Day 18

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with my blogs! But here’s the update. There’s really nothing to say about Monday. I went to class, learned about stuff I don’t really remember (which isn’t good, I know, but for some reason it just didn’t stick), and then I came home and worked on my essay which was due Wednesday at midnight. I went and got the books I needed for research on Sunday, and on Monday I started reading through them and coming up with a “game plan.” The way I intended to take it originally wasn’t working, so once I started looking through the books and writing down the stuff that interested me, I found a common theme and wove my paper around that. Then I wrote as much as I could about it without actually putting any of the research in it. My problem with my last paper was that it was too much research, not enough analyzing, so I decided to analyze first this time, and then support my ideas with research. I’m not sure if he’s going to like it or not, but I liked it. So I got about 1,150 words done on Monday, out of 2,000. Then at 6:45 we went and did the River Thames walk that I had signed up for as one of the cultural activities offered by the program. It ended up that 40 people who paid didn’t show up, so the few of us that did got to have nicely small groups with our two tour guides. My tour guide was really interesting, but it also turned out that every sight we went to I had already learned about. I probably could’ve given that tour. Although I did learn a few new things, so it wasn’t a complete loss. And it turned out that it was a mini pub crawl so we stopped at three pubs along the way and I tried some ale called Young’s Bitter. The guide recommended it to me. It was good, but it made my stomach feel weird, so that wasn’t good. We went to this one pub that’s called a “free house” because they aren’t tied to any certain brewery. They actually specialize in bringing in ales from all over the world. On the walls of the pub were hundreds of the labels of all the different kinds of ales they’ve served over the years. One of them was called “Harry Potter’s Christmas Ale.” I thought it should’ve been called “Butterbeer,” just like in the books. So after that we headed home, but stopped at the Builders Arms on the way because we were all hungry. And then we made it home. It may not have been a terribly eventful day but it felt good to get half my paper done and then go out and see the city as the sun was going down.
Above: The Clink Prison Museum that I really wanted to go to, but it's closed.

Above: The free ale house with its hundreds of beer labels on the walls.

The George Inn. This used to be a carriage house, a place where people traveling to London or from it could stay the night and swap out their horses and what not. It's one of the few remaining carriage houses.

Love you guys!

Jaime