London to Athens

We have spent the vast majority of the past ten days at the British Museum in London. The museum itself is an incredible place, and we were lucky enough to get personal lectures from some of the smartest and most articulate people I’ve met. But that is not the point of this post, as it were.

We are all learning some basic Greek so that we’ll be able to construct such useful sentences such as, “The big man has a small house” and, “Where is my wife?” when we get to Greece. As it turns out, all my work as a Latin scholar hasn’t really transferred to Greek, so I’m usually one of the last ones to finish our daily quizzes. In my rush to turn in my quiz on Monday, I forgot my notebook on the floor in the main court of the British Museum. Because thousands of people pass through the area over the course of the day, I wasn’t really expecting to get it back.  I went back for one last look at the end of the day and was pleasantly surprised to find the notebook sitting on a bench. However, when I opened it none of the notes were inside. Someone apparently ripped out all the pages of notes and left my blank paper. Ha. Losing the notes was kind of a pain in the ass, but I guess it means you’ve made it as a scholar when people take your  notes instead of the blank pages out of your notebook.

 

I’m glad to have Big Red back home safe and sound.

I’ve never spent more than a few consecutive days in a city before, so I haven’t really ever had to figure out how to work out in an urban setting. I decided running would be the logical choice and figured it wouldn’t be so bad, thinking of Rocky shadow boxing and dominating stairs in Rocky I through Rocky Balboa. Instead I ended up looking more like Forrest Gump. Once I got approximately 2 blocks from the hostel, I realized I had no idea where I was and because the city’s so flat, I ended up running a lot faster than normal. It turns out that running fast when you don’t know where you’re going makes you look pretty stupid. I just felt like running, Jen-nay.

 

About half of the runners in London wear weighted backpacks. Hardo!

 

I toured London on our day off and saw some of the most iconic sites in the city. While there is arguably some sun in this picture of the Parliament Building and the London Eye (the huge Ferris wheel), don’t let that fool you- it’s never sunny in London. We probably saw sun or bright clouds for a total of 43 minutes over the past ten days.

While walking along the Thames, we encountered an enormous crowd that was a combination of lines for the London Eye and the London House of Horror or something. It wasn’t pleasant for anyone, but one old British lady took it particularly poorly. She had this high-pitched, gravelly voice and a thick accent. She gave a monologue that went like this:

(Notes: skip this section if your mom doesn’t let you watch PG-13 movies or you are easily offended. Also, I’ve done my best to make the spelling reflect her pronunciation.)

 “FECK’S SAKE!  STOP FECKING PUSH MAY!  FECKING AMERICANS!  DO YA MIND?  MOTHAFUCKA I’LL BEAT YOU WITH MY CANE!  OOO FECK’S SAKE!”

And so she went, screaming non-stop for about ten minutes. Needless to say she’s now the most quoted person on the FSP.

 

Here’s Big Ben. The lamp post on the right is of no historical significance, and you can’t see the top of the building, but this picture is included by default because I have yet to buy a memory card for my camera. This means that even though this picture sucks, it is still one of best of the 14 images I have of the trip to London.

 

This is Lauriel riding in the back of the van on the way to the airport. I still haven’t gotten used to fact that all the cars and roads are opposite of the ones in the US. Several times I’ve watched cars drive past and thought to myself, “Huh, there’s no one driving that car.” Classic mix up.

 

Here I am with my eye mask and neck pillow on the flight to Athens (Thanks again, mom). If you look closely, you might be able to see the new FSP pet. It’s a caterpillar who lives on my face, somewhere between my nose and upper lip. Hopefully it becomes a butterfly by the time we reach Istanbul in a few weeks.  

Without further ado, the Cam and Lauriel Take on the Greece Fan of the Week is none other than The Johnson. I’m not sure Leif even reads the blog, but it seems fitting either way.

Cheerio (Get it??),

Cam

London!

Hi all,

It has been an exhausting few days. I theoretically have time to explore London tomorrow (until 11:30 am, when we're back in the British Museum--this evening after 10 and tomorrow morning are our first and last break from work for this part of the trip), but I'll probably just get up early and try to get ahead on my reading for the rest of our time in London. I think I averaged 4-5 hours of sleep over the last few days, since I didn't sleep much on the plane or the night before I left. We've had 3 quizzes, 5 assignments and 130 pages of reading due so far. Why the hell am I doing this? Well...

Walking into the British Museum 

Admiring the "Royal Standard of Ur" (it wasn't really a standard, but it's cool)

Listening to a lecture on looking at art by Professor Christesen 

 Cutting into a treacled sponge (it's delicious!)

The central group of the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, which Cam and I got to analyze today

So, highs and lows. I'll try to put up another update before we leave for Greece!

Laurel

Telephone boxes outside the hostel. Must be London.

London

Hello all-

This is my first blog post. Laurel has already written one blog post. I read Noah Hoffman’s blog regularly because he is impressive and inspiring. He writes one of the better blogs in the Nordic skiing community. I thought I would try to blog like Noah for a whole post. But it is too difficult.

Kris Freeman (pictured here) is in fact not on our trip

That aside, I began my trip by taking the bus from Portland to Boston and apparently overestimated the power of the most recent Nor’Easter. Upon arriving at Logan a healthy four hours early for my departure to London, I was left with plenty of time to contemplate a couple of issues. One, this is the first time I have spent a term away from campus since my freshman summer. This is mostly troubling because I will probably have to make do with less than five Collis sausage breakfast sandwiches a week. These once-awesome, now mediocre-at-best sandwiches have been a staple of my weekday mornings for more than two years. I’m pretty sure the Greek diet is made up of strictly olives and yogurt and given that I’m not particularly a morning person to begin with, this change could be brutal. But anyway…

Two, I am going to Greece but don’t know a single word of Greek. Fortunately we are doing a crash course while we’re in London, but the fact remains that at this point I most closely associate the Greek alphabet with Keystone and Greek Key Weekend (and community service, of course). In related news, I recently discovered that the gyros/ jyros I have been demolishing at Foco are actually pronounced heroes- good to know, I guess.

Hero vs gyro… apparently not the same thing

 

In addition, I would like to address the lack of original pictures in this post. It is safe to say that most blogs without pictures suck and are boring. My excuse is that I don’t know how to use my camera yet, but once I figure it out there will be pictures on pictures. For now I have had to make do with the camera built into my computer, which severely limits the subject matter.

 

Here I am with my neck pillow and eye mask thing (good call, mom) (photo credit: me)

Finally, and on a more serious note, I would like to extend special recognition to Natalie, Austin, and Elise because they expressed interest in reading my first post via Facebook. They are the “Cam and Lauriel Take on Greece” fans of the week for sure.

Pax (not Greek but sort of close),

Cam

Porpoise of the blog

Hello friends, teammates, family, acquaintances and other people! Cam and I are '14 Dartmouth students going on a Foreign Study Program for Classics to London, Greece and Turkey this spring. In addition to the official FSP blog, which I will link to as soon as it exists, we will document our travels here as often as we have the time/energy/willpower/moral fortitude. I'm leaving in 5 days for London, so I'll pick it up around then.

Laurel


The porpoise. (Image: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/glorious%20porpoise)