Thursday, January 15, 2009

15/1/09

First off, I sent in the Obama column last night and The London Paper got back to me. They said this:

Hi Scott,
Thanks for sending in your column. We are considering it for publication. Can I ask your age and occupation? We like to state that for each author.
Many thanks,
Mark


I would imagine that means they are going to use it, which would be very excited, especially if I had something published before I even started a class here. Anyways, I'll let everyone know the link and you know I'll grab copies if it does actually run.

Today I turned in my group's 'getting to know London' project (which I did the whole thing, mostly out of my own curiosity, we didn't have to do it) and then I went to Salas to get tickets to see Peter Bjorn and John on March 5.

They are probably my favorite band (the whistley guys) and the venue is on my street, just a mile or two down. It was only 12.50 pounds, so another plus. The Streets play here on the 29th, but that's sold out for now, I don't know if they do StubHub or anything else like that here.

From there I went to King's Crossing train station.

It is right by Salas (I think that was the station in Harry Potter? Someone will tell me if it's wrong) and went down to the Tate Britain (not Tate Modern as I thought.) I got there rather early, so I picked up a Metro (another free paper, more newsy than the others) and read it by the Thames for a while.

We were supposed to meet our group leader Koichi by the Underground stop, but he was 20 minutes late, so I ended up sitting outside for about an hour, and today was rather damp and cold.

The Tate Britain has art from only British artists. It turns out I'm not too keen on British art. Most of the stuff was the 18th century portraits of people sitting around in fancy clothes not looking real. I find paint thrown on canvasses more interesting.

They did have some cool things, like a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I that I swear I've seen before. It is sort of amazing to think that they commissioned paintings so that people would know what they actually looked like. It was about 400 years old.

They also had a Henry Moore sculpture that I think I've seen before as well. Maybe there is a replica at the DIA?


I came back and made some food and was invited to eat with the rest of the hall. They're really cool people. We talked about difference in America and England, how they don't do peanut butter and bagels that much, things like that. Turns out Phil was very impressed that I interviewed Dizzee Rascal (but not impressed I interviewed Paul Oakenfold. I figured it'd be the other way around.)

I went with the hall down to the club/bar thing in our basement of our campus and hung out. As I walked in, they played Dizzee Rascal. And they played him later too. Pretty funny stuff. But nearly everything they played was American. Snoop Dogg, DMX, Jay-Z, even Soulja Boy.

I ended up chatting with Phil from next door and he was very jealous that I saw the Arctic Monkeys live. They're apparently the best thing ever. I asked if the Beatles were still cool over here, and he said yeah. His parents had seen them six times or so, even in Liverpool, which is incredibly cool. After hanging around for a while there, I decided to head back up, I was tired and wanted to get a couple things caught up.

I purchased my plane tickets and reserved a hostel in Athens. I'm pretty excited, I never thought I'd ever go there. It's a pretty awesome first trip. I hope. I need to figure out what else there is besides the Acropolis there, I remember learning a lot about it in art history, I'm sure I won't have much trouble filling time. I'm there from February 1-3 and staying at the Athens Backpackers Hostel. I'm excited.

Tomorrow I have another orientation meeting and then all the study abroad people are going on a boat tour on the Thames for five or six hours. Could be cool. I'm thinking I might want to go to Picadilly Circus tomorrow too, I also need to figure out where the plastic dinosaurs by Crystal Palace are.

My foot is still bothering me but I think it's getting a little better. Ir's probably only slightly torn.

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