Feminist London - Days 20 & 21

I think this is going to be my last post! We're moving to a hotel near Heathrow tomorrow, so I don't know if I'll have internet access.

Yesterday was a pretty slow day. We had a class meeting in the morning and I spent the afternoon doing some GRE studying and thinking about my Honors Thesis (which I just found out that I was officially accepted to do! Woohoo!)

Today was much more exciting. First, we went as a group to visit the grave of Emmeline Pankhurst, the great English suffragette. So that was cool, but I felt a little weird taking smiley group pictures in a cemetery. Oh well. After that, I went to the British Library where they were having a big exhibition on maps, which was pretty cool. I'm really glad I went back though, because they had a bunch of different manuscripts on display in their "Treasures" collections than they did when Eddy and I went over Christmas. This time I was able to see the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript, which was so cool!

Also today, Anna and I went to see Les Miz! We had the worst seats possible and could only see about 2/3 of the stage. That was fine for the most part, except Eponine died in the corner of the stage that I could not see at all, but we could hear everything just fine. The most ridiculous part of the show was Marius, who was played by Nick Jonas. Of the Jonas brothers. Seriously. He was surprisingly good!

From Feminist London July 23

Bed now. I have to finish packing in the morning!

Feminist London - Day 19

The days are beginning to wind down! Today was a free day, and I spent the majority of it at the theater! I went back to Regent's Park to see a production of "Macbeth" in the afternoon. It was a production specifically aimed at children, so the play was condensed a bit, but most of the original language was preserved. I thought it was a really odd choice to turn into a children's play, as it's a really gruesome story, but I thought it was really well done.

From Feminist London July 21

The puppets are the Weird Sisters. Very creepy!

In the evening I went with Anna and this friend of her grandfather's that she was meeting up with (I was there for moral support) to see the play "Warhorse" which was just amazing. It's the story of this boy from Devon who raises a horse that eventually is sold by his father to the cavalry at the onset of WWI. Even though the boy is only 16, he enlists in the army to try to find his horse and bring it back to England. The show was incredibly moving in how it portrayed the affects of WWI not just on people, but on the animals as well. But the puppetry of the horses was just unbelievable. The puppets were so complex that it allowed the puppeteer to make it seem like the horse was breathing. So cool!

Feminist London - Day 18

This week has turned into the week of plays! We went to see "The Woman in Black" today, which was just a terrifying as I remember it. Dr. Smith assigned the book that the play is based on for our class, so we discussed that before hand and then headed off to see the show. There were a bunch of younger school groups in the audience, so there was so much screaming during the scary bits! I don't think I've ever seen a play or movie where the audience actually screamed like that. It was quite funny really. I absolutely loved the show, and am planning on writing my final paper on a feminist analysis of the books. I think it's such a good ghost story!

We have another free day tomorrow, and I'm going to see two plays! I'm going back to the open-air theatre at Regent's Park to see "Macbeth" and then I'm going with Anna and some family friends of hers to see a play called "War Horse." Her grandparents are insisting that she go meet some of their friends who live in London (who she's never met before) so she's dragging me along for moral support - I can't protests, since I'm getting a free meal and play out of it.

Only five more days left! I'm so bummed!

Feminist London - Day 17

I feel much more lively today! Hurray!

Since I was so tired yesterday, I decided to take today pretty easy. Anna and I headed to Leicester Square this morning to try to get half priced tickets to go see Les Miz (which, sadly, we were unable to do). After that, I spent a long time at Regent's park, just walking around, taking way to many pictures of birds (they have black swans!) and doing some studying for my class and for the GREs.

During my stroll around the park, I happened upon their rather famous open air theatre and decided to splurge and by myself a couple of tickets. I went and saw Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" tonight, which was just lovely.

From Feminist London July 19

They set it in 1940's Casablanca and added a couple of song and dance numbers - hilarious! My seat was way in the back, but I still had a great view of the stage. I'm going again Wednesday afternoon to see Macbeth, which I'm hoping will be equally as enjoyable. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't see any actual Shakespeare when we went to the Globe, so I'm making up for it by going to these two shows!

We have a class day tomorrow and then we're seeing "The Woman in Black" in the afternoon. This week is just filled with theater!

Feminist London - Day 16

Tonight I feel really worn out. I'm not sure why though. Today wasn't really an active, walking around town kind of day. I think all the activity from the past 16 days has just caught up on me and now I'm just exhausted.

Today we went to the Globe Theatre to see a play. Not a Shakespearean play, sadly. There wasn't anything playing that Dr. Smith could relate to our class, so we ended up going to a reading of the 1682 play "Virtue Betrayed or Anna Bullen" by John Banks. This play was written as a kind of sequel to Shakespeare's "Henry VIII." The two plays were ofter performed concurrently in Banks' time.

I honestly don't have anything really intelligent to say about the play, because I'm super tired. More tomorrow.

Feminist London - Day 15

Whew. I'm tired.

Today was a free day, so Anna, Lidia and I spent the day at the British Museum! It's so big! And so full of stuff! And people! The last time I came to the British Museum, I left the memory card out of my camera and could only take about 5 pictures. I guess I wanted to make up for it this time, so I took about 300. Which, in retrospect, was kind of ridiculous.

From Feminist London July 17

We spent 4 hours in the museum and there are still big chunks of it that I haven't seen. I skipped most of the sections that Eddy and I saw last December (I had to go back and take pictures of all the medieval stuff) and looked at the Asian, African, Middle Eastern and parts of the European artifacts. It's an amazing museum! And I'm so tired now. I always forget how tiring it is to go to museums, especially giant, overwhelming ones like the British Museum.

It's worth it though.

Off to the Globe tomorrow!

Random

I just logged on to facebook and noticed that it's suggesting that I become a fan of Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, and the TV show House, all because I'm a fan of Barack Obama. Apparently people who like Obama like all of those things as well. I'm really amused by this.

Also, I just saw the preview for the movie about the creation of facebook. It looks pretty dreadful and I really don't understand why anyone would make that movie. Is it really that dramatic of a story? I guess I need to see it and find out.

Feminist London Day 14

Day fourteen! I can't believe that it's been two weeks already! I'm not nearly ready to go home yet.

Today was another museum day (though, to be honest, most days are museum days!) We went as a group to the Florence Nightingale museum, as we had briefly studied her along with Mary Seacole (another nurse working during the Crimean war) in our class. The museum is pretty small, but details her life, her work during the war, and how she revolutionized nursing. For a small museum, it packed in a lot of information!

After a group lunch at a nearby Japanese place

From Feminist London July 16

I headed off to the Imperial War museum, which was way more depressing than I remember it being. Really, I guess I should have seen that coming. I went through the sections on the First and Second World War, the British Secret Service, modern international conflicts, and the Holocaust memorial. (I didn't take too many pictures from this museum, cause I thought that would be a little tacky). It's a really well done museum, but it's left me feeling a little gloomy.

We have a free day tomorrow and I think a bunch of us are going to tea in the morning and then to the British Museum. Eddy and I went last Christmas, but we barely saw any of the museum; hopefully I'll be able to spend a lot more time there tomorrow!

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!

Book Review - Selling Olga

Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking by Louisa Waugh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


We read Selling Olga for my course, as an introduction to a more modern feminist and social justice issue - having spent most of the class reading older texts about the women's rights movement, this text was definitely needed to ground our course in what is going on in the now. Before leaving Seattle, we had a speaker come in to talk about human trafficking in Seattle; this text offers an interesting comparison between the two situations.

Louisa Waugh sets on a mission to research human trafficking, focusing mainly on Europe, more specifically the Balkans, Italy, and Britain. The books is a record of her trip throughout these states to discover the root causes of human trafficking, to see what is being done to aid those who have been trafficked, and to hear the testimony of these people, to see just what happened to them.

The text focuses almost exclusively on sex trafficking, which I found to be somewhat problematic. Waugh states that one of the aims of her book is to refute the claim that all people who are trafficked are victimized sex slaves, yet she seems to confirm this stereotype by focusing so heavily on sex trafficking. She briefly mentions that trafficked migrants are also forced in construction and agricultural work, yet only cites one example.

Despite this, the stories of the trafficked women that the books mainly focuses on are completely devastating. One of the major strengths of this book is their testimony of how they were trafficked, what happened to them, and how they escaped; Waugh (I assume) leaves this testimonies in the women's own words, making them extremely powerful. Ultimately, the books is an excellent introduction to the problem of human trafficking across Europe.

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