My week.

Sorry that my posting has not been the greatest this week. The internet has been crappy and people have been working on it so then it gets shut down completely...sorry. Anyways, on monday the 9th we went to class for the first time since the snow storm. For our Contemporary Britian class, the students all take a week in which they prepare to lead our seminar/discussion group which follows the class. My partner and I were suppose to go this week but because of the snow last week the lecture from the week before had been skipped and was then going to be rolled into this weeks lecture. We figured that our week would be skipped over, so we didn't bother keeping any of the materials we had found. When we got class she asked if we had prepared anything and we said no and she said that was okay since the snow threw everyone off and gave us a different week to present. That night for theatre class we went to see the show The Pitman's Painters at the National theatre. The National theatre was cool, since there's three theatres in it and each theatre is different, one is even a black box and I'm really excited to go see a show in that theatre.
On the 10th one of the boys in our group turned 20 and we celebrated by going to a place called Zoo Bar and Club. The Zoo Bar normally costs 15 pounds to get in, but we had called ahead and told them how many of us were coming and we were able to pay a discount rate of 5 pounds (that's about 7 or 8 dollars).
On Wednesday, I went to Oxford Street, which is the main shopping street and most of the popular stores are located here. I did some window shopping, found a few touristy stores, looked around in there (i thought of ideas for what to get some people well I was in the stores) and then went back to the house and hung out with friends.
On Thursday, I went to my internship for only the third time ever. My job well I'm here is to research different support groups for both men and women that are found around London. The Red Cross is looking at making a support group of some sort and wants to find out if it's necessary/reasonable to do this. After I'm done researching online we compile the data and make a list of 15 places we want to go out and visit and some others that we want to call to get more information. I've already been told that a few coworkers want to go check out certain places, so they'll be going with me to help me evaluate those places. Then when/if I finish all of that I then evaluate and write up my findings and make a recommendation to the Red Cross. Later that night I went to go see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform Othello. In order to get to the theatre, I had to take the tube, then get off the tube and transfer to the London overground rail system. I may have mentioned this earlier but London has this thing called the Oyster Card which I pay for one time each month and that gets me on any form of public transportation within whats called Zone 1 and 2 an unlimited amount of time during that month. The two zones cover the main parts of London like Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street as well as my internship. This means I can get on the tube, bus and London overground (the light rail) in these areas with my card. Getting there took a while but it was worth it since the show was amazing, and yes I cried when Desdemona and Othello died.
On Friday a group of us left for Wales. There's another Central program there, so some of the students here know students there and we crashed in their rooms, which saved us money. We had to wait for one girl to finish her internship so we didn't leave London until about 9 pm. Then we had to make one train transfer which the others in the group almost missed. Once we made the transfer, we got to about two stops and then we sat at the platform for 15 minutes and then the engine and lights were turned off. We were worried that we'd have to spend the night in the town we stopped at and none of us knew where we would be able to go/how to find our way around. We arrived in Bangor finally around two am so we didn't obviously see a whole lot when we got there.
On Saturday we did some sightseeing around Bangor which had some really pretty and scenic views. We walked down the pier in Bangor and spent time admiring the mountains. It was really cool because it was a little bit cloudy so the mountains looked mysterious and tucked away behind the clouds. I'm still trying to figure out how to post pictures on here and once I get it figured out, I'll be putting up some of my favorite pictures for you to see. Then we went shopping for some Valentine's Day stuff so that we could have a party. Then we went back to the University of Wales dorm--where the Central students stay in Bangor, they don't get a hotel like we do, and had a Valentine's Day party. From there some of us went to a dance club for a few hours.
Today we headed back to London. We had to take a bus to get us to the station we left Wales from, but once we got to the station, we were able to ride all the way to London and not make any transfers. It was early when we left, so I slept for most of the three hour trip, but as we were leaving Bangor by buss, we got a beautiful view of the Menai Strait, which leads out to the ocean. The sun was coming up and the clouds were clearing up and the water looked so blue it was breath taking and I was tempted to ask the bus driver to stop so I could get out and take a picture but I didn't but the beauty of it will be in my head forever. Later today, I'm going to get a drink and catch up with one of my friends from Northwestern who's getting her Master's somewhere in England and came to London to take some classes at the Globe theatre. She was the technical director for the scene shop last year and I'm really excited to see her again.