camden town, al-jazeera, and the 39 steps

so i've waited a while before posting again because i wanted to be able to write something mildly interesting.. haha so on sunday, me and my friend brooke took the tube to camden town where we went to the camden lock market.. biggest and craziest market i've ever seen in my life! camden is a total hipster area, and also very touristy, so you'll see 7-foot tall black women with shaved heads walking right next to american moms wearing fanny packs. it was very bizarre to say the least. the market also includes a food and tea market, with sooo many options including polish, turkish, indian, thai, english, mexican, anything you can possibly think of. also very cheap. and the tea here is sooo great, every kind of herbal tea you can imagine and sold very cheaply but of high quality. i'll probably bring a decent amount home with me. camden is centered around a canal with bridges criss-crossing it and the camden lock market on the other side of the water from the underground station. the main parts of the market are in what is called the horse stables, which is pretty self-explanatory as the market dates back to the 1600s. but this place is sooo huge, if you didn't have your bearings you could be lost in there forever. everything is very cheap there though, and very easy to haggle. lets just say i walked away with a few good things but didnt have to pay that much money.

camden was an all-day adventure that left us pretty tired. but yesterday morning we had to wake up bright and early to go to Al-Jazeera English. here in the UK it was a bank holiday, which means no one was at work and everything was closed.. but WE still had to do educational things. we met outside anglo-american in the rain (because it was closed) and took the tube to marble arch, right outside of hyde park. we did this mainly to kill time, not because it was the closest tube stop to al-jazeera (why would we do that? that would make too much sense). instead we walked across the whole of the hyde park, in the light rain and the annoying wind. this caused all of us to be blown in the face with pollen and dust and every allergen that exists in hyde park. i felt like there were needles in my eyes by the time i got out of there. literally everyone had red puffy eyes by the time are 15 minute walk was over. i also had a coughing fit. dont forget that we only did this walk to kill time, as our tour was scheduled at 11 but we met at 10 to keep with the classroom time visa regulations. now i have an eye infection, but i wont complain.

anyways, al-jazeera english was very interesting. the woman who spoke to us was an american jew who quit ABC Nightline to come work for Al-Jazeera. she addressed the fact that she was jewish quite a few times, and even mentioned that Israel had recently replaced the BBC with Al-Jazeera on its main cable channels because it had a less biased approach to israeli issues. i found this very interesting. nonetheless, the gaza debate was brought up quite a few times and i found myself getting quite heated when people would talk about it and have NO idea what they were talking about. a lot of people in my class think they are all-knowing, when really they just absorb their news from abc, nbc, cnn, etc. it really irks me. anyways, i got a chance to explain Israel's position to a lot of them, and i was really happy to see that most of them had no idea how completely crazy Hamas is, and that israel wasnt attacking them for no reason. basically this issue really pushes my buttons so im glad i got to speak my mind to some of my classmates.

after al-jazeera, we found ourselves in knightsbridge, one of the ritziest areas of london. and we were hungry. and nothing was cheap. luckily we found a little noodle chain called wagamama that was quite good. then a few of us went home to relax before our requisite monday theatre, which was located this time on Piccadilly Circus: the 39 Steps.

overall, the show was very well-done. four actors played 129 different roles in this comedy, which in 1935 was a movie done by hitchcock. the comedy was so british, though, that it took us all a while to start laughing and loosen up at the ridiculous jokes and silly humor that isn't american in style AT ALL. but it was funny and made sense in the end once you started comprehending the crazy british cockney accents.

and that was pretty much the end of our first free weekend. this weekend we have plans to go visit the Guardian and the BBC on friday, and travel to Dover and Canterbury on Saturday. the next weekend, about 12 of us are going to Alsace, France, on the German border. one of our friends' cousins live in a huge farmhouse on a lake there and have offered for us to come visit. it should be a good time.

Well, i should probably get back to work at this point. hope this was a sufficient update for you.. i'll post more pictures next time once i've taken some. cheers!