Reading Week

No classes this week at Queen Mary's: it's Reading Week, a time for responsible students to catch up on and get ahead in their coursework.  Most study abroad students use this time to travel...unfortunately, I'll be hanging around flat 40 being a responsible student.  I'm trying to clear my Christmas break of essay-writing, because I have four final essays due when the break ends in January...and I'll be doing most of my travelling over Christmas.

Yesterday:

National Gallery with my Art Histories class at 10 a.m., after which I decided to check out the National Portrait Gallery, which is right next door.  Really cool: I'd rather look at pictures of people than pictures of anything else.  There was even this exhibit of a cast of a man's face, a self portrait, which he'd made from his own blood!  It was kept in a refrigerated case.  Apparently he updates the cast every ten years or so to reflect how he's aged, and fills it with new blood.  Really fascinating, in a disturbing sort of way.  The gallery had portraits of everyone from Ian McKellen to Charlotte Bronte to Darwin (who, by the way, is on England's ten pound note) to Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue.

Afterward, I walked around Leicester Square with my friend Angeline, who is from Singapore.  There was a mini carnival going on, with rides and games and food.  Angeline had never been to Soho, so we checked out that area as well.  Soho is pretty sketchy, actually, with lots of sex shops!  There are some fun clubs there, but I definitely wouldn't want to walk around there by myself at night.  Angeline left to go to a dance class and I got back on the tube to Mile End, to my empty flat.  I had to walk back from the station in the rain, and I whipped out my new umbrella for its first use...and the wind turned it inside out.  I think I need to invest in a quality umbrella, not a five-pound one from H&M.  Janette and I ended up going back to Leicester Square with some friends last night and catching a night bus back to campus.  All in all--umbrella excluded--it was a fun day.  Now that I've been jarred out of sleep by a Pooley House fire drill, however, it's time to crank out the essays!