Today the subject of my dilly-dalliance is a paper for my IPLF class due this Friday at 5:00 pm. Our professor, the wonderful Dr. Grillot, has already so graciously extended the deadline for this paper because we have been so busy with the Board of Visitors this week. However, that still leaves plenty of time I could be using to be productive with my life, and instead I choose to...not. I choose to not a lot.
Fortunately, in order to procrastinate one thing, I usually end up doing something else of equal or lesser importance. So today, for instance, I cleaned my bathroom. Then I caught up on my email correspondence. Even now, I'm using this blog post as an excuse to further put off The Dreaded Paper.
Usually somewhere in this routine I will have a moment of weakness and begin the project at hand. This time that weak moment produced three-fourths of a page and a witty title for my paper. Thankfully, a Skype date interrupted my progress, and now here we are.
About last week.
First, London.
I kept a travel journal of the whole experience, so I think I will just copy a few excerpts of it here:
March 16th (Friday)
"Our taxi driver, Hank, drove us to the hotel. So quaint! We're just down the street from Hyde Park and the famed Oxford Street. I love London already. They use words like "queue" and phrases like "it's been here for donkey's ages."
"I still love London, and my ardor is growing. To walk the streets of this city of ideas, of intellect, of fish and chips! Which we had for dinner. Then we conquered the Tube and made it to the Tate Britain, enjoying a short jaunt along the Thames. Oh, the view of the Thames at night is surreal. The afternoon fog - which coats everything in a dreamy, 19th-century daze - has faded with the setting sun, and the crisp air smells of dusty book pages."
March 17th (Saturday)
"It started raining in Kensington Gardens today, but it was beautiful and I got to see the Peter Pan statue so I didn't care. Then Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament."
"If I ever come back to London, I will refuse to do the major tourist destinations. I guess I just have a penchant for the obscure and/or experiential, but I would rather browse a street market in Camden or spend a couple of hours in a 300-year-old bookstore that Hemingway frequented than take the same picture of the same building that millions of other Americans have already taken. However, tourism is also a big part of the London atmosphere (economics and all that) so I should appreciate observing it first-hand."
March 18th (Sunday)
"It didn't feel like Sunday. We hit the ground running early this morning, and have had little to no rest on this Day of Rest. I'm still sad we didn't get to go to the Evensong service at Westminster, but I can be thankful for the few hours I have this evening to get refreshed."
"Shakespeare's Globe Theater was amazing! The best part was not being in a reconstruction of the open-air, thatched-roof theater that performed the Bard's plays. The best part was our tour guide, 'a spry old British woman who could kick my butt' according to Mac. An astute observation. That lady was hilarious and really knew her stuff. We learned about groundlings and costumes and Pudding Street. (Shakespearean insults to follow.)"
March 19th (Monday)
"Monday morning on the Tube: life happening quickly all around you. Swarms of city folk converge and disperse, everyone hurrying to work, or reading the paper intently in their starched suits and shiny shoes. Business is booming and the workers are walking walking walking-
"Until the sanctuary of the church (pun intended). Peace and stone welcome the weary traveler at the door and the tour of Westminster begins. My favorite part of this medieval church experience was not Poet's Corner, which was far and away one of the coolest places I've seen, but it was the minute of silence for the hourly prayer, interrupting the hum of the unconcerned visitor with humble words and good wishes."
Thoughts of Paris to follow...
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