Having Kara visit was so much fun! She arrived Friday night and we spent awhile talking before resting up for our big day in Brighton on Saturday. We admired the Pavilion and walked all along Brighton Pier, which is bigger than I realized. There are a couple of restaurants, lots of stands selling snacks and souvenirs, carnival game booths, an arcade/casino, and a midway at the end with rides (including one that swings you over the ocean. I haven't decided whether I would enjoy this or not.). It was fun to see the whole thing. We had fish and chips for lunch, which was delicious of course, and explored/window-shopped in Brighton for awhile. We also discovered a Unitarian church! It's at a really easy place to get to by bus, so I think I'm going to try it over Easter weekend, since I'll be back in Brighton briefly. I'm excited! Anyway, we were debating whether or not to go to Rottingdean for cream tea (we wanted to be back in time to go to a comedy show in Brighton at 7) because the bus we were planning to take was late, and then lo and behold, another bus appeared! It took the long route, but that's the one I prefer because you get great views of the English countryside, especially if you sit up top. Cream tea was food bliss as usual, even better than the first time I went to Rottingdean. I just don't know what I'm going to do with myself when I can't have clotted cream anymore.
After cream tea we went back to Brighton and poked around in some shops before going to Komedia, the comedy club. There was a huge line and it turned out that the stand-up show we wanted to see was sold out. However, there were (cheaper) tickets still available for something called The Treason Show, which was basically political satire (it was a British clone of Second City, for those of you who are familiar with that group). We had about an hour to kill before the show, and shops were mostly closed, so we just sat in the club and drank Strongbow blacks (cider with blackcurrant juice, aka delicious) and played Hangman to keep ourselves entertained. I got more of the British pop culture references in the show than Kara did, but we both enjoyed it, especially when the actors made each other laugh during the skits.
Kara had to leave fairly early on Sunday to meet another friend in London, so we didn't stay up too late after the show, but we did talk awhile and share some good YouTube videos. Needless to say, I laughed a lot that day. It was great to see Kara. I've made friends here, but there's nothing like having history with someone, and Kara and I have known each other since about middle school.
Well, after my seminar tomorrow I will be done with spring term! Next term I will only have one class (The Look of America), but I technically pick up another class and I have four assessments. The "technical" other class is Independent Research, so there's no lectures or seminars but we're expected to spend a chunk of time writing a critical response to a journal article in psychology (we can choose from three articles, all of which are very meaty - one is 80 pages long, but that's because it includes a couple dozen critical responses and the bibliography for the original article and all of the responses, so the actual article is about 20 pages long). Then I have papers for Art as Psychology and The Look of America, and an exam for Social Psychology. All of this will be done by June 4th, and then I have until June 24th to write the report for my research internship. In other words, I'm going to be doing a LOT of writing in April and May - about 21 pages, to be exact (though they assign papers here by word count, not page numbers). At first I had visions of spending the entire month cooped up in the library, which was enough to make me despair, but after doing some calculations I figured out that I'll be okay as long as I just work hard during the day and do some reading over break.
Speaking of break, I leave at the crack of dawn (literally... our flight is at 6:30, so we're getting a cab at 4:15... ouch) on Friday for Greece! Easter break is a month long, so I'll be traveling most of the time. Here's my schedule:
March 20-23 - Greece (Athens & Santorini)
March 23-29 - Italy (Rome, Florence & Venice)
March 29-April 6 - Germany (Hamburg & Darmstadt)
April 6-April 10 - Paris
April 10-April 14 - Brighton (taking a break from break, haha)
April 15-April 17 - Copenhagen
I'm very excited but I'm also getting nervous. After Greece and Italy I'm basically traveling by myself, meeting friends in the different cities, so I just hope everything goes smoothly. This time to travel was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Sussex, and though planning the trip was MUCH more stressful and took MUCH more time than I had anticipated, I think it will be worth it. It still hasn't really hit me that at this time on Friday I'll be in GREECE!
I really have no idea if/when I'll be able to update this blog while traveling, so you can just imagine me taking lots of pictures and eating lots of food wherever I am. :o) See you in April!
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