Classes and Other Educational Tidbits

This post will mostly be dedicated to the academic aspect of London, for Dad's sake.
I've had four classes so far and I think the following anecdote will best sum things up:
As of Monday night, I had done no homework (which is all reading) for either of my classes. I hadn't even looked at the syllabus. I had sworn to myself I would do it on Tuesday, but ended up going to Imperial College with my friend Allison instead (more on this later). Well, of course, when I got back I was a little disappointed with myself, so I said I would do some of it right then and the rest the next morning. I looked at both syllabi's and discovered that in between last Thursday, and next Thursday, I am expected to do 38 pages of reading. Yes, that's it. That's approximately less than 3 pages a day. I think I can handle that.
There were rumours that the academics were easy here, but sheesh. But I take that back. For both of my classes, it's apparent that going to class and actually taking good notes is far more important than reading books. Both of the topics (British Political Institutions and Britain and the EU) are so "cutting edge" that all the books are out of date. We talk a lot about current events and are expected to watch the news (which I do do). While there isn't a lot of homework per se, for both classes, there is a 3000 word paper. This amounts to I guess about 8 pages. So, that's 16 pages in the next 5 weeks, which is no small feat. I think my topic for the EU class will be about how the UK will come to rely heavily on its European partners when dealing with energy matters and dealing collectively with countries like Russia. The UK is not at the moment the biggest fan of the EU or the continent in general so I hope to argue that it will need to change its tune shortly. For my other class, the British Political Institutions, I'm not entirely clear what to write about, but I think it will have something to do with the House of Lords and whether or not it should be abolished or changed. I think my point will be that it's not worth the hassle as the House of Lords hardly interferes in government and it's nice to have some long standing traditions in government.
Both classes have a lot of overlap because in order to understand why the UK feels the way it does about the EU, you need to understand its current politics and government setup, and in order to understand the current policies of the government and the direction it's heading, you need to understand its relationship with the EU. And as the same professor teaches both, there's naturally a lot of repetition. I guess this is a good thing because it helps to reinforce things.
Overall, I do feel like I'm definitely learning a lot. I'm very intrigued by British politics and I have to say I find them quite a bit more interesting than US politics. Not having a constitution (well, a written one) makes things so much easier to get done here. The perfect example of this is the gun law. People wanted it, so boom, overnight, it was done. Can you imagine that happening in America? Nay, you cannot. No matter how many school massacres we have, the constitution says something, and we will never come to a consensus about changing it.
We broke into discussion for a bit today, and inevitably, our group started talking about the differences between the two countries. We thought it was cool that the UK had the power to do that kind of stuff so quickly, but to America's credit, it's far far far bigger with a far more varied population. Public Opinion is rarely if ever overwhelming enough to get something changed. We also came to the conclusion that while some things in our system are unfortunate, it works and doesn't really effect us too much, so we like it OK. I think when people leave a place they are generally critical of, they realize that it's not so bad. New perspectives from study abroad... I guess that's the point.
So, I'm in these two classes until spring break. Right before Spring break there are exams for each class. Following Spring break, we start our 3rd class, which will meet only once a week (called Elective B, and I guess is the most ancillary class), and the other 4 days we have our various internships.
My real interview is on Friday at 11 am. I need to do a test run on getting there beforehand, which I'll probably do tomorrow evening. I will make sure to brush up extensively on all the news going on with the Arab world. Being on their mailing list definitely helps with that. Hopefully it will go well. I'll be sure to post about it.

