Shanah Tovah!

Shanah Tovah from London!
Wednesday afternoon I took a break from college life and went to spend Rosh Hashanah with my cousins in London. That evening we had a very nice Rosh Hashanah dinner and I got to meet my cousin's friends which was another opportunity to talk with actual British people. One of them even studied at the same university where I'm taking my classes abroad. Most of her friends were speaking German which I thought was so cool...seems like no matter where I go in London I don't hear much English! So much diversity! Yesterday morning we went to services at an Orthodox temple, so it was very different from home, but still an interesting opportunity to experience something new. It felt so good to see some familiar faces here in London, sleep in a normal bed without waking up to loud college kids in the middle of the night, and to spend some time with my cousin's adorable little kids.
When I got back home (Thoresby House counts as home for now I guess), my friends and I had our own Rosh Hashanah dinner with apples and honey and challah, and we even got my friend's grandmother's kugel recipe and made a delicious kugel which, considering we had no measuring cups and were in a very poorly equipped kitchen, is pretty impressive!
L'Shanah Tovah to all my friends and family back in Boston, definitely missing you all during the high holidays!
xoxo,
Sarah

Me and my two of my cousin's kids, Joseph and Lola,
with their friend at our Rosh Hashanah dinner

Lola, Joseph, and Gabi who couldn't seem
to smile at the camera in any pics :)

Megan, Alexandra, and Jacob enjoying a sweet start to the new year :)

Kugel time!

First week of classes and more outings around london

You would think that since I have not blogged since Tuesday, I have successfully adjusted back into the world of endless homework. Unfortunately that is not quite the case because the weather is beautiful, there are still so many places to see, and it's hard to get used to figuring out when to sit down and do work when your schedule is so unstructured. After beginning the past five days thinking, "Anna Karenina can wait until tonight," I am determined to finally start that giant book...when I'm done with this blogpost. My history  notes haven't been going too badly though...mostly because I use them as a way to procrastinate starting Anna Karenina.
Anyways, Tuesday night some girls from the other dorm came over for dinner, and so a ton of us decided to eat together and we made latkes and brownies and it was so fun! Then on Thursday I had my first Art History class and it was so good! Definitely seems like its going to be a great class.

Zoe and I grating potatoes and chopping onions
for enough latkes to feed eight hungry college students

Bon Appetit!

Yesterday we started our day off in Covent Gardens, a marketplace really similar to Boston's Faneuil Hall with lots of food and shopping. If you've seen "My Fair Lady," this is where Eliza Doolittle sells flowers and sings her song at the beginning of the movie. It wasn't anything amazing but it's definitely a nice place to walk around. After fish and chips for lunch (we've been here for three weeks and we still act like tourists), we went to see Harrods, the famous English department store which is like nothing I have seen before. It's beautifully decorated, and so unbelievably expensive that most of the people there are tourists, and the ones that aren't tourists and are actually shopping there are fascinating to observe. The way each designer brand's clothing is displayed basically just makes it a museum. Friday night some friends and I went to the synagogue we found last week for Friday night services, and afterwards we went back to the Notting Hill dorm and watched one of the only movies we could find for free on youtube - Fiddler on the Roof. You're all probably rolling your eyes right now but I guess these kinds of evenings are bound to happen when you're on a Brandeis trip abroad. :)

Mickey Mouse in London!  

Where Eliza sold her flowers :)

yummy British chocolate 

Fish and chips!

This morning my friend and I visited the Imperial War Museum which was even more amazing than I thought it would be. Definitely a must-see for history lovers! There are three huge sections: WWI, WWII, and a genocide/Holocaust exhibit. There are so many cool artifacts and the entire time everything I've learned from my history/social studies classes in high school was all coming back to me.  The WWI exhibit had a place you could enter that was basically a simulation of a trench and trench warfare, and the WWII exhibit extended into the formation of independent India and Pakistan, the conflicts in the Middle East, the Cold War, and the fall of Communism. The Holocaust exhibition was also really well done. This trip definitely reminded me why history has been my favorite suject for so long and why I will likely someday be teaching it!

Me and Jacob in front of the
Imperial War Museum

Russian tank during WWII

German missile from WWII

Gas mask from the battle at Ypres, the first
time gas was used as a weapon during war

Trench warfare! 

Soldier in a trench

Nazi uniforms 

A copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf

Soviet Union banner 

Gorbachev's suit

Matryoshkas of Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, Gorbechev, can't remember who the small one was 

Piece of the Berlin Wall

Weapons, uniforms, etc from Israel's wars after it gained independence from Britain

Okay Anna Karenina, here I come! After I clean my room... :)
xoxo,
Sarah

Madame Tussaud's

On Sunday my friends and I took a break from the historical sights and made our way to a slightly different tourist trap: Madame Tussaud's wax museum. I'm not sure exactly why standing next to wax statues of celebrities and taking pictures as if you know them personally is so much fun, but it really is entertaining in the moment. And I guess it does have a tiny bit of history...during the French Revolution, a woman (Madame Tussuad - hence the name of the museum) was hired to make wax molds of the heads of royals and other prominent figures after they were beheaded at the guillotine. The museum even has a display with the actual guillotine blade with which Marie Antoinette was beheaded! Anyways, after the revolution Madame Tussaud took her wax display to England and I guess it just caught on because now Madame Tussaud's museums are everywhere. So this wasn't a particularly meaningful experience but it was definitely a lot of fun.

