ and say that ‘the journey, not the destination, is what matters’, yet paradoxically dislike spending time in airports, which are inherently crucial to most long-distance journeys. As a kid, I agreed. I wanted to be able to get on a plane right away and get to wherever it was I was going.

Now, however, I’ve grown to appreciate the diversity in both the visitors and their journeys; I cannot fathom the sheer number of people who have used, are using, and will use Portland/Vancouver/Heathrow/etc. as a vessel for their travels, nor can I imagine exactly how and to what extent those people and journeys have crossed paths with my own. We’re all strangers to each other, and we will most likely never see many of those around us again in our entire lives.

But we’re here now, together, on separate paths that collided by chance in bright airports with, for example, famous carpet.

After traveling for a lot of hours (honestly, I lost track after awhile), I made it safely to London around 2:30 pm local time, and am posting this from my flat after experiencing some technological difficulties at the Vancouver airport during my layover between flights. Cheerio, mates!

I’m more than stirring, I’m positively bursting with excitement! It’s weird to think that I’ll be in the air and on my way across the Atlantic in just 24 hours. The bags (as well as their carrier) are ready to go to Portland tomorrow…