Feminist London Day 12 & 13

Sorry for the belated post! I tried to do this last night, but blogger was being funky.

We've had horrible weather for the past couple of days! It's been all cold and rainy.

From Feminist London July 14

Having been warned that London in July would be horribly hot and sunny all the time, I so did not pack for this kind of weather. I only have one pair of pants! Oh well. I have my raincoat at least, so I'm not totally unprepared.

We went to Anti-Slavery International yesterday, the oldest non-profit social-justice organization in the world. We had a woman from Seattle give us a lecture on human trafficking in our area before we left, so this talk was meant to compliment what we already knew about human trafficking in the States and show us what goes on in Europe. The organization focuses on more than just human trafficking, but that issue was mostly what we talked about. It seems like a really cool organization, that works on a national and international level to end modern day slavery (which, I'm sure, many people don't even realize exists.)

Today was a bit tense because we've been having a bit of in-fighting within our group. I suppose that's bound to happen when you have 11 adults spending so much time together, but it definitely throws off the whole group dynamic and makes everything uncomfortable. We had a big mix up in communication this morning, dealing with a group plans for today, and a couple of girls just blew up at each other. Thankfully, I wasn't involved!

Anyway. After everyone cooled down, we went to a coffee shop to have our class discussion about our visit to Anti-Slavery International as well as our readings about Mary Seacole and Florence Nightengale. I love how informal our class days are. All we do is just sit together and talk about stuff, which I think is how the best classes go. I sometimes feel like this class could be much more focused on the academics, but I don't mind too much that it's not!

I went with Uliana, Diana, and Ryan to the Natural History Museum after our class, which was enormous!

From Feminist London July 15

We were able to get through the exhibits on dinosaurs, insects, plants, human physiology, and marine invertebrates before the museum closed at 6. We spent a good three hours there and barely covered a third of it! I would love the opportunity to go back, but I doubt I'll have time.

Off to the Florence Nightingale Museum tomorrow!