London Life and York

It is almost the end of my first month in London and I am still loving it. Classes have been a transitioning point as the UK education system is very different from the US. The British move through their texts much faster, the secondary reading list is the length of an epic poem and there is a greater expectation for independent study and research to compliment the class. Just this week my reading list includes selected texts on mass culture, the play “The Witch of Edmonton” and the novel Moll Flanders (which is 427 pages in eighteenth century English).

My internship is going well. Last week felt like a slow start with relatively simple and mundane tasks. This Monday was more engaging with a research project I was asked to do for the firm’s chairman. He is doing a pitch later in the week to a potential new client and I did the preliminary investigation for him into the company’s background, business strategy, etcetera. My set workdays are Mondays and Thursdays, but I went in this morning to listen in on weekly staff meeting just to get a further idea of their operations. To say the least I am impressed. I like my co-workers and we are warming up to each other. The first day I felt anxious and awkward, but that is evaporating. I am still nervous around the managing director who sits near me. He seems highly knowledgeable to where it intimidates me, consequently I really want to earn his approval.

I have been exploring some of England and the world’s history and culture by checking out London’s museums. Thus far I have visited the Tate Modern, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The Tate Modern had paintings I liked and others that were just a bit too contemporary for my liking. It was my first time seeing Monet, Matisse and Picasso’s work in person. The British Museum houses a bunch of awesome history. I saw the Rosetta Stone and I loved the Greek statues. They have the top of the pantheon that they stole from Greece. It was impressive, but I feel like the top of the pantheon should be in Athens! It does make me excited for Greece in April though. The V&A has vast amounts of art, furniture, jewellery, really anything the royal couple fancied adding to their collection. They even had a Dale Chihuly glass chandelier sculpture, which I thought was cool. It made me miss Seattle where everywhere you turn around there is a Chihuly.

This past weekend I went to York in north eastern England. It was a surprisingly big town, but it felt like a petite English village. All the streets are cobblestone with tons of leftover medieval architecture. York is home to a long string of invasions including the Romans, the Vikings and the Scots where consequently many of their main attractions are historical and religious sites or both. We went to York Minster, which is a large gothic cathedral. The front actually looks a lot like Notre Dame, but inside it is nowhere near as intricate. We also when to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal which was a thriving monastery until King Henry VIII decided to repossess all the Roman Catholic Church’s land and wealth in England. The abbey is pretty although it is slowly crumbling away. The grounds have been maintained/redone and they are gorgeous. The estate has an area called the Moon Pond so automatically I was obsessed. It has one large circle pond in the middle to be a full moon and crescent moon ponds on either side of it. We took  fun pictures courtesy of my camera’s auto-timer.

I have class now so I must go. I’ll be back with a report on this upcoming weekend trip to Scotland soon.