Week 4 Recap by Nicole Greenberg

I have to say that this past week has flown by. Last time you heard from the group was a week ago, which you learned about our past two weeks in London, which were jammed packed with field trips and group activities, and our first week of classes. Now that we are into our second week of classes the workload has begun to hit us and our free time to go out and explore the city is slowly diminishing. However, we have made time to go out and seize the time we are not sitting at our extremely small desks listening to our professor’s lecture. On Wednesday our group had the opportunity to visit the Freud Museum. It was the house that Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life. He came to London in September of 1938 as a refugee from the Nazis. Most of the group, being psychology students found it to be pretty exciting getting to see the couch in which Freud used to psychoanalyze his patents, and pick their brains about what lie in the patients subconscious. It looked like a very nice place to cuddle up and take a nap to me. The museum also had a temporary exhibition titled “Paranoia” which presented works of international artists exploring the essence of paranoia through digital technology, conceptual work, performance, photography, video, installation and drawing. I have to say that the signage was fairly poor and some of the pieces needed to have further explanation in order to understand the artist paranoia. One of the artists I found interesting used photographic portraits of middle eastern women going about their everyday lives and included a personal story about how they face racism in their everyday lives and how these young women are questioning their identity within British society.

After the museum most of us returned to Metrogate to work on our extensive packets of reading for Diaspora studies and a ten-minute presentation for our Social Welfare class. Thursday we began class at 9:00 am titled Diaspora Studies in which Rocki and I presented to the class about the history of the Notting Hill Carnival. Just to clue you in if you ever wish to visit London during the month of August for the carnival. The carnival began in January 1959 and was a response to virulent British racism that stemmed from the Notting Hill Riots that took place in 1956 between the white working class and the Caribbean population in the area. Instead of fighting back the community of immigrants came together to celebrate their diversity through song and dance. The carnival is based on a Trinidadian tradition going back to when slavery was abolished in 1833 called “Mass,” which has reminisce of a masquerade. Today the celebration last for three days and includes parades, music from local bands, steal drum competitions and food from all over the world. It brings together all the different groups in London and celebrates London’s “multi-cultural” identity.

Later that afternoon in out Social Welfare class we had ten-minute presentations that looked into social welfare issues in London. The topics ranged from homelessness, to what is being discussed in Parliament to prostitution and people living with disabilities in the city. It was pretty interesting to hear how London has dealt with certain issues and have overlooked many, such as teenage pregnancy. Our class ended at 5:30 and we all came back and cooked dinner for ourselves. Let me tell you it is such a sight when it comes to dinnertime. Have you ever seen fifteen students trying to cook for themselves in a kitchen that is as small as a closet? You have to laugh some of the times because it is so overcrowded.

After a long day of class on Friday we finally had the opportunity to hit the town. We quickly learned that in London on a Friday night if you want to go dancing at a hip club you better get there before ten when there is no cover charge and no queue. A group of us ended up going to a club called Camouflage and danced into the wee hours of the night to hip-hop. While dancing we quickly became aware of being one of about fifteen white people at the club, which we don’t find very often at Lewis and Clark. It was an experience to remember, purchasing our tickets at the tube station and begin escorted to the club by a guy who was from Minnesota…small world.

On Saturday Katie Burnett, Andrew Barnes and I went to Borough Market located off of the London Bridge tube stop. It was an adventure getting there because both the Circle Line and the District line were closed for maintenance. The food was amazing and we ended up stuffing our faces with venison burgers and cheesecake. Later that afternoon we took a walk along the Thames down to the Tate Modern museum and spent two hours exploring only one of the five floors of modern art. Later that night we ended up meeting up with my family friend and went to the bar/club titled G-A-Y. It was AMAZING!!! I love dancing with gay men; they know all of the words to the best 80’s music and can dance like nobody’s business. The plan was just to go and grab one drink from the bar but it ended up being one of those nights to remember. Just to put it into perspective Katie and I did not get to sleep until 5:00 am Sunday morning. We also experience our first run in with sexism. We were trying to get into one of the clubs and we were turned down by the bouncer, take out of the queue because we were women!!!! We had a fit and talked with the bouncer and he made up some stupid excuse that made no sense what so ever.

Sunday and Monday have been filled with reading articles and working on our papers. It has been pretty quiet on our floor. Tomorrow we get back to our third week of classes and it is Andrew’s 21st Birthday so we are going to do something special for him. You are going to have to wait to hear about the night next week. Hope all is well back in the States!