Literary London, Chicago, and American Independence Day

The past three nights I've hardly had time to go on the computer and write blog entries or even check email. But they have been great! On Wednesday night, I went on one of the famous London Walks. You just show up at the meeting point at the correct time and then you're off on a guided tour of some of the lesser-known parts of the city. The walking tour I went on was called "The Literary London Pub Walk." We saw Charles Dickens' house (which I actually visited the last time I was here), the house of Dickens' best friend (the only person he ever confided in about his horrible time at the blacking factory as a child), a castle-ish building where lawyers used to reside and have their offices (John Donne worked there and it's said that he heard "the bells tolling" from that building, and Oscar Wilde went there to get legal advice when he was accused of "sodomy," i.e. homosexuality, which was illegal at the time), Bloomsbury Square (of Virginia Woolf and the "bohemian" intellectual artists/writers group called the Bloomsbury Group), the church where Sylvia Plath got married to the guy a lot of people blame for her later depression and suicide, etc. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and told us about a lot of random things. Like, for example, houses where the windows are in line with the walls instead of set back a little are from before 1700 or so, because after the Great Fire they were declared a fire harzard. And houses with wide doorways and only one step are from a time when women wore really gaudy hats with parasols attached to them, and they couldn't go up or down very many stairs without falling over--which would be most unladylike, of course.

Also on that tour, I met two other women who were there by themselves. (Sounds like the dude ranch, right? Haha.) Doris is younger than her name makes her sound (probably 30-ish). She's an English professor who is originally from Germany but got her Ph.D. in America. She's been working at Auburn and is now taking a better position at a school in Iowa. She is in England for a conference where she'll be presenting a paper on Peter Ackroyd and A.S. Byatt and their use of museums in two of their novels. The other woman, Katie, is a high school English teacher. I can't remember where her school is, maybe South Carolina or something, but she doesn't particularly like the area. One of her biggest dreams is to move to San Francisco because she really loves that city. If she doesn't do that, she might go to Bangladesh to teach English as a second language. She's in London for a few days before going to Cambridge to take a class or two for a few weeks. One of the classes is on Medieval literature and "the gaze" (which is something I talked about a little in my Topics in Literature course). It was really fun for me to get to talk to these women as equals even though people like them were my teachers just a few weeks ago. But I felt like I was equally able to contribute to the discussions on English literature, which was very exciting for me. :-) We even all went out to a pub after the walk to get snacks.

On Thursday night, everyone in my program went to the theatre. We got to choose between Spamalot and Chicago. Obviously (from the title and from my usual interests), I chose Chicago. It was a little bit racy, but I really enjoyed it. There were a few somewhat opposing themes running throughout it. One was the overly optimistic reporter's idea that "there's a little bit of good in everyone." Another was the ironic statement from two charming female murderers who went free based on razzle dazzle in the courtroom that they are "living examples of why America is such a great country." And of course, there was the theme of wanting to be noticed and paid attention to. But anyways, the music was very enjoyable and Roxie Hart was a very enigmatic character. I really liked the choreography and the way the glitz and glamour were portrayed through lighting, costumes, falling silver confetti, whispers of "Roxie" in the background, etc. It really sweeps you into the emotion, like all good musicals do. (I seriously believe that combining the power of story with the power of music is pretty much insane. I always leave musicals feeling such a rush or a high...and all that jazz.)

Tonight is good old American Independence Day. My boss who is British joked to me and the other American intern, "Hey, congrat-
ulations." A few of us from the internship program went to the British Museum tonight because they were having an American-themed festival. There were people playing rugby football, a Cadillac (American car), American dancing (line dancing, the Charleston, etc), a live jazz band, and an American art exhibit called The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Polluck. One of the girls on my program knows a lot about jazz dancing, and she got one of her guy friends to teach me a few basic steps and turns, which was fun. I'm really glad I did something tonight, even though I didn't really expect to care about not celebrating the 4th. I did actually miss having a barbecue and seeing fireworks and whatever else. It's kind of ironic to be missing tradition when I'm in England, the great land of tradition. :-) But there you have it.

My internship is still sort of boring, but it's going well. But at the same time, I am extremely glad it's Friday! I'm looking forward to a whole weekend of enjoying all that London has to offer!