Captain Jack Sparrow!

Everyone's favorite ogre :)

Me and QUEEN ELIZABETH I!

King Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots

Lady Gaga

Alexandra and I with our four best friends

Amy Winehouse

Obama and I hanging out in the oval office

Megan with Winston Churchill

The actual blade which beheaded Marie Antoinette!!!!

Wax molds of the original molds made my Madame Tussaud. Marie Antoinette's head is a lot smaller than I thought it would be...

Yesterday was our first day of classes (FINALLY!) and I had my creative writing class which was really great! Unlike other creative writing classes I'ce taken, we actually have to read books here and not just write, and our first book is Anna Karenina which I have no idea how I'll ever finish. Today I had my Modern British History class which also seemed like it's going to be really interesting. The first class was already pretty engaging. Each week there's going to be a student presentation and my friend and I volunteered to present about Queen Victoria next week...I have no idea why I agreed to do the first presentation...don't really know what I was thinking. At least I get to get it out of the way!
xoxo,
Sarah

Shabbat and Portobello market

 Last night while some kids in the dorm stayed in to cook Shabbat dinner (stereotypes of Brandeis kids are usually true I guess:) ), my friend Jacob and I decided we'd try to find a conservative temple to go to for Friday night services. After google-ing "conservative temples in London" I remembered that conservative Judaism is an American movement and the closest I could find was a temple called the New London Synagogue which is associated with Masorti Judaism (Europe's version of conservative Judaism which is a bit stricter than what I'm used to back home), so we decided to come to services last night to see what it's like. Plus, the temple is right on Abbey Road which never gets old. Anyways, the service was really nice and the community was so warm and welcoming. And guess what? The Rabbi there knows my Rabbi from home and is even very close friends with a Rabbi who used to work at my temple for a bit a while a few years ago. Small world! After services there was a congregation Shabbat dinner which the Rabbi invited us to and it was so great to get to know the people there (and to have a home cooked meal!). I'm sure we'll be back with a bigger group next week! As far as cultural differences go, even though it was more of a conservative temple, seating in the sanctuary was still separated by gender. Also, apparently here people usually use temple as a word for mosque, and only synagogue or shul for what we usually call a temple.

I didn't have my camera but I found pics on google. :)

Add caption

After services I slept over at the Notting Hill dorm and in the morning a friend and I went to the famous Portobello Market. I assumed it would just be another cute little market with antiques and some food and whatnot, but this market stretched down all of Portobello Road and it was a whole mix of small shops, fancier boutiques, booths selling antiques, farmers' markets, restaurants, and it must have gone on for miles. All the buildings/homes in the area are different colors and walking down the market you can smell everything from falafel to crepes  to really any food you can think of. And even though it was really crowded, everyone around seemed very happy and friendly - not anything like our experience with crowds of tourists at Buckingham Palace a few days ago. And posters of the movie "Notting Hill" were everywhere since it took place in that area. The sun was out and the vibe on Portobello Road was so happy and energetic...definitely one of my favorite places in London!

The colorful buildings of Portobello Road 

Lots of scarves :)

Vintage cameras 

More colorful buildings 

Fresh fruit :)

yum. 

pretty tea cups :)

Later in the evening my friends and I hung out at Soho and walked around. The area we were in really reminded me of Times Square. Everything was lit up and there were tons of people out. I absolutely love being in the city! 

Lisa, Alisha, Miriam, Alexandra, Emily, and I in Soho :)

As much as I do love living in a city for a change, I just have to point out that while I was writing this blogpost at 1:30 am here loud and probably intoxicated men were yelling outside, and there's a siren every fifteen minutes. I shouldn't have complained about how quiet it was in Sharon! This whole hearing-people-yell-in-the-middle-of-the-night situation is quite a change! It's probably my only complaint though, so it's okay.

xoxo,

Sarah

The Tower of London

Yesterday after our last orientation session at the university some friends and I went to tour the Tower of London, where back in the day lots of monarchs and whoever else the church disliked were beheaded, and where the crown jewels of many monarchs are stored today. Once again I was overwhelmed with the amount of history that went on there! This is where Anne Boleyn was beheaded, where Queen Elizabeth I was imprisoned as a princess, where Lady Jane Grey was executed, and where Queen Elizabeth I locked up her enemy and threat to the throne, Mary Queen of Scots. Then we went to see the gallery with all the crown jewels and other sparkly royal belongings used for the coronation of kings and queens. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed, or else I would have dozens of pictures of everything relating to the Tudors.

The Tower of London!
Just as seen in the movie "Elizabeth" :) 

Alexandra and I with one of the tour guides

Traitor's Gate - where all the prisoners were brought in to be executed...so Anne Boleyn has been here!

Inside the tower's gates

Windy stairs n the Bloody Tower

View of Tower Bridge from the Bloody Tower

Next we took a trip to the London Beatles Store. To get there we had to get off at the Baker Street Station, which we were told was the oldest underground station in the world! After the Tower of London my camera ran out of batteries so I couldn't take any good pictures but still, it was pretty cool!

The only pic I got of the oldest underground station

The Beatles :)

Only a few more days until classes...time to order textbooks and enjoy the last weekend of freely wandering around London.
xoxo,
Sarah