My mother always taught me...

...to never look directly at the Sun. But we'll get to that later

Sorry it's been longer than usual between posts; it's been a rather busy and slightly stressful week. I've had all my classes now, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to like all of them. And I believe I've mostly whittled down my options for summer employment, which means one more thing checked off the to-do list for the semester.

Tuesday was particularly uneventful, which was fine with me. And then Wednesday in my journalism class we were studying newspaper and had to flip through a few different ones to compare an contrast. One immediate contrast from American newspapers can be found in The Sun, a rather blatantly tabloid publication owned by Rupert Murdoch. It seems that a few years ago good ol' Rupert thought he could boost circulation by adding a half-page photo to page three. But here's the trick: the photo is always of a woman, and the woman is never wearing any clothes. Page 3 girls have become the norm among the tabloids and certainly provided a shock to those of us in class who were not expecting them. Now you have been appropriately warned.

Wednesday afternoon I decided to take a walk in Kensington Gardens (directly across from my street) and Hyde Park (connected, but farther to the east). As you can see from the pictures above and to the left, it's a really beautiful place, and I would love another opportunity to explore it. The Serpentine, which is the name of the man-made lake in the middle of the parks, has boats and bandshells and little snack shops which I'm sure are bustling during the warmer months. So I'm looking forward to visiting on a Sunday afternoon when there are lots of people around. Apart from that I also got to see the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain (which was not on) and the Round Pond, as well as really large trees that had been entirely uprooted by the wind storms last week. They closed the park that day due to the "dangerous conditions," and I think it's a good thing they did. But the parks are great -- full of birds of all kinds and squirrels and dogs and babies running all over the place. It's perfect.

On Thursday after class I went to the National Gallery, which is on Trafalgar Square. I was there for about two hours and saw so many amazing paintings. But then I looked at my map and realized I hadn't even seen a tenth of what was there. In fact I went back through some of the rooms to find a particular painting I wanted to see, and I was going into rooms I thought I had been in but was surprised to discover that I hadn't seen any of those paintings. But they were beautiful and famous, which is always really exciting to see.

After the Gallery I walked around Whitehall for a little while to kill time, and I got to see the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey at night, which are very pretty. I met with the girls for our authentic fish and chips dinner at The Golden Fish Restaurant in Farringdon. And true to the guide book it did give us all a bit of "a hug on the inside." After this I met up with a friend from home and some other Carolina alumni to watch the Carolina v. Wake Forest basketball game. I met a lot of cool people and got to watch us beat the Demon Deacons by a lot.
Friday I slept in really late and then went to my placement interview at Black Spring Press. Even though I had some difficulty finding the building (the street numbers here don't make any sense at all), it was a very nice interview and I think I will really enjoy working there. I still only have a vague idea of what exactly I will be doing, but most of it will be editorial with some photo and design work and some research.

There's been many more exciting things this weekend, but it's really late here and so you will have to wait until tomorrow. Gnite!