Feb 20-22: Am Alive, Am Back, Am Busy.

Hello all,

Sorry I've been doing sparse updates and such. One of our classes ends this week and so the triggering of that final project is causing all of us to freak out and start looking at the other final projects. Only 8 weeks left in England :\ Suuuuper sad.

Feb 20
Cornwall and St. Ives was amazing. Mom, I'm pretty sure I saw the houses that were used as models for the little houses you used to collect when I was little. The real ones. St. Ives is a little fishing village about 7 hours by train away from London, and in the southwest little niblet of land for England. It's surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic ocean (which surprisingly looked way more cleaner than the Pacific, and only slightly colder. I'm pretty sure I could have swam in it for a few minutes at least) and everything else is postcardesque hills and cottages. I could definitely understand belief in the fae and spirits while we were wandering around on the hills and such.

We went for a tour of the Tate St. Ives, but while the outside was awesome, the inside wasn't what I was expecting. It was a small gallery devoted entirely to a single artist who at one point had lived his life in St. Ives. I can't even remember his name or tell if he was British or American. He basically made collages of rooms of famous people/events and then painted whatever he collaged onto giant canvases.

St. Ives seems to be well stocked on pubs, ice cream, ocean, and artists. Every other place was either a house, a restaurant, or a gallery. Basically a fun place to stay for a little while and/or retire, not a fun place to be young and go out to meet other young people. But that was okay. A group of us ended up playing board and card games at a pub, then went back to the hostel to watch the Blues Brothers. Everyone seemed to rave about the movie so apparently I missed out on something good. I passed out about thirty seconds into the intro music.

Feb 21
The next day Cat Rachel and I went to check out Penzance, a town further west and mentioned in the title of one of the first musical theatre pieces I was ever introduced to. It wasn't as awesome as St. Ives, but the gardens were nice. Also, it was very hilly, and the beaches were made of smooth river stones. Weird, no?

Amusement ensued at 3pm when Cat and I caught the train back to London, which had to stop at St. Erst (the train went from London to St. Erst, which is basically a waystation which then means you get on a single car train to take you to St. Ives.) When it got to the platform we saw the entire rest of the group and startled Jackie when we knocked on the window and waved, already on the train before the doors had opened or even before the train had slowed down fully. Good times.

Six hour train rides are only slightly more bearable than plane rides. But I'd still prefer a train to a plane.

Feb 22
Today I happily woke up late at 11am (considering the last two days I had woken up at 5am and 6:30am/9:30am respectively) and cooked food, and wandered the V&A museum to work on a project with Cat. They had this amazing travelling exhibit called Decode, where there were basically art created using computer code and programming, and interactive things like a wall you could stand in front of and wave your arms around and colors would splash on a screen, and a tree projection that would lose its leaves if you walked up to it, and then the leaves would scatter when people walked by.

For dinner I fried potatoes, onions and celery, which was interesting but tasted pretty good. Then it was back to Cat's room to put together our presentation for later this week.

Now, I am going to read my book, and get some sleep. For lo, tomorrow is Handel Day, and I am going to need rest.

Oh, and P.S. The photostream at the top should be working now, and is updated with all the photos from St. Ives and Penzance.