Well, my four-day weekend officially started at seven o'clock tonight. I have one every week this semester. I have a feeling I'll have a horrific schedule next semester as karmic retribution for such a fabulous one this time around, but at the moment, I'm rather liking the English school system. ;)
Screenwriting seems like it's going to be a good class, although me picking a seat right in a patch of sunlight and it being at nine in the morning made it difficult to stay awake. (Humor me; the earliest I've ever had class at Kenyon was 9:40, and I've been trying to put the whole getting-up-at-5:30-school-starting-at-7:45 thing from middle and high school out of my mind for two years now.) I'm the only JYA student in this section of the class, much less the only American or Kenyon student. This is...different...as there's twenty-two or so of us all taking a lot of the same courses in the same department and living in the same complex of flats, and we're constantly running into each other everywhere. Should be interesting. We started class by everyone having to get in front of a camera for ten seconds and saying the first movie that impacted you as a child and what kind of movie you wanted to make. I chose Peter Pan for my first movie-with-an-impact, and explained how I sprinkled glitter on my head and jumped off of chairs for months after seeing it in hopes that I could fly. And of course, I mentioned something about wanting to do some kind of low-budget, cheesy sci-fi movie.
The prof ("Jane") showed us a fifteen-minute film where all the characters had Glaswegian accents. Most of the English students didn't understand half the words they were saying; I was completely lost. Had no idea what was going on. Didn't have a clue until someone explained the plot after the film was over. Oy.
Anyway. Kenyon seminar from 5-7 (why?), which was more introductory stuff that was less than thrilling but necessary (we talked about Frank Lloyd Wrong for a bit for some reason, and I think we might do something with Art Deco...although all in relation to literature, of course. Somehow.), and I was done with schooling for the week. Awesome.
Now. Pictures! This afternoon,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
softstepshoes, rowdycamels and I treked up in a direction we've never been before to the duck ponds behind Lafrowda. We couldn't stay long because we had to get to the aforementioned seminar, but we're all planning to come back. It's very nice--peaceful, and there was nobody else there. Just the two ponds, one lone duck, an old building up on the hill, a field in the distance, and the wind brushing through the leaves. It was very much like Kenyon, and I'll admit to a sharp pang of, er, school-sickness.
One thing that feels different on a very basic level about England is the amount of people packed into a relatively small space. Maybe it's that the school is near the center of a city, or maybe this is common to the entire country; I have no idea. But buildings here are placed very close together, often connected, and there's always a lot of people around. At Kenyon, there's great big lawns separating all the buildings--there's a lot of space between buildings everywhere I've been except in downtown areas, really--and there are only lots of people walking around during the ten minutes between classes. Every other time, it's like there's a low hum of activity, but you don't see crowds of people walking around every minute of the day. You can look down Middle Path at, say, 2:34 PM on a Wednesday, and there's only six or seven other people on the whole mile with you. Here, on the road in campus that goes to most of the academic buildings and serves as something vaguely similar to Middle Path, there's at least fifteen or twenty people around all the time. It's not cramped, because the space is used really well, but it is crowded, and at times I start to get a little...hmm...what's the word for claustrophobic, but it's people that are hemming you in, not a place? Anyway, like that. I think I'm finally starting to realize what Hyde (in the one useful thing he ever said in that class I took with him) meant when he called Kenyon a very Romantic, Thoreau-like campus. An intrinsic connection with the landscape is built into the layout of Kenyon's campus, and the buildings' architecture, for the most part, fits in with that, too. Here, that doens't happen so much, except at places like these duck ponds, and hopefully other places I havne't yet discovered. Maybe it's the fact that actual roads go through the grounds, whereas at Kenyon, they sort of go around the main body of the campus. I'm not sure. But while they both have their good points, I think I like the way Kenyon's laid out somewhat better.
Okay, now here's pictures. Sorry, didn't mean to go off on that ramble...
The upper pond
The lower pond
Random pond plant
It's Monet's waterlilies! Or, um, conifers. Reflected...in the...water...yeah...
Pretty old dorm at the top of the hill going down to the ponds
Scenic view
For Peter, who requested "more pictures of my friends standing in front of stuff in England," I give you: Becca the Wood Nymph 1 and Becca the Wood Nymph 2, courtesy of Ellen. (Note the Wood Nymph, not the Wood Ho. Sorry.)
We all had dinner in my flat after seminar. That was the dining room. Look how pretty our kitchen is, too. (And yes, there is a large fridge and a large freezer in a little alcove off the kitchen; we don't all fit all our food into those two tiny ones on the left.) Ellen decided she wanted to boil an egg. Only...it didn't turn out right. It turned into Spiderman Egg!
Yes, that was our night. Much fun.
Screenwriting seems like it's going to be a good class, although me picking a seat right in a patch of sunlight and it being at nine in the morning made it difficult to stay awake. (Humor me; the earliest I've ever had class at Kenyon was 9:40, and I've been trying to put the whole getting-up-at-5:30-school-starting-at-7:45 thing from middle and high school out of my mind for two years now.) I'm the only JYA student in this section of the class, much less the only American or Kenyon student. This is...different...as there's twenty-two or so of us all taking a lot of the same courses in the same department and living in the same complex of flats, and we're constantly running into each other everywhere. Should be interesting. We started class by everyