Please will you wake up, open your eyes; it's the first day of a new life, you'll see.

Oh, hey, half-over second week!  I intended to write about my classes and first week of work in painstaking detail on Friday, but I was too busy partying and having fun this past weekend!  We met new friends on a different program who are from UNC, and we took them to a bar with us on Saturday night, which was a bunch of fun.  Charlie's British friend told us about that bar, thank god, because it's been ridiculous trying to find a cool, cheap place.  It's funny how much finding a bar in a new country makes me feel like a freshman in college.  We wander the streets for any place that looks even slightly cool and feel like loser Americans.  But it's always an adventure trying to someplace we can all agree on, and I love the new-ness of it all.

We took a day trip to Cambridge, which was really cool.  It was such an interesting little town!  It's got these cute little cobblestone streets and everything has so much history; it's incredibly fascinating.  I would have loved to go to school someplace like that.  Except, you know..  it's the top university in the world and you can't leave campus during the semesters.  But we ate at Cambridge University's dining hall!  And the vegetarian meal was good!  Way to go, Cambridge.  Besides a driving tour and a little pub time (mulled wine!), we went punting.  Aka flat-bottomed boat with a lovely, charming British man pushing us along the river with a punting pole.  Highlights of punting included Hannah explaining to Jimbo why punt is a funny word, and getting water poured all over me courtesy of the punting pole.  But it was lovely and relaxing, so it didn't really matter.

The cultural opportunities available through my classes are absolutely staggering.  I've been to the Tate Modern to see the Gaugin Exhibit (£15 a ticket, and Birkbeck paid) for my first British Novel class, and  today we went to see this awesome exhibit called High Society at UCL that examines the cultural history of recreational drug use.  Yesterday for our second Shakespeare in London class we went on a tour of The Globe Theatre.  Over this semester I will be going (for free) to performances of: Hamlet, The Magic Flute, The Woman in Black, Frankenstein, Julius Caesar, King John, and Macbeth.  I'm also visiting The Globe again next week, going backstage at The National Theatre, taking a tour of the Victoria & Albert Museum, and visiting another as-yet undecided art gallery.  Maybe National Gallery.  I'm overwhelmed with art and loving it.  All of my classwork is just reading incredible novels and plays.  I've also read a lot of the pieces before, which means I'm getting to study these novels and plays from the British perspective now.  I'm so excited!  I'll also have the opportunity to go to a bunch of shows for really cheap through my job, so I'm in cultural heaven right now.  For real.

Otherwise, things are pretty great here.  Mackenzie and I are able to split groceries and cook together every night very amicably.  We eat healthfully (lots of veggies, rice, pasta), and tonight we combined forces with Eugene, so we had soup and salad, bread, and some of these really good (probably Russian) potato-ey things.  He ate pork chops.  We did not.  I finally put my pictures up on my walls today and my corner definitely feels more like home.  Basically, when I get home from work and class every day, I hang out in my sweatpants with Mackenzie (+/- other friends), read, do 8 minute abs, and watch movies.  Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.  And what sweetens that deal is the United Kingdom thinking it's appropriate to only play Scrubs and Friends reruns, Never Been Kissed, She's All That, and the new season of Glee.  I love you, British programm(e)ing.

<3 Emily