This Week in London

These last few days have been busy with adventure. I have been trying to make the most of my time here and have ventured out every day to a new place to see what I can see.

Once on our last trip a well-to-do English businessman asked me what my favorite part of London is, and I said "the transportation system." He was disappointed in my answer, but I stand by it. Trains, trams, tubes, and buses, you can get anywhere. The city is so well connected, and you rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes for your next ride. The place we are staying is about 8 miles outside of the city proper, which translates to over an hour journey in to areas like London Bridge and the waterfront, but that hour is easy and is have gotten pretty good at figuring out the main hubs from which other side trips can follow.

There is great pleasure in a latte and a train seat by the window. In this case there was even a table, and I happily watched the fields and brick buildings and graffitied back walls go by. 

My first day out was to the Old Operating Theatre. It was used for poor women mostly, in the early 1800s before anesthetics were invented, and is one of the only 19th century operating theaters still surviving.

I paid 6 pounds to go in (about $10 US) which I never would have done on our world trip. I'm so glad I did, though! By chance, King's Medical College was holding a special lecture for their students inside the theatre on the use of surgery in cancer treatment. I sat down too and listened to the whole thing. It was incredible---the platform where the patient was operated on in the 1800s was now holding a laptop and projector, a screen was hung in front of the place where the surgeons used to (sometimes) rinse their hands in a porcelain bowl, the students and I sat around the wooden rows where medical students used to watch surgeries, beneath the same sign--a quote in Latin that means "mercy before wealth." 

It was an amazing experience, and made me even more excited for the physician assistant program to start in August. 

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I drew all the time on our world trip, but have hardly drawn at all since then. I wanted to get back to it so I google searched for drawing classes in London and found the "London Life Drawing Society" and went to a drop in session for 10 pounds--right down the street from the British Museum, I might add, which was cool in its own right.

I was very nervous about going--what if everyone there is friends and I'm a random stranger, what if everyone there is really good at drawing and I'm not, what if the model looks at my drawing and feels bad about themselves because I drew them poorly, what if I go to the wrong place and walk in and everyone stares at me and and and. Standing outside the door all of my insides yelled at me to just go home and take a nap. I powered through, however, and of course am so glad I did.

 

I've never gone to a life drawing class before, aka nude model. Little desks were arranged in a circle around a table covered with a black cloth. The model had some sort of accident and couldn't come, but to my great surprise one of the other people in the class just decided to get naked and be the model instead. 

While I am by no means a real artist and nowhere near as skilled as most of the people in the class, I was surprised to find I wasn't actually THAT bad. I've always thought that a person's drawing ability was 70% natural and 30% learned, but now I think it's more like only 20% natural, 30% learned, and 50% practice. My ability to draw has increased dramatically in the last year as I just did it over and over again.

The class was a series of 10 and 20 minute poses. It was great experience to have the time to just stare at something and really see what it looked like, how the parts related to one another in space. I had enough time to realize that I have a tendency to make legs too short, and fix it. 

I used charcoal, which I've never really used before. It was so fun! I made the decision to commit to big dark lines, which normally I am afraid of. With the charcoal though if a line went wrong I could just rub it away. 

The guy next to me did this cool thing where he shaded in the paper with the charcoal and then used the eraser to draw. I tried to do this but realized I'm just not skilled enough to get the first line right like the style required, so I drew on top instead and ended with my favorite drawing of the day. It's a style I would never have thought of without going to the class to see my neighbor's idea.

The class also made me feel oddly body-confident and in love with the bodies of all my fellow humans. The man who modeled was very muscled, and it was fun to draw him because you could see the muscles under the skin and it was interesting from an anatomical perspective, but the other two people who modeled first were heavy, and were equally fun to draw because they had swooping curvy lines and just as much detail. I had so much fun, and drawing them felt like a way to celebrate each of them for their unique shape among 7 billion others.

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Finally, yesterday I went out to the Camden Passage antique market, and the to the "Fashion on the Ration" exhibit at the Imperial War Museum.

The antique market was a bit out of my price range, generally, but I had fun wandering up and down the narrow street looking at piles of shiny old things.

I did end up buying this necklace for about $10 US, a souvenir from my adventures.

I ate an amazing "apple and goat cheese" crepe and then went off to the war museum.

The exhibit was 10 pounds, which I don't really think it was worth, although the rest of the museum is free so I suppose they have to make their money somewhere. It was all about how men and women made do during the many shortages of world war 2, and the clever ways they reused items to stay unique and fashionable in a time of crisis.

My favorite examples were of the purses that had special slots to hold a gas mask and luminescent white buttons to give visibility during blackouts:

And the lingerie made from silk maps given to soldiers of the areas they were deployed. The one is from a silk map of Italy a woman's boyfriend had been given while fighting there, which was repurposed by her during the major silk shortages of the war. 

It's been a great week so far. I only have 10 days left before it's back home again to real life. Even that will be okay, though. We have moved to a new town so I can go to school and I don't know anything about it yet, but it seems promising. This trip has inspired me to explore our new town the way I would explore a tourist destination. Walk around, figure out the buses, look for free events, make the effort.

But! That is still ten days away. For now it is off on the next adventure.