Sonnets vs Somalia

I haven't written in a few days, huh? That's because nothing too interesting has been going on. I've just been in Cambridge doing whatever it is that I do here (and to tell the truth I'm not totally sure my what that is still).

Actually this is what I do. I just look at this all day.

So I haven't really felt like it's worth my time writing or your time reading. But then I remembered that I have kept a diary almost my whole life for the sake of recording things and only about 1/8th of that could be considered interesting. So here is a recounting of the past few days. Feel free to skim. I felt like I was skimming even as I lived it.

So Monday. On Monday I got myself all worked into a tizzy because I got an email from my supervisor with a forward of my assignment that she sent last week. She was being very nice and making sure that I had received it since I hadn't yet responded. I had in fact received it but this reminder caused me to re-read the email and realize that my assignment was due that day and not on Tuesday like I had thought. I felt especially guilty because I literally just slacked off the entire weekend. It's not like I was working on other things.

This is my library. I work here.

So basically I wrote all morning.  It was pretty fun actually. And just goes to show that I do so much better with a deadline. This is why school was invented. If all we ever had was access cards to libraries the nuclear bomb would never have been invented.

Ok that wasn't a great metaphor.

What I'm trying to say is that things that are 'advanced' but not strictly necessary never come about without a deadline. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. I mean people like DiVinci would still have dissected dead bodies and Newton would still have figured out his laws of motion because that's the kind of thing they thought was fun....but they are higher men.

Speaking of Newton, I saw a lock of his hair today! But I'll get to that latter.

Back to Monday. Monday, if you saw my facebook status was also a day that I did a lot of stupid things. I was supposed to babysit Anson but never got the message from his mom saying that they didn't need me anymore so I waited for like fifteen minutes outside the porter's lodge for them to show up. I tried to call her but accidentally dialed my supervisor instead. She didn't answer but later texted me to find out if I was ok. It was embarrassing and I felt quite unprofessional. Later that day I tried to fill out an internship application and accidentally sent it in too early so that the box "describe a time you solved a problem creatively" went unanswered. I was really tempted to email them about this accident and then pass it off as a creative solution.

The other stupid thing I did was skip dinner and then bite into a piece of moldy bread at around midnight.
So stupid.

But! Things got better! Because I got to talk to good old Sameer Ahmad who I haven't talked to in weeks because he thinks that he's really important saving the world from chemical weapons...or something like that.

Alright Monday is hogging the spotlight. I will get to Tuesday.

Tuesday = very boring.

 The only thing worth mentioning is my seminar on war and insecurity. The majority of students at PKP are American but in my seminar I also have a classmate from Greece and another from Holland and then my teacher is from Dublin. So somehow linguistics came up. I think it started with the phrase "sorry Stratos, but it's all Greek to me."

Here are the various flags represented...just for fun.


From there we somehow got to the word "double dutch." How on earth did that come up? My teacher had some good reason for using it but all the Americans were just like "jump rope?" And then the Dutch guy was like "double dutch? It's like being extra safe. Like when you use a pill and a condom."

I mention this because in context it was about the funniest thing in the world. But then I did warn you that Tuesday was very boring.

Wednesday: Wednesday was a reaction to Tuesday. Determined to get up and do something with my life, I set myself a strict schedule which included four hours of working on my supervision which I'm proud to say I followed pretty well. I spent several hours in the university library and then had lunch and then watched Black Hawk Down.

Does my title finally make sense now? I remember wanting to Watch Black Hawk Down when I was younger because Orlando Bloom was in it but I couldn't because it was rated R. And then I forgot about it.

And then I remembered it again in the past couple weeks as I've been learning about US peacekeeping and modern day politics relating to third world security and western intervention. As one of the biggest UN disasters ever (or at least from the American standpoint), Somalia gets mentioned quite a bit. So I decided to watch the movie as the fastest, easiest way to familiarize myself with the event.

Since I would get in trouble if I downloaded anything illegally from my dorm (they are always watching!) I went to the library at Pembroke College and watched it in there. We aren't allowed to borrow anything or even take it out of the room so I had to change the international setting on my computer's dvd player and watch it with headphones on, totally paranoid that people could hear all the shooting and epic music playing for three hours.

It was a really good movie but not nearly as hard to get through as I had imagined. See, I make it a point to avoid R rated movies as they are generally inappropriate for whatever reason. But I'm making an exception for movies that are based on actual social/historical events of great importance for the purpose of informing the audience and not just shocking them (are there enough qualifiers there?). Anyway, I guess I've been studying development long enough that I wasn't too shocked by what happened. And admittedly, it's quite old news. I'm sure most of you have seen Black Hawk Down as well.

But it's a fascinating case study. By which I mean, I'm probably going to write a securities paper based on this event. I mean it's just the classic dilemma. Interfere with national sovereignty? Fight in someone else's war in order to feed someone else's famine? Or sit back and watch the country destroy itself on CNN? Are we trained to fight or to make a difference?  (Watch the movie trailer to pick up on my blatant plagiarism).

I mean in every oppressive regime its always the vocal minority calling the shots and the silent majority too afraid to speak out but wishing someone else would. In this situation, the UN forces were trying to help and protect civilians. But did they have a 'right' to do so?

I think my answer is yes and will probably always be yes. I believe in the ideals of the UN even if they aren't very enforceable or practical. It's such a tricky business though. There's politics and poverty and insurgency and famine and security and children and warlords and history and economics and soldiers to take into account just to name a few. It goes back to the question I posed in a previous post: how much compassion do we owe our fellow man? What if your son was a soldier dragged through the streets of Somalia?

Alright enough of that. I'll move on to the sonnets.

After dinner I somehow found myself watching "A Midsummer Nights Dream" at St. John's college gardens with a few friends. We got there late so there were no seats left and we just had to sit on the grass. But we were in front so that was alright. It was the same company who did a Winter's Tale that I went to a couple weeks ago. It was pretty good but I didn't think the actors were as great. And I swear I have the same purple tights as the man who played Demetrius. We got them from Primark.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a bizarre play. I mean seriously. What on earth? I really felt like I was playing into the typical townsperson role as I laughed along with everyone else at the stupid physical humor and bumbling idiocy of many of the characters. I'm told that it is one of Shakespeare's most highly criticized plays but most well loved by the masses. I can't decide yet whether or not I'm one of the masses. It is a great title for a play but...

Illustrations like this one make it seem way cooler than it actually is. Or maybe I just didn't see a very good production. What do you think Shakespeare buffs?

So yeah. That was my last few days. Sonnets verses Somalia, English verses International Relations. You know your life has taken an unexpected turn when you realize that you enjoy analyzing bloody war scenes by yourself in a library more than watching Shakespeare on a nice midsummer night with friends.

Or could you guys have predicted that for me?

The West End

Sunday Jenny is very jealous of Saturday Jenny. Saturday Jenny saw two shows in the West End of London for exactly 25 pounds. Sitting in church today I just kept thinking about how much I wanted to be back at the theater watching Les Mis.

That's right! I saw Les Mis yesterday and The Lion King. Both, as you can imagine were amazing. We took the train down from Cambridge in the morning with a group pass thing. It was a super good deal because four people can get tickets for the price of two and so I got a round trip ticket to London plus tube and bus transportation within London for the day for a mere 11 pounds. Gotta love public transport. And the fact that we arrived in London via King's Cross Station. I didn't get to see Platform 9 3/4 though because it was in the area under construction. My return train did, however, leave from platform 9b so I feel a bit of a kinship.

So we got to London early in the morning before most of the tourists were there and waited in line for a couple different shows so that we had the biggest possibility of getting tickets. When the box office opened we were able to get 7 standing tickets for Les Mis for just 10 pounds. They only sell these tickets after every one of the other tickets is sold out so we really got lucky that we came at the exact right time to get them. Elated at our success, we then ran to the Lion King theater and were charmed enough to get the same deal. Fairy tail no?

So after getting the tickets (Les Mis for matinee, Lion King for evening) we split up and my group went shopping for a little bit in Camden. As you can imagine I spent way too much money but it was fun. It's a bit fringy and there are a lot of punk-ish people there but I didn't really get to explore as much as I would have liked because there wasn't much time. There were a couple of cool outdoor markets though with fun shirts and skirts and tourist junk. If I went back I would like to get a little bit deeper than the tourist wall.

When we got to the theater one of our program assistants, Chris, was waiting for us. He is a Cambridge student that you might recognize from my Harry Potter pictures because he came to the midnight showing with us. Upon hearing that we were planning on seeing Les Mis he got super excited and met us just for the show. Man it was amazing . When  I was younger, I got really obsessed with Les Mis and would listen to the cd all the time and sing the songs and pretend that I was Eponine and dream of seeing the show live. I finally got to do so at the fabulous Fox in St. Louis but from some really high nosebleed seats. Also I was still only about 13 or something and I didn't totally understand everything. This was way cooler.

Even though we were standing at the very back, It was still an awesome view because the theater is fairly tiny. The only  downside is, of course, your aching feet but there is a handrail to lean on. At intermission, I actually happened to be lucky enough to be offered a seat from the man in front of me who was tired of being cramped up in the tiny aisles and simply wanted to stand. So for free I got to sit about a foot in front of where I was standing for the second act in the place of a ticket that had cost about 35 pounds.

Alfie Boe was performing as Jean Val Jean and it was incredibly epic. My favorite parts though were the big ensemble numbers like "One Day More" and "Do You Hear the People Sing." You know I'm a sucker for revolutionary fervor. My absolute favorite part of the play (this is gonna sound odd because it's so tragic) is when the men fight on the barricades. Everyone dies in this epic battle. The main revolutionary leader, knowing he was about to die, jumps up on top of the barricade and waves this huge red flag around. He falls over to the other side and the fighting continues. Once everyone has died though, there is this aweful stillness on stage and the set rotates (spinning floor) to show the other side of the barricades. There the revolutionary leader is dangling dead from a ladder with one foot hooked behind a rung, the red flag spread out under him. Maybe you could call it melodramatic but I thought it was really artistic. The effect was only slightly ruined by the fact that the actor was shaking a little bit. I'm sure it really exercises those ab muscles. Hanging. Upside down. In midair... being totally still.

Imagine the scene like this.

I won't bore you with too much more. All I know is that I was so incredibly lucky to get to go see it here in London where it is the best. If I have a chance and can get the 10 pound tickets, I would totally watch it again. 

Some pictures of the theater

"25 years young!"

Alfie Boe as Jean Val Jean!

we somehow managed to look creepy here but really we just love Les Mis

Our stand up spot. Actually that bald guy in the back is the antsy one who couldn't sit still and so eventually gave me his seat.

Jenny, Katelyn and Chris (we are really proud that we actually made friends with a Cambridge student)

That's a picture of Les Mis behind us

I'm thinking I should also probably read the book of Les Miserables.  I've reached that point. I tried reading it in High School but didn't get any further than the first couple pages which described the priest's travel at a snails pace pointing out in minute detail how ostentatious it was that he was riding a donkey just like Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem. Actually, considering I read literally about three pages, I remember quite a lot. Seeing as I speak French now and tell people that I'm into literature and history I think I'll give it another go...one day soon.

After that we went and got some Indian food. (INDIAN FOOD IN LONDON!) It was delicious and pretty fancy despite this gem of a sign posted on the window:

 It was good just to be able to sit for awhile. Granted I did get to sit for the second half of Les Mis and my friends didn't. They were a bit bitter.

Jacqueline and Brett

The heated hand towel felt so good wrapped in plastic that I never took it out. That's the life right there.  Ice Cream, in and Indian restaurant with friends and a heated cloth pressed against your face In LONDON.

Food took longer than we meant for it to so we rushed to get to Lion King. This theater was a lot bigger, so our "seats" (standing spots) were a lot further back and we were all really tired. Part of me wishes that we had seen Lion King first because after Les Mis everything else just seems so trivial but that sounds incredibly picky. Lion King was really good. It was funny to hear Simba with a British accent but, hey, since he's an African cat it doesn't make any less sense than the American accent in the film. The puppets were really cool and the set/costumes/voices and dancing were so cool. I will say that the acting wasn't amazing but that's not why anyone goes to see Lion King so I'm probably just being a snob. My favotite song is "He Lives in You (reprise)." Look it up on youtube.

Outside the Lion King theater

At this point, we were quite ready to get home so we took the tube to King's Cross had some ice cream while we waited and then boarded the last (an incredibly crowded train) out of there. It was a magical magical day. Two West End shows, shopping in Camden Town, Indian food, ice cream, and LONDON. 

Here are some random pictures throughout the day:

seems very English

shows in the West End!

that's all that really needs to be said

waiting for tickets. we didn't actually end up buying any here

Great name for a froyo place. I also like this pub back in Cambridge called " the Snug"

LondonLondonLondon

I don't know about you, but we got d'posh

The story behind this is that I went to use the loo in the cafe where we had brunch.  Toilets in Europe can be a bit odd and often involve toilet handles in odd places. Occasionally there is a lever or something hanging from the ceiling that you pull. I saw a hanging string and just pulled it and an alarm rang out. I read the sign next to the string which said "pull for assistance." I tried to explain to the worker who came to turn the alarm off but she kind of just ignored me.
It was embarrassing.

Pauls: a cute french cafe

small huh? No wonder they charge extra to "Eat in"

Brett, Jacqueline, Caroline and Katelyn outside the cafe

a more subtle cousin to the typical bright red

there were four girls and four phone booths. How could I resist?

I think this was Trafalgar square...I think...

wherever it was, I was excited to be there. You can't tell but there's like a fifteen foot drop below that railing.

Yay Big Ben...and a random animation film festival!

on the tube

Well that was my day, folks.  Definitely one of the more epic ones of my life.

Noughts and Crosses

And now we come to the book review portion of our program.

See since my supervision has to do with young adult fiction, my supervisor recommended some good young adult fiction for me to read. I didn't have any classes today and so took the opportunity to cuddle up with the book "Noughts and Crosses" by Malorie Blackman. This is how I spent pretty much all day. It was wonderful.

So, without giving too much away, I will just say that it was a good read. Very quick and interesting. At first the language and word choice and scenarios seemed very childish but I thought to myself 'this is ok. this book is probably meant for thirteen year olds.' But I was very impressed when about two thirds of the way through the story the maturity suddenly picks up because the characters have grown up several years. And boy it is no longer childish then. All I can say is that this author is not afraid to let her characters suffer a bit (or a lot).

The basic premise of the book is that we live in a world where race relations are turned on their heads. Instead of whites being the dominant race that enslaved blacks it was blacks that became the dominant race and enslaved whites. The time period of the book is a civil right-ish scenario when the whites are no longer slaves but still don't have any rights either. Some people think that the best way to get these rights is through a terrorist organization called the Liberation Militia....calamity ensues.

Like I said, it's a good book. I recommend it if you aren't too sensitive. The cool thing about it is that it really fits into what I'm learning about insurgency/counterinsurgency warfare and revolutions in my class on War and Security. One day in our small seminar group our teacher gave us the task of planning an insurgency. We debated about whether to use guerrilla warfare tactics or terrorism or both. One guy argued for terrorism and I countered that terrorism might not be the best policy because it could annihilate the population.

Everyone stopped at that. Annihilate. That wasn't the word I had meant to use.

 "You know, that word that means to exclude...to, you know, set apart? Make them feel not a part of it   ?"
 My classmates offered various possibilities but in the end I think it was this Dutch guy who finally said "alienate?"

Yes! Yes that was it!

My professor warned me that I probably shouldn't mix those particular two words up again.

So there you go. Literature does fit into real life. Oh, and the other interesting thing about the book is that it's written by a black woman (Malorie Blackman) so it's clearly an effort to make whites understand what it's like  (and especially what it was like in the past) for blacks.  But it is also a very sincere venture into what it would be like to hold the power in society. The question, 'would life really be so different if blacks ruled whites?' is implicitly posed. The real enemy of the story seems to be human nature. That whoever has power (black or white, man or woman, individual or group) they will hold on to it and they will repress others with it.

What do you all think of that? We all know that hate and jealousy are natural human traits but does that necessarily mean that we will always be pitting group against group? Most wars in the world today are labled as 'ethnic conflict'. Think about Rwanda or Yugoslavia. When people are used to living together, being neighbors and sending their kids to the same schools, it actually takes a fair amount of work to rile them up into a frenzy of ethnic pride or nationalism. Events like genocide are usually masterminded and suggested by one leader or one small political party. People don't just one day decide on their own, en mass that it's time to kill their neighbors with machetes.

But if they are such rational human beings then why is it that someone can work them up into that state of killing or suppression? I don't know. And I don't really mean to use the word "they" and "them" actually. Because whose to say that I (or you) wouldn't do the same thing if I was scared for my life, if I was caught up in the group mentality, if the  background conditions were right. I hope that I would be courageous and do what was right but I haven't been in a situation that drastic so I don't know.

But if I think back to the moments of tension that I have had in my life, do I pass the test even on a small scale? Am I nice to the person who everyone else ignores? Do I judge someone based on their appearance? Would I include people that others reject?

It's something to think about. We are all self-interested people deep down and even though we preach generosity and good will, those aren't usually the motives that win out in a life or death situation. So how much compassion do we owe to our fellow man? Where do we draw the line between merely observing injustice and taking part in it?   I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Paradise Lost

Alright, the first bad thing has happened to me while here at Cambridge.

I dropped my friend Jacqueline's camera in the river. 

Thus, the melodramatic title for this post.

To tell the truth I do feel a little disillusioned. It's like this beautiful magical place somehow tricked me into letting my guard down and then pounced. How it happened is this:

I was punting on the river with a group of people from my programme. Two of my friends, Jacqueline and Brendan were there.  We had a jolly good time punting down the river with our guide and then laughing at eachother as we each got a turn to try it out. As a side note, punting is deceptively hard. You stand on the back of the little canoe thing, stick this long pole into the water, let it touch the bottom of the river and then push yourself forward with it. The trick is to not lean it one way or the other and also not to fall out into the water (which apparently my friend Jackson did a couple days ago!)

Anyway, there we were having a merry old time of it and Jacqueline was punting and I was on the other end of the boat, sitting on the stern or whatever its called taking pictures with her camera. 1. she wanted pictures of herself punting and 2. I was taking the opportunity to take stalker pictures of all the hipster professional punting crews. Brendan and I had the idea to make a 12 month calender out of these photographs. Clearly a worthy cause.

So then we were mooring (that's right MOORING as in docking) on the side of the river at our own private  little king's collage boat dock and Jacqueline was still punting and I thought 'hey! I'll just hop out really fast and get a picture of Jacqueline punting in front of King's Collage and it will be absolutely epic and the best picture ever." Here is what such a picture might have looked like : 

Except that obviously the boat would have been right on this side of the river. But this would have been the backdrop

Sadly, this did not come to pass. I hopped out of the boat no problem but Brendan who was holding the camera (and no doubt not quite keeping up with my unbridled enthusiasm--I will admit I was a little hyper) reached to hand it to me and somehow our hands didn't connect and the camera fell in the water. It wasn't his fault or mine I don't think, it was more just this epic fumble. Brendan reached in and grabbed the camera before it sunk.

Jacqueline was really nice about it and we ran to the groccery store to get some rice to put it in and are hoping that the water will be absorbed and maybe it will still work but my hopes aren't high. I just feel really stupid and really horrible that I did that to her camera. If only it had been my own that I dropped!

So yeah. My first melancholy blog and now I know that bad things really do happen in England as well. 

But that was yesterday right? Today I had a great seminar on how the developed western world by maintaining policies of NGO funded 'self-reliance' campaigns in the global south is actually perpetuating the circle of unending war that exists all over the world. 

A typical tourist-y day punting on the Cam
(and yes, I already know the irony of the fact that I dropped a CAMera in the CAM river thank you)

Babysitting in Britain: A Test Run (Emily this is for you!)

I got to babysit today!! (yes! my calling in life!)

How it happened is this.  There is a couple here at Cambridge who brought their 20 month old son with them to England. The mom is also pregnant. It hardly bares stating aloud that this couple is from BYU. Anyway, the parents are nice and I feel bad for them because it's really hard for both of them to be going to school in a foreign country with a kid. I mean its difficult to have a kid whatever the environment. But when you are at a fancy pants institution its especially difficult not to mention rather gauche.

So I volunteered to babysit for them a little bit. I mean,  I don't actually know them but if either of my wonderful sisters were in this situation I would be helping them out however I could. Plus, considering the path I'm steering my life on right now there is an overwhelming chance that one day I will be toting a kid or two of my own around in some foreign country. So I thought I might as well pay it forward. And, lets be honest, I really love kids.

This little boy's name is Anson and he is adorable. I only had him for a couple hours so we just walked around a bit, went to the playground in the park and had lunch. I really freaked out my War and Security professor when I ran into her on the street pushing a stroller. She totally would have passed me by but I said hi and she stopped, took off her sunglasses and just looked at me. I explained that I was in her class and quickly added that the baby wasn't mine and she was like "ohhhhhh, sorry. I just don't expect one of the students to have a child." Yeah, that's a pretty safe assumption most of the time.

The playground was really fun and Anson and I had fun playing on the slide and the obstacle course. When it was time to go to lunch, I took him into the King's College dining hall and felt extremely conspicous as all the women workers in the place zoned in on Anson and started saying how cute he was and asking how he broke his arm (apparently he fell off a chair awhile ago...?)

Anyway, props to all you moms out there because it was not an easy couple of hours. And lunch, the most mundane activity was probably the hardest. I had a tray piled with food, a stroller and a baby. It was quite difficult to maneuver and, as I mentioned before, extremely conspicous. After I dropped him off with his mom at 1 I felt so free. It was like "wow, I can walk on the sidewalk and then step down into the street for a second and then jump the gutter and be on the sidewalk again?" (the narrow cobbled street made the stroller difficult).

Handsome Anson

he does well for a kid with only one functioning arm

me and my replacement Milo
(just kidding Emily!!)

Ducky...quack  quack!

But yeah. To all you mums out there (EMILY and LAURA!) It is definitely very doable to bring your kid to England (I mean England itself is a very easy place to live) but it would not be hard to raise a kid here (so basically we should all move to Britain!) The people in the town and at the playground were really nice and I don't think it would really be any harder to live here than where you guys live right now --except of course that you don't know anyone yet.

Anyway,  seeing as I would really love to move to Europe and raise a family here I thought it was a good little test run and I'm sure I will be babysitting Anson a bit more while I am here.

The other thing I did today was walk with some of the other PKP students to Granchester for tea by which I mean scones. Apparently a lot of really famous writers used to go there. It was very picturesque and I had fun.

A quaint English house we passed on our way to Granchester

I love red doors!

It was hard to get lost when we had such faithful trail markers

When in doubt, pinky out!

tea at Granchester! 

The secret life of bees
(actually the bees were jammed in there--get it "jammed"?!?--because they were stuck in the remaining jam in the jar and then someone closed the cap over them and they couldn't get out. Poor guys. I thought about rescuing them but didn't want to get stung.)

this is England

I like the little European cars

So I'm sure many of you are thinking, "this is great, but when on earth does she do homework?" That's a very good question and I've been asking myself that lately. I mean to be fair I did spend about 7 or 8 hours in the library yesterday but it didn't really feel like work. I mean I'm working on a novel the same thing I would be doing if I was at home. And then I'm doing super interesting reading on security and international development. It's awesome. But I really should be doing a bit more. So with that I will sign off and hopefully force myself to do some writing.