Rain Rain, Go Away

Ugh. London is wonderful but this weather just sucks. It rains all the time! There hasn't been a single day when we've been here and it hasn't rained for at least part of the day. And its so F"@& ing cold! It feels like winter...and people here wear shorts! Are they nuts? So what have we been up to since my last bloggy bits? Well, yesterday was a trip to the houses of Parliament and a BBC radio show taping in the evening.

Parliament was ok, but it was a tad boring. The English Parliamentary system is reeeally complicated. Some of the words used are the same, but they don't mean the same thing here. Like "government." Here, Parliament is not the government, the government stems from Parliament. Yeah I know, sounds like splitting hairs, but its actually a big difference. We got lectured by an MP, or member of Parliament, who spent most of his time bashing Tony Blair and the majority Labor party (this MP was a conservative from the Manchester area). Nice enough guy...but this was like an hour and half lecture on a governmental system that we didn't understand at like 9:00 am...needless to say that the vast majority of us spaced out and/or fell asleep...not intentionally, but this trip has been exhausting.

Parliament itself is a really neat building architecturally and contains a lot of history. There are paintings and busts everywhere (just like every other large building in England) and before proceeding to the lecture with the MP we had to go through (again) a laundry list of every single monarch England has ever had, look at their portraits, marvel and the ridiculous tudor costumes, and then talk about all their children, who was beheaded and who the 4th earl of whatsit was during the battle of thingamabob. Yeah. The Brits really like their oil painted monarchs.

After that, we had class, then went to a radio show taping in the evening. We didn't really know what the show was going to be and we were prepared for it to be a boring news type show. Turned out, it was a hilarious game show. It was set up much like NPR's news quiz show called "Wait, wait Don't Tell Me!" in that it was a fast paced show played by a panel of celebrities. It was freakin hilarious. The show was called "Just a Minute" and the panel was given a random topic by the host and had to talk about it for a full minute without deviating from the subject, hesitating, or repeating themselves. If they did any of those, one of the other panel members would interrupt them and the topic would switch people like that till time ran out. The topics included such gems as "what I have on my IPOD," "baboons," "puddings," and "American slang." All of these were talked about using that fabulous dry British wit and it was so funny I think my abs hurt when we left. All in all, we had a great time and chatted about the show on the late night tube ride back to Crouch End.

Today, we've had class all day and have just gotten done. We had an interesting lecture by a guy named Bob who has been our tour guide for several of the tours we've been on thus far. He is incredibly knowledgeable and fun to talk to and the lecture was fascinating. We got an excellent summary of nearly two thousand years of British history in an hour and a half. We then went and had some lunch, then headed back for a bit more class. We have a close knit group of six of us who are taking classes, and its been really fun getting to know all of them. Being in a big foreign city that you have to navigate by yourself has a funny way of bringing you closer to people.

Alright, well, I think that's all the excitement for now, but do check out the above photos of Big Ben and some of my buddies at our local pub from the other night.

Cheers!

UK Words of the Day:

Row = block of houses
MP = Member of Parliament
Laundrette = Laundromat
jacket potato = baked potato
Telly = television
Newsagent = usually a convenience store, sells newspapers