Something I've noticed about British TV is that there are an almost excessive amount of quiz shows. There's at least 2 different ones on every night, and they're usually very hard. This might not be the case if I were British, but I'm not, so they're hard. In general, the country just seems to like them. Even Imperial College across the street has one every Tuesday. After watching a few on TV on Monday, Allison and I decided to go and check it out. We went over there and stood around awkwardly for awhile in the pub (called DaVinci's for whatever future reference there may be) wondering if it would start or not. Finally the guy made the announcement and things were underway. It's not what I was expecting where people gather into groups and someone shouts questions and whoever buzzes in first wins. Allison and I were going to give it a shot, so we asked someone how to enter and they invited us to be on their team. Any number of people can enter in any size group and you just grab an official piece of paper with the questions on it.
Our teammates apparently were quiz veterans, but had never won. They were both post-graduate students (which here means getting a masters, not the same meaning as at home) living on the outskirts of London but originally from Northern England. They were quite nice and we had a good time with them, although they did have that definite MIT-awkwardness tint to them (as I've mentioned, Imperial College is like an MIT). It was really nice of them to invite us on their team though, and it was great to chat with some locals and finally meet some Brits. They were very pleasant and we made fun of each others pronunciations a lot (did you know they say albeeno for albino? I said unless you said rheeno instead of rhino, you should be saying Albino... I was actually able to win that particular argument :-P) They told us to get out of London, as the country and other parts are extremely different. One had almost a Scottish accent and was a bit difficult to understand. Neither had particularly bad teeth.
So anyway, the quiz. There were two parts. The first was a series of picture clues with acronyms that we had to figure out. It was a like a picture of a body of water saying "tPitLO", which meant The Pacific is the Largest Ocean and so on. We were actually able to figure all of these out, including Jacques Cousteau invented the Aqualung. The next part was more of what I was expecting where the announcer asked a bunch of questions in different categories and we were to write down our answers. They were definitely difficult, even for the locals. I was able to get a few (thanks in part to Snapple caps), but definitely had no idea what a cricket bat was made out of (Willow incidentally) or that a football changes color depending on the weather (they turn orange when there's snow). We did not win (winners got 100 pounds), but we didn't lose either. The losers were actually a group of Americans across the pub that happened to be there. The winners had a large number of people on their team, so they had more knowledge reserves, but also had to split the money more. It was fun though, and definitely nice to do something different with a local flavour. I will probably do it again. And probably not win again.

I've got a decently busy weekend ahead. I think on Friday I'm going into the East End to see Emma in the evening, going to Portobello Market in the afternoon, and then Hampton Court on Saturday. I think Saturday night I may just have to go to a club called "Slimelight"-- I'm sure you can guess what kind of club it is, but I have to work up the courage first. Sunday will probably be the London Eye and Madame Toussauds. More on all this as it happens.

I'm very pleased to say that I've been cooking well for myself and eating far more healthily than in the states (which really shouldn't be all that much of a surprise). I don't feel like spending the money on desserts or snacks, so it's just the basic meals with not a lot of fringe. I made stir fry last night, and multiple people commented on how good it looked / tasty it smelled. I pretty much owned cooking last night. I also am a big fan of Sainsbury's prices. The more I buy, the cheaper I realize their stuff is. Even after converting it, most of it is still a really great deal. I think I got breaded chicken which I froze for 4 dollars the other day (about 12-15 chicken strips). I'm not sure that would happen in the states. They put stuff on sale a lot, and you don't have to have one of those stupid cards to benefit.

I've written a lot about some of the differences, good and bad, about London. It struck me the other day though that besides some obvious things like calling private schools Public Schools and driving on the wrong side of the road, there really isn't anything that I just can't fathom here. There's nothing fundamentally different about life here that I'm unable to grasp. Perhaps I'm easily adaptable, perhaps it's US cultural imperialism, or perhaps our two countries are more similar than I had thought. I haven't been here that long, so I may encounter more, but I'm alternately pleased and disappointed that things are understandable here. Usually more so than that, they're familiar. Different enough though that I'm still learning and seeing and doing a whole lot (don't worry mom and dad... money well spent!).

Speaking of money briefly, yes, the exchange rate is terrible. And yes, it probably will get worse. For those of you wondering on how a high-maintenance girl like myself is faring, read on.
Having been here for 11 days, buying 100% of my food (85% or so from the groceries), start up costs like a computer cord and some toiletries and cleaning supplies, some outings, some tourist stuff, some night life stuff, I have spent approximately--

Holy Crap. I don't even want to post that number, quite honestly.

Well, to console myself, I will not need to buy another computer cord (which was a good chunk of that) or grocery and apartment start up. I hope.

Well, that concludes another installment of Life in London.
-Kate