Typical England Day
I considered getting up to get breakfast again today, but I don’t know if that will ever happen. My mom called me late last night because she got skype!! Yay, so now I can talk to her for free when she is at school, which makes me happy. Anyway, I decided since I had been woken up and hadn’t gone to bed until around midnight, that I needed more sleep and didn’t get up at 6:45. I woke up around 8:30 again and read some journal articles while I ate an orange for breakfast. Later, I found that my orange, which was very juicy, had gotten juice on my computer screen so I had to clean that off. I guess I shouldn’t eat oranges around my computer, or at least not juicy ones.
After my breakfast, I took a shower, read some more until 12, and then walked to Regent’s. Today is the first day that I think it has actually looked like a “typical” English day since I’ve been here. The skies were gray, it was quite cool, and it looked like rain. Later it misted, but never really came down. But it still seemed cheery in a way, maybe because it’s what I’ve expected all along and this is the first day I’ve gotten it. I don’t know. I’m sure it will get dreary once the days get like this more often and it gets colder, but then I’ll just have to wear my big sweaters and tights under my pants to keep warm.
Oh and on my walk, I saw this crazy car! It was shaped like a normal car, small like normal English cars, and had two wheels in back like a normal car but in front it only had one wheel centered underneath. At first glance, I thought it was somehow balancing on the back two wheels because I didn’t see the front wheel. But it was sort of like a tricycle but a car and all the wheels were the same size and the car didn’t get narrower at the front or anything. So I just thought I would share that with you. It made me smile, especially the fact that I thought it could only be on two wheels at first. That shows you how my mind works, but it would be awesome if a car actually could do that, don’t you think?
I’ve been leaving a little early lately so I can stop in some of the stores along the way just to look. Today, I stopped in a book/poster store called Blackwells. They had some really neat calendars, some that were really big so each page you could save as a poster. I would get one of these if there was an easy way to bring it home, but I don’t think there is. I sat next to Ruth at lunch and had the salad bar, which was really good today. It had humus and chicken salad, along with the other usual stuff. I think I am eating more lately, so along with walking less maybe I am gaining my weight back or at least stabilizing it. So that’s good, now my mom doesn’t have to worry.
After lunch I walked to the library. I finished the poverty book, which was really good and people should read it, but at the same time it sort of made me mad because I feel like we should be doing more. And then he gives you the statistics. And I remember numbers easily so they keep going through my head. One is that in 2002, if you look at the U.S. foreign aid and distribute it individually, we gave $3 per sub-Saharan African and then if you take out all the other costs, like debt repayment and paying for experts to help Africans, it ended up that we gave $0.06 per sub-Saharan African for the whole year. We give a total of 0.15 per cent of annual GNP to developing countries in foreign aid and we, along with other U.N. member nations, have pledged for the past 35 years, signing at least 5 documents, that we would make concrete efforts to increase our aid to 0.7 per cent of GNP, which is not very much anyway. 5 countries, I think, on the list have reached this goal and the U.S. is the farthest away from it and is the richest nation. I think in the first two weeks of the Iraq war, we spent more on military than we do for the whole year on foreign aid. Bill Gates does a lot though so it made me like him a little better. Okay, I need to stop lecturing. It’s just crazy because it seems we are capable of at least eradicating extreme poverty (where people can’t afford the basic means of survival), but it just depends on if we want to. And now you know what I am learning and writing papers on. Which by the way, after taking a break from reading by looking at scholarships and internships on fastweb, I wrote a short paper on the book to share with my tutor.
Then I went back to Regent’s for dinner. I sat next to Dan and near Rhys and talked to them. I had fried brie and fried mushroom with vegetables, plus dessert of some sort. It sort of looked like lemon meringue pie but without the meringue and bakes apples on top instead, so almost like apple pie too, but more of a pastry crust, softer and flakier than normal pie crust. Sort of neon, but it tasted fine and it came with ice cream so I ate it all. And I was very full after dinner. As I was getting ready to leave, Marshelle came out and said to wait because she wanted to walk with me, which was actually good because my iPod was low on battery.
We stopped in Sainsbury’s on the way because we ran out of toilet paper and apparently we have to buy it ourselves, which Marshelle and I are the only girls in the house, so… Anyway, Marshelle’s lights also burned out, so we looked for light bulbs but they didn’t have any so she’s going to try to get some tomorrow because she apparently has to buy those on her own too. When we got back she was going to go downstairs because you can’t really do much in a dark room. We talked on the way back about boyfriends, missing home, the food here, and walking and how we probably would walk more when we got home. It was nice to have company on the walk back and it made it go by fast.
Then I got back here, called Kyle and my mom on skype, and I’m going to get my mom some clinique so I can get the bonus.:) If anyone else needs anything, let me know, or I will just buy the second thing for myself I guess. I think I might buy that and some tea tomorrow after I go see my play, which I am really excited about and will talk all about tomorrow. I can’t decide what to wear but I’ll figure it out, and it will be wonderful.