London: day seventeen

This morning I made my way through the pouring rain to where my class – Modern British Novel – was meeting at the British Library (just the other side of St. Pancras/King’s Cross, so essentially just down the street from us) for our lecture. Here we were first set loose in the one part of the Library which is open to the public, a large room that houses numerous first, and original editions of some of the world’s greatest books; first editions of printed Shakespeare, Marlowe, the original handwritten and illustrated version of Alice in Wonderland, first copy of the Communist Manifesto, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrius, as well as handwritten scores of music by Beethoven, Mozart and Hayden. There were also letters by Michelangelo informing his father that he had completed his work on the Sistine Chapel, sketches and notes by Leonardo Da Vinci, a letter from Darwin defending himself and his belief in natural selection from the attacks of a friend, a feverishly paranoid letter from an Issac Newton suffering from Mercury poisoning in which he informed his friends that he could no longer see them anymore, and of course the Magna Carta. Now the Magna Carta itself is not actually one single document, in fact, they don’t think that there was ever only one copy of the document drawn up to begin with, rather there were seven or so initial copies made based on the meeting itself, and then sent out – so the British Library has two of those copies. After having explored this room, spending a good amount of time thoroughly combing over everything it had to offer, our professor then bought us tickets to go into the exhibition that the Library was hosting; a look into Georgian England – life, style, household objects, books, writings (including some of Jane Austen’s letters as well as her writing desk), sport relics, maps, architecture, entertainments, and so on, providing a general picture of what life was like in Georgian England.

From there, I then made my way to Birkbeck where I was meeting Hannah and Aaron for the same free lunch that we went to last Thursday. (Unfortunately this time there was no sign of our Austrian friend). We had lunch, grateful for the warm food due to the biting cold wind that decided to kick up today – even though the rain thankfully stopped, it remained one of the coldest days we’ve encountered thus far. And unfortunately it was the same day that one of the buttons on my coat decided to abandon its post…will have to sew that back on later, but regardless, I wasn’t able to return to NIDO for a different coat and ended up having to hold my coat tightly around me with folded arms for the rest of the day.

After lunch, I parted from Hannah and Aaron and made my way to IES where I printed off the documents I would need later in the day to finalize my registration and get my ID card at City University. The paper I was consulting said I didn’t need to be there until 3:00 however, and finding myself early, I opted to hang out in the IES study room for a while, just writing and mapping out the route I would take to get to City University from there. When it was time, I set off and found my way, fairly successfully, to City University. The walk was nice, albeit cold, but I did get to explore a new street I hadn’t been down before. Forty-five minutes later I arrived - the last bit, I had to hurry so as not to be late, but when I finally did arrive at City University I entered the first door and asked reception for directions, she then directed me around to the front door, where I again consulted another registration desk, was directed down some hallways and up the stairs to the third floor, down more hallways and much out of breath, found the room I needed…which was dark…

Confused, I looked at the paper I had been looking at from before, and my heart jumped when I realized I had been reading the wrong time for the wrong day – I had missed it. Though I was right that I had to be there today, unfortunately, the time at which I should have been there was back when I was in class. Basically, I not only missed it, but I’d missed it by quite a long shot. Sweating and quite frantic by this time I called the number of the International Program – the second time I called, the lady picked up and kindly informed me that it was alright, I could come back tomorrow morning, no harm done. Already quite footsore, and still recovering from my panic attack, I slowly made my way back to NIDO, listening to some calming music on my phone so as to try and bring my heart rate down. Additionally, due to the panic, this time I was rather grateful to be back out in the cold air which was helping this time to cool me down.

Back at the dorm, I flopped down on my bed and retreated for a while into the silence. Unintentionally, and without realizing it though, I almost immediately started to drift off. It wasn’t until my roommate came in that I was brought back from what I believed to be thoughts but which had unknowingly become dreams as I was starting to fall asleep. With some effort, I shook it off and forced myself to go to the kitchen and down a PB&J.

Not a whole lot later, Hannah texted me to see if I was interested in going out for dinner; she wanted to check out a pizza place on the East Side – and also just an excuse to go explore over that way. We hopped on a bus that took us over to Shoreditch. Once we got our bearings, we were able to find the pizza place, but to our surprise it turned out that it was closed for a private event that night. So we went back to the drawing board, and chose a direction to walk, hoping we would stumble on a place to eat. A couple blocks down, across the street from an absolutely beautiful stone church, we found a little pub that showed promise. We went in, found ourselves a seat and ordered up some food and drinks – pizza and a cider for Hannah and a little plate of hummus and pita, a cider, and a shot of Jack Daniels for me. All of it was good, and I rather enjoyed ordering my first shot in a pub. Of course there was no effect whatsoever, but it was something I felt would be fun to do as a first while here. I also laughed a bit at the fact that I am the kind of person who doesn’t like tea unless there’s a decent amount of sugar in it, and yet, I like whiskey straight (haha).

Once we were warm enough and full, we set out to explore. It didn’t take us long to realize that we were in the part of town where what they consider to be East Side meets with “The City,” or the more downtown area of London. We figured this out when we rounded a corner and all of a sudden, there was the Gherkin building, large as life, towering above. Because we were so close, we thought it wouldn’t hurt to go check it out; on the way joking that most of the others in the program were almost definitely out partying and getting wasted at the moment, meanwhile the most exciting thing we were going to do tonight was go touch the Gherkin building. Which, even though we were joking, of course, because we said it, then we HAD to go get close enough to touch it. So, yep, we found the Gherkin, went up close and touched it and then walked all the way around it for good measure.

We made our way back to King’s Cross via Liverpool station and once back at NIDO Hannah showed me how to set up my computer so that I could watch American TV shows while I’m here in Britain. So after quite the tiring day, I have been lounging around, getting caught up on Supernatural, talking to you lovely folks, and am going to now fulfill my poetry quota (even though it’s almost 1:00 am) and go to bed…

PS: again, I unfortunately do not have any pictures of the Gherkin excursion as I left my camera back at NIDO - sorry!