A Thursday of Classes

6:55 am:
I am awoken by the sound of church bells, better known as my iPod alarm. It is a much more pleasant sound to wake up to, so pleasant in fact that I decide to stay in bed for a little while longer. I think about all of the things I need to do to get ready for the day and the best order to do it in, instead of actually getting out of bed and doing it.

7:15 am
My secondary alarm goes off and I drag myself out of bed, dressing and brushing my teeth in a daze. Mornings in England are just the same as in the United States, at least until you leave the room and go to class in a bus instead of walking.

8:05 am
Libby and I begin the walk from our dorm at the bottom of a hill to the bus stop at the top. I remark jokingly to Libby, "Didn't you know it is supposed to rain today? Since you are wearing your Toms and not your boots it will end up raining extra hard." It seems that she always ends up choosing those shoes, with absolutely no water resistance, on rainy days.

8:13 am
A girl with long dark hair rushes past us at that strange pace that is in between a jog and a brisk walk. Whenever I see someone walk/running I want to say, "just choose one and then commit." Then I began to think, "If I was late for the bus would I run to catch it? Probably not unless it was for class, then again, I prefer to be early for things so it would be highly unlikely that I would ever need to make this decision. Oh look, the bus is here."

8:16 am
Libby and I board the bus and find seats on the top level near the back. No good views of the drive today with all of the windows fogged up. I admit that I am a bit disappoint that I can't watch all of the children walking to school in their uniforms. They all just look so adorable.

8:38 am
The bus arrives at the Wheatley Campus and everyone piles off. It is surprisingly warm outside considering the early hour. Though I am only wearing a cotton shirt and light blazer I feel comfortable, no shivering in the near future.

We enter Dora Cohen Hall from the main entrance instead of taking a side entrance like usually to stop off at the loo. The huge lecture room with rooms of desks stretching from one wall to another is dark. The weak morning sunlight is not strong enough to illuminate all of the corners, and none of us feel comfortable enough to turn on the lights. We always leave that job to the teacher for some reason.

9:16 am
The lecturer for International Markets and Competition, an Indian man who always seems to wear a purple button-down shirt, explains market structures that fall on a sliding scale from perfect competition to pure monopoly. It still takes me a second to recognize when he says "mono-poly" (only two syllables) that he means "mo-na-po-ly" (four syllables). I am not sure but I think that is just his personal way of saying the word and, not the actual British pronunciation.

9:36 am
The two boys behind me (I think they are speaking German) have not stopped talking the entire lecture. It is incredibly rude and distracting and I almost turn around to stare at them to see if they will be quiet, but I don't.

10:25 am
I am sitting in the undergraduate building trying to get some schoolwork completed before my seminar starts at 11:00 am. I manage to complete one reading assignment for my travel writing class. It is a very interesting account of an American journalist's time in Saudi Arabia over the past decade, focusing on how she was treated differently in the Islamic country because she is a woman. I think that  traveling to the Middle East would be a major life experience because it is so culturally and religiously different from the United States.

12:14 pm
Libby joins me in the library after eating her lunch in the refectory. I try to find one of my class textbooks to read but someone else is using it. I spend most of the hour wasting time on Pinterest and trying to find a recipe to make on my assigned cooking night. I tentatively choose sweet potato pancakes, potato hash and turkey bacon.

1:17 pm
In seminar for Financial Markets and Institutions, we are told to split into groups to answer the assigned questions. I choose to be partners with the young man who won the stock market game we played in class last week, hoping he would know the answers. He ends up knowing about the same amount as me, a.k.a barely anything, but we muddle along and have a relatively good time doing so.

3:33 pm
"If you can find the graphs somewhere on the internet for me to paste in the Powerpoint, well, that would be brilliant." This is the first time I have heard a British person actually use the term "brilliant" in conversation...outside of Doctor Who that is. Perhaps it is because it is a foreign usage, but "brilliant" sounds much better to me than simply "amazing" or "wonderful."

4:07 pm
I board the bus to get back to main campus and my dorm, choosing to sit in one of the raised seats on the bottom level. Sitting higher than everyone else is fun and appeals to my inner child.

4:13 pm
I pull out my iPod and find my place in my Phantom of the Opera audiobook. An extremely attractive boy with golden hair and a bit of scruffy facial hair sits down next to me, listening to his iPod. I surreptitiously glance at him from the corner of my eye for the rest of ride.

4:25 pm
The air in the bus is stifling. People are packed together, body heat fogging up the windows so no one can tell when we have reached their stops. In my headphones, the managers of the Opera Populaire keeping nattering on about safety pinning a letter to a pocket's interior so the Opera Ghost can not steal it. I am relieved when the chapter changes to more the more engaging topic of Christine Daae's disappearance from stage during the middle of a performance.

4:34 pm
The bus reaches my destination and I have to ask the man sitting next to me to move so that I can get off (he replaced the cute guy when he got off several stops earlier). Of course, it is raining outside so I grapple with the side pocket of my backpack for my umbrella. One of the umbrella's metal rods are broken and keeps poking me in the head. I cross the main thouroughfare onto the back street that leads to the path to the dorm. Several cars speed past on the tiny road and I am determined not to be splashed when they go through the accumulated puddles.

4:41 pm
I have finally reached Flat K1, signaling the end of my academic day. All I want is a hot tea and a snack before I have to do more schoolwork.