From London With Love

4th August 2009

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Hey, hey, hey USA.

This week is going by super fast which I think is really unfair (insert epic sad face). This girl is not ready to come home. Although, I am looking forward to eating some really fantastic Mexican food. Yummy.

Dr. Fischer brought in a guest speaker for class on Monday. His name was Jon Stewart and he used to be in a semi-successful British rock band called Sleeper. They had 8 #1 songs on the British charts and toured with Oasis and Blur. He was really interesting. He’s now a professor at the Brighton School of Music. He told us a lot about the in’s and out’s of British rock music and even talked a little bit about music business. He had some great stories about touring too. I really enjoyed our time with him. I think Dr. Fischer has done a great job with our classes and our fieldtrips. I wish this class could have lasted longer than a month!

We had our last fieldtrip today. We went to the British Music Experience at the O2 Arena (the place where Michael Jackson was supposed to play his 50 shows). The Arena itself was really impressive. We definitely do not have anything like it in the States. It had lots of retail stores & places to eat (including 2 Starbucks). It even had a roller rink in it. The British Music Experience is a museum/exhibit that showcases British music and musicians from the 1940’s up to today. Lots of the displays were interative- lots of memoribilia and great video clips. The entire exhibit was very high tech - we were able to swipe our ticket on most of the displays so that when we log in to their website with our personal ticket number we can see everything we looked at that day. How neat is that? I spent a ton of time in there. We went in a little after 10 and It was almost one when I looked at my watch…and I had barely made it into the 1970’s! Sadly, I had already made plans to meet up with someone on campus at 2 so I had to book it back to campus (on the other side of town) after speeding through the rest of the exhibits. However, I did make time to do the interactive dance booth! Lexie and I learned how to do a dance called “The Rock N’Roll.” It gives you a quick dance lesson then records you doing your attempt at the dance. Supposedly, I will be able to pull it up to view it when I log in to the website. I will most definitely post a link for you all to laugh at ;) I talked to Dr. Fischer on my way out- He said he thought the British Music Experience was way better than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which I still need to go to!). I think I may get up early on Thursday morning and go back since I missed out on really getting into a decade or two. I think that would be a good way to spend an off day, right?

I stayed in tonight because I have a presentation to give in the morning and our music journals are due tomorrow as well. I’m not complaining though, this is the only night I’ve actually had to do homework since I’ve been here.

Meaghan and I are going to West Hamstead after class tomorrow to eat at some famous crepe shop. I’m going to get a Nutella crepe and it’s going to be amazing, I already know it. Nom, nom, nom.

Over the past few days I’ve been making a mental list of the things I’ll miss most about London. Here are a few:
- Public transportation - tubes, trains, buses. I love them all. I do not miss driving my car.
-Sainsbury’s - The best supermarket ever! I love it even more than Kroger.
- Seeing nice looking English men on their way to work in their fancy suits.
- British accents *swoon*

Love,
mch <3