NaNoWriMo

Last night, I registered for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is simple: write a 50,000-word (roughly 175 pages) novel between November 1 and November 30. Editing and clarity will go out the window in a frantic rush to be one of the elite few that had enough time to write 50,000 words that will probably be completely jumbled and incoherent. Will I do it? Stay tuned and I'll keep you updated. For more information or to register if you're interested in participating, visit www.nanowrimo.org. 

Oh, and Happy Halloween! =)

-ZMG

For anyone looking for a worthwhile read...

I believe I started reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral in high school, but couldn't get through it. It's a rather dense book with multiple complex layers, by no means a quick-and-easy read. However I returned to it this summer and finished a couple weeks ago. I have never been affected so deeply by a book in my life. Roth is a masterful writer, and if you can manage to stick with his prose through the slow sections, you may realize that every word of those sections was absolutely necessary. It is truly powerful and moving, and I suggest anyone with some time (but seriously, who has any time? No one does, so everyone should read it...figure that logic out) find a copy and read it. 

So, once again: American Pastoral by Philip Roth. By far my favorite book of all time...so far. Read it.

-ZMG

What to do with a five day weekend?

Yes, I have a five day weekend. How did that happen? Well, I only take two classes at the University of East Anglia (UEA), one of which meets once a week for two hours on Tuesday (Contemporary Writing), and the other, 18th Century Writing, meets twice a week--a lecture and a seminar--both an hour long, both on Wednesday. I do, however, have the class I take with the Dickinson program, which meets once a week on different days to coincide with the schedules of all 25 people in the class. 

I've been in Norwich for six weeks now. I'm completing my sixth week of classes and I handed in a paper for each of UEA classes today. I've been acclimating myself with the UEA campus and a bit with the city of Norwich. UEA is a terrible concrete atrocity in an otherwise beautiful part of England. The 1960s or '70s architecture is full of hard right angles and grey concrete so that the university actually resembles some sort of maximum-security prison. That being said, the way the campus is laid out is quite fascinating. It is contained within itself. There's a bookstore, food outlet, bank, post office, a pub (but no dining hall, grr...), even a booth to have passport photos taken. There are elevated walkways that take you to the Student Union building, the library, the lecture halls and virtually all other academic buildings. 

The Sportspark, I believe, is one of UEA's finer qualities. It has squash courts, a gym, four basketball courts that are also used for other sports (badminton, netball, baseball, cricket, etc.), a swimming pool, a climbing wall, and several football (soccer) fields. Okay, let's be honest, it's not that much better than the Kline Athletic Center at Dickinson (if at all) but the facilities are pretty nice. I've joined the baseball team and I'm on the men's basketball second team (not quite good enough to be on the first team). Two weekends ago the baseball team took a roughly three-hour trip to Nottingham for a baseball tournament where we played teams from Oxford (who we lost to and then beat the next day), Southhampton and Nottingham. It was great fun, and wonderful to finally be playing (somewhat) competitive baseball again. I'm sure you can imagine what the level of baseball over here is...We ended up coming in second place! When we returned home, however, I was experiencing soreness in muscles I didn't even realize I had. 

I've had some time to explore Norwich, which is a 10-20 minute bus ride from campus depending on traffic. Nrowich is supposed to be in the "top ten" of English cities for shopping. There's a mall, an open-air market, and winding roads of old, beautiful cobblestone streets. Two symbols of Norwich are the Norwich cathedral and Norwich castle. The spire of the cathedral reaches high into the sky, far above the rest of the city. The castle is a peculiar one. It's a large stone cube that sits atop a man-made hill. The ground in Norfolk is so flat that it was necessary to build a hill to provide an advantage against attackers. One of my favorite pastimes in Norwich thus far has simply been to wander the city alone taking in its small, beautiful streets and discovering what the city has to offer. I've heard there are places to go to hear live poetry, but I have yet to find them. That is a project for the upcoming month.

I've fallen in love with the winding streets of Norwich. They are picturesque and exactly the type of scenic backdrop I was hoping for before arriving in Norwich. A few friends and I discovered a tiny place to have tea called The Britons Arms. It is small, quiet and homey with a small selection of teas, coffee and homemade baked goods. I go there every two weeks or so with a friend or by myself to enjoy some quiet time away from campus. 

And now to answer my own question: What do I do with a five day weekend? Well I've been exploring, and I would like to explore more, although it takes all of fifteen minutes to walk across all of Norwich. However November 6-10 three friends and I will be boarding a plane and heading to Dublin for 4 nights. I am trying to plan to meet up with a couple friends in Bologna, Italy the weekend of November 14, and I'm considering a trip to Berlin for late November. When you have six hours of class a week, the possibilities are endless!

I do need, however, to remember to escape campus once in awhile. It is very easy to not leave the University Village (my residence) for five days straight between the days I do actually have class. Now is the time to take advantage of being on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I have every intention of doing so!

-ZMG

A Month in London

My month in London is complete. Sincerest apologies for not writing sooner, but being in London left little time for anything other than what we needed to do and exploring the city on our own. 

Arrival in London was one of the more overwhelming experiences of my life. A sleepless flight (perhaps a product of having a cup of airplane coffee right before trying to sleep--needless to say, I wasn't thinking) and a roughly 10:30/11am arrival at Heathrow made for an exhausting first day. The idea was to get us acclimated as quickly as possible and to get us past our first day of jet lag, which resulted in my being awake for over 24 hours. The adrenaline served me well for the first few hours, during which we had to find a specific stop on the London Underground (aka the Tube) and take note of the are in which we were in. The stop my roommate and I had to find was Liverpool Station, a spot in a more financial district of the City of London. However when we returned from Liverpool Station amid the crush of London citizens leaving work and rushing to the pubs, the adrenaline began to wear off, and exhaustion and panic set in.

I believed that making the transition to London life wouldn't be difficult coming straight from New York City, but I couldn't have been more incorrect. Growing up in New York, I never realized how overwhelming a strange city could be when you didn't know the streets like the back of your hand. I was terrified. I didn't know where I was, where I was going, and I had suddenly realized just how far I was from home, and for how long I would be away. The combination of exhaustion, panic and jet lag is a nasty one that can really only be remedied by a restful sleep or communication with people from home. When I returned to the hotel )and after dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant at which the waiter was very excited we were from America and enthusiastically suggested things to do and brought us some brandy "on the house"...he was very fond of that saying) I promptly fell asleep on my bed with my computer in my lap. I woke up several minutes later in a panic because my computer's battery had died and all I wanted was to get in touch with people from home and I couldn't figure out how the plug adapted I had bought worked. I had to go to my professor help...hah.

I slept like a rock that night (and really every night thereafter as well). Our schedule was packed and we regularly had to rise before 8am, and you must understand how difficult that is for 25 nineteen- and twenty-year-olds. Perhaps if I had written an entry every day, I could go into detail about every experience but if I were to do that it would turn into a 500 page memoir, so here's what we saw (I will go into the ones that I found most moving or interesting in more detail): a boat trip down the River Thames to Greenwich to visit the Maritime Museum and the prime meridian, a visit to the Museum of London preceded by a walk through Roman London, experiencing a Mozart Requiem and clarinet concerto at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, a visit to the Notting Hill Carnival, a walk through the City of London, a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, a walk through the neighborhood in which we were living, Bloomsbury, a play called Let There be Love, a visit to Stonehenge and Bath, Westminster Abbey, a play called Her Naked Skin at the National Theatre, a walk through Southwark, South of the Thames, the Tate Modern, a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and a production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, a walk along the Thames with Lord Leslie Griffiths, Baron of Burry Port and a tour of Westminster Palace, followed by a tour of St Paul's Cathedral (including a walk up the 538 steps to the top of the dome) and Evensong, a meeting with Robert Hannigan, Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, experiencing the Proms at Royal Albert Hall, a trip to the East London Ragged School Museum, "Late at the Tate" at the Tate Museum, a day trip to Oxford, Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe, a visit to the British Museum and the Charles Dickens Museum, Mayor's Question Time at City Hall, an exploration of the Tower of London, a walk in the East End to experience some of London's fantastic diversity, two Harold Pinter plays at the National Theatre,  A Slight Ache and Landscape, the musical production of Billy Elliot, and finally, a trip to Hamstead Heath, followed by a visit to Regents Park and Harrod's. 

Now, if you've managed to make it through that extensive list, I'm impressed. When people we met along the way asked us what we had done in London, our response was, "What haven't we done in London?" 

I found that I never quite adjusted entirely to the London way of life, but I've a feeling that part of this can be attributed to the fact that we were staying in a small bed and breakfast and living out of our suitcases for nearly a month. However, my slight discomfort did not prevent me from being utterly fascinated by the city. I was blown away by the amount of sites there were to see and how much there was to experience.

I had no trouble identifying my favorite part of London. I loved the walk along the south bank of the Thames. Walking over Westminster Bridge, we had a spectacular view of Westminster Palace (the Houses of Parliament) and the London Eye. then, walking east along the river, we had a beautiful view of the city skyline, including the Gherkin, and my favorite, St. Paul's Cathedral. I am completely fascinated by Christopher Wren's fantastic structure. You may have seen photographs of St. Paul's through the fire and smoke of the Blitz (an impressive presence amidst so much wreckage and mayhem), and the cathedral is no less impressive in the 21st century. It dominates the skyline, towering over the structures around it (it is not in the financial center of the city, which I am pleased about because some of the buildings there may dwarf the cathedral). It looks powerful, like it is presiding over the rest of the city, keeping watch over one of the most powerful cities in the world. The view from the top of the dome was breathtaking, although a bit unnerving as well. I've unfortunately (and most definitely) inherited my father's fear of heights, so the narrow walkway at the top and relatively low railing made me a little uncomfortable. Fantastic view, though.

The number of museums in London is astonishing, as well. My favorite was the Tate Modern, probably because it made me feel like I was at MoMA back home. There was a fantastic exhibit of urban vs. studio photography with some beautiful photographs, both of models and unsuspecting passers-by. The museum itself is in a massive out-of-use power station directly across the Thames from St. Paul's so that the two structures almost mirror each other. Granted, St. Paul's is a much more beautiful show of architectural expertise than the atrocity that is the Tate Modern.

I also enjoyed exploring London's East End. This section of London is certainly it's greatest display of its incredible diversity. It is now mostly Bengali and Somali, with a huge Muslim population. Brick Lane, a small street with a lot of history, is lined with Bengali restaurants and sari stores and the occasional mosque. However, it is also adorned with some hip clothing stores and the occasional up-scale restaurant and real estate office. These, as I've learned from experiences in my neighborhood, are sure signs of gentrification. The area is a fantastic example of how people can mold their surroundings to fit their needs. There was a restaurant on Brick Lane claiming to be the "Oldest Restaurant on Brick Lane!" and it had been established in 1971. All the stores and restaurants looked fairly new, testament to the fact that the current population in the East End is a relatively new one. the area once had a huge Jewish population, which is now nearly completely gone. It is only a matter of time before the neighborhood changes again...

I had very mixed feelings about London. While it may not be my favorite place in the world, I was still fascinated by it. Never had I been in a place that had so much visible history available to anyone visiting, and the number of attractions in the city was astounding. Even after being there for a month, I still don't feel that I got to see nearly everything the city has to offer. I'm looking forward to making some day-trips to London while I'm in Norwich and visiting some of the museums again and visiting things I didn't get to see. Cheers!

-ZMG

Hello!

Hello everyone! I have decided to start my own blog here, not through the Dickinson website! My goal is to add more to this than just study abroad entries, and  to continue updating it once I return. I will add the entry I have already done in the Dickinson blog to this one, and add another one shortly! Enjoy!

-ZMG