On Wednesday I had my first film screening for my Look of America class. We watched Birth of a Nation, which was three hours too long. It’s a silent film, first shown in 1914 or 1915, I can’t remember. When it was shown in theaters there would be a live band playing the score but we obviously didn’t have that, but the music was on the DVD. It was a strange movie and I could go on for a while about it but I’ll stick with a short version of my opinion. It takes place in the Civil War and follows two families, one from the South and one from the North. The two families are friends but are divided when the Civil War erupts. The first hour and a half of the movie is spent battling and being dramatic about war and the second hour and a half deals with the reconstruction period of the south. It’s been said that this is a racist film and I have to agree that there is a lot of it that is pretty unnecessarily racist. By the end I really didn’t care, I just wanted to have it be over with. When we discussed the film in our seminar for that class on Friday we went around the room and everyone had to say their reaction. This was the first time I’ve spoken in the class so the cat is out of the bag: I’m American. I didn’t really want to say much before because then people would automatically know I’m American and I didn’t want people to assume I know everything they’re talking about it the course. Sure enough the next person who spoke after me kept looking over at me as if to ask “am I right?” and kept asking me questions about the Civil War and American history. I’m really no expert hence why I’m taking this class but I guess this had to happen at some point. All of my other classes are going really well, I’m really loving my art history class because I keep seeing different paintings we’re discussing in museums and will probably see many more in my trek around Europe. Culture and the everyday is also pretty good and has a lot to do with sociology which I know a lot about already so it makes a lot of sense. The next few weeks sound pretty cool, we’re talking about food, transportation, “going green” and other exciting topics. My developmental psychology class is probably my least favorite class thus far because it’s been a lot of review from my psychology of learning class that I took last semester. The nice thing though is that all the subjects in the studies we’ve read and everything we’re learning has to do with babies, so at least I have something cute to look at. Here are some pictures of some of the beautiful views the crazy weather here creates. I took all of these from my window.
Thursday night me, Gwen, Carey, Riley and Jen, all friends from Clark, went to a few clubs. We started at Jam, which is the 50s/reggae night that I went to a few weeks ago and then went to a club called Coalition that has a Thursday night “Secret Discotheque” themed set. As Gwen put it, every song was “epic” and we all had a great time. They played all the songs that everyone knows all the words to such as don’t stop believing by Journey, Hanson’s infamous mmm-bop, a couple S Club 7 songs and even c’est la vie by B*witched. I knew it was awesome because my throat hurt really bad the next morning and my voice was really horse.
While I was out I realized that every night of the week if I go anywhere there are drunk people. The bus coming back from Brighton was full of drunk university students, a lot of whom were very, very drunk to the point of passing out. Since I have a big fear of throw up, I was nervous someone was going to throw up on me. It was not pleasant. I think that the immense amount of binge drinking in this country has been the most surprising element that I didn’t expect. I thought that because the drinking age is younger than in the states that binge drinking wouldn’t be a big thing, but it really is. I’ve never seen this many passed out and falling over drunk people at any university at home. The worst part about the drinking is that people leave their friends when they are sick. When I was in London the other week there was this passed out girl on the bus we were on. And when we were leaving the club on Thursday night we saw this 17-year old boy throwing up on the beach alone. He had gotten sick in the club and was kicked out by the bouncers and his friends didn’t follow him out. It was so sad! I talked to a few of my flatmates about it and they said that that’s pretty common… how horrible! If anyone gets sick at home there’s always someone there to help them. If it’s the same friend over and over I suppose it could get annoying, but still. I’ve been shocked by the number of drunk alone people I’ve seen here.
Friday a few of us went into town to go to sta travel, a student travel agency that has an office in Brighton. We were hoping to book train tickets for weekends in Paris and Brussels but it was super expensive for any of the weekends for the next month so we’ve decided to postpone our more expensive travels to try to find cheaper tickets. It was a bit disheartening so we decided to cheer ourselves up and go out to eat instead of making food. We went to this 5pound vegetarian Indian buffet and it was so good! They had 3 or 4 different kinds of curry, soup, rice, delicious nan, vegetable tempura, some yummy sweet potato thing and lots of interesting sauces. It was really tasty, very satisfying, and very cheap; doesn’t get much better.
The highlight of my week was definitely Saturday when I went to Windsor Castle!! It was one of the trips offered through the International students office on campus so about 80 of us from Sussex boarded a double decker bus and drove the two hours to Windsor. The castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and as my audio tour told me, it is the queen’s favorite residence and she spends most weekends and holidays there. They also hold many official banquets and parties there. The tour took us through a lot of the castle and we got to see all the different rooms and famous artwork that hangs there. They also had a special Henry VIII exhibit, celebrating the 500th anniversary of his accession to the thrown. One of the drawing rooms was dedicated to work from artists who were in his court and had many different paintings of the king and his six wives as well as drawings of what Windsor castle looked like then. It was really neat because I have a small obsession with Henry VIII after reading all of the Phillipa Gregory books about his wives. It was the perfect day to go to the castle, the sun was shining and even though it was really cold, we walked around the town of Windsor and did a little shopping. By the time I got back to campus I was ready to crawl into my bed with a cup of tea and watch a movie.
On Sunday me, Gwen, Riley and Carey went for a nice long walk through the rolling hills of Falmer. We walked down this dirt road and all around us was hills of green dotted with sheep and small farmhouses. It was absolutely stunning and my pictures don’t do the view justice. Before turning around to go back to campus we walked up to the top of this hill and could see all of Brighton in front of us with the ocean in the background. We could also see the ocean peeking out between two hills to the east. It’s views like that that make me pinch myself to make sure it’s real. After our walk we got a couple pizzas and wine from the grocery store on campus and ate dinner before going back to do yucky homework. Blech.
Today’s been my busiest day so far on campus. I had three lectures and a really boring practical for my psychology class. Then me, Riley and Carey went to salsa class! It was really fun and the teacher was hilarious. We were rolling our hips and shimmying like crazy. I’ll definitely try to go every week.
New things I’ve learned:
-they don’t have drip coffee here
-everyone drinks bottled water, I don’t think I’ve seen a single water bottle like a nalgene or sigg (which I suppose is understandable, the water tastes really bad)
-new words: society means club (i.e. salsa society, canoeing society), they use the word proper which doesn’t really have an equivalent in the states. The closest I can think of is correct or right but that doesn’t even really make sense. Proper is used in situations like: a proper meal, a proper dance class. They use the word bit a lot. It has the same meaning as in the states they just use it excessively such as: could I have a bit of water, see you in a bit.
That’s it for this past week. Toodles!
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