Friday, February 19, 2010
I’m starting to realize that my blogging everyday has kind of failed. The last couple of posts have been chunks of days put together. I don’t mind, but chunks for some reason don’t seem right. Anyway, I am not here to rant about myself. Instead, I am here to rant about London. I’m going to change things a bit and blog about the big things. I started a personal journal today so all the little stuff will go there. This blog is here for interest and not for my stuff. So, I guess it is time to start.
On Monday, I went to my first play for my theatre class that I am taking here. The play was titled 11 or 12. In a nutshell, the play focused on the events that surrounded both French occupation and the wondering of whether a prayer should be done 11 or 12 times. When I came out of the theatre, I really did not know how I felt about the play. Part of me felt that it was a good show while the other part of me just felt that the show was lacking somewhat. After that night and a discussion in class, I felt like it was something that I could really like. A lot of things helped make me like it, but there are two that stood out the most. The first was the staging. It was a very simple stage: a big red-orange blanket, sand, some simple trees, a couple of tree branches, and some little pillars. During the play, all the stuff was used creatively. For example, the blanket became a blanket during one part of the play and then a cliff during another part. The other thing that made me like the play was some of the themes. My favorite was about the existence of God. The play asserted that God was the embarrassment of the Human Mind. From what I understood was that as humans we like to have a logical and fact-based reason or things. Yet, it is impossible to do this for God because he is beyond all definition. There is no logical, scientific, or mathematical reason why God exists. He just does, and his existence is proven by our faith. This was really powerful for me because I know a lot of people struggle with whether or not God exists, and this kind of helped me understand my own struggle. Even though I did like it, there were some things that I did not like about the play. They just dealt mainly with the acting and the choices some of the actors made for some of the scenes. Overall, it was a good start to my theatre class.
On Wednesday, I had my first field trip for my Art Class that I am taking here in London. We went to the National Gallery and the National portrait Gallery. At the national gallery, we did an introductory tour through the major art periods. It was really cool to see real art pieces of famous painters up close and personal. Actually, it was a little more a couple of feet away from the painting up close and personal, but it was still really cool. The most interesting thing was it was a lecture tour, meaning we our teacher was making us learn. I really like this kind of tour because I got so much information that I probably would not have gotten from a typical audio tour. It was really cool to hear and learn about how techniques like 3-dimensional features in a 2D plane developed. The unfortunate thing was I didn’t have anything to take notes with so I need to borrow notes. The highlights of the tour were the following: Seeing paintings that I want for my future place of living, seeing an art exhibit on prostitution, and a head of a famous person made out of his blood. Pictures of paintings and the head portrait will come soon. I just need to get the sheet with all the painting names.
The museum tour took up most of my morning, and I spent most of my afternoon sleeping and writing an essay. During the evening, I made the decision that I was going to the Ash Wednesday service at the church near the flats. I did research earlier in the week to find a place to go because I really like Ash Wednesday services, and the one near the flats happened to be part of the Church of England and Anglican. I made my plans, but the only problem I had was I didn’t want to go alone. Luckily, I convinced someone to go with me at the last second so everything was ok.
So, I guess it is time to talk about the church and service. The church itself is pretty small and somewhat weird in its arrangement. The inside of the church was in the shape of a triangle crossed with a rectangle, but I really don’t know. Whatever the shape was, it caused the altar to be in a corner, which I thought was weird. The pews still managed to face the altar, and the cool thing about them is that each row was one continuous pew that was bent at various points. Overall, the inside was very cozy.
Now, the service itself was pretty interesting. Before the service began, I read the bulleting and found that the church was in “the catholic tradition of the Church of England.” I had no idea what that meant, and I thought it was just a Lenten thing. It was a very logical thought because there are various times in the Episcopal calendar that the words change from regular English to Old English. Anyway, there was nothing really unusual or new to me when it came to the liturgy. It was very similar to the one that my church uses with some more words and phrases. There were three things that I noticed that were definitely different. The first was the fact that they were using incense. Basically, the incense was used to bless almost everything from the congregation to the bread and wine. I didn’t think much of this because my childhood church did this when we got a new priest. The second difference was the fact that there was I guess a high priest. From what I remember, there were three people on the platform with the altar: a priest, another priest with a more elaborate dress, and a person who was dressed like a Deacon. The third difference was the fact that they prayed for the Pope. I thought this was extremely weird because I thought that the Anglican Church did not pray to the Pope. The whole break from the Catholic Church was the fact that King Henry VIII could not get a divorce from the Pope. Anyway, I heard that and I knew it had to be Catholic or very Catholic related. Besides those things, everything else was ok. After the service was done, we left, and I said I wasn’t going to go back. I just didn’t feel like it was the right atmosphere for me, and I am now wanting to explore other churches. I learned today that there are many variations of Anglican Churches. Apparently, the one I went to was a high Anglo-Catholic Church. I didn’t even know that existed, and it was really cool to learn that. I can’t wait for my next church.
There is not much to report on for Thursday. The highlight of that day was basically the fact that we watched A Hard Days Night in the Beatles Class. Apparently, it was one of several movies that the Beatles starred in and that used their music. It was a really cool movie, but slightly weird too. It was a good weird because it kind of made the movie even more entertaining. Even if I watched the movie again, I would not be able to give any kind of summary, but I would recommend it to be watched. Besides that, I took a nice nap and worked on my essay
Today was a really productive day for me. I got up somewhat early for my day off and lounged around the suite for a bit. Then, at around noon, I left the flat to make the journey to my practicum school. The journey was pretty interesting. It started out with a tube ride that I did by myself. That part was fine, and I got to see some really nice stations. I had to take the Jubilee line to get to the station that was near my school, and the stations on that line seem somewhat new. They are very plain and have glass doors that separate the platform from the track. One of my fellow fellows believe that this is to prevent suicides, and I kind of agree. Anyway, after getting to the appropriate station, I got off and made my walk to the school. It was a twenty minute walk through a part of London that I am happy I get to see. It’s a definite stark contrast to the area I am living in. The streets were very small, and there were various stages of construction going on. It was definitely a poorer side of London. It was a very uneventful walk for the most part, but there was one slight event. In a nutshell, I crossed a street before the crosswalk light turned green and had a close call with a car. I walked away, and the man in the car yelled at me. I shrugged it off because a lot of London drivers do that or honk their horns. Yet, the interesting thing is one of the cars that was waiting at the light honked at me, and the guy did the little “I’m watching you” gesture. That was slightly disturbing, but I luckily never saw him again. I also doubt that I will see the guy again anyway since I will only be in the area for six Mondays. From that crosswalk on, I was extra careful. I still don’t know why I did that. Since being here, I usually wait for the green light unless I am in a big group and we cross all at once. I do know now that the intersection is busy so I will be careful from now on. Besides that, the rest of the walk was fine, and I found my school. I also found out that I can take a bus from the tube station to a bus stop that is right by the school. I may end up trying that on Monday, but who knows.
After my little adventure, I went straight back to my flat and had lunch. It was after 2 when I got back so I was hungry. I ate lunch and just lounged around a little. At around 4 pm, I started working on my essay, and I finished at around 11:30. Why did it take so long? The answer is I write a chunk and take a break. I can’t sit down and just write out an essay. It’s just not appealing to me. I do better writing in chunks and coming back. Usually, it’s in days and not hours, but I wanted to get done with it in one day. I got it done and can move onto the other essay that I have to. That’s it for the update.
Until Next Time,
Jefe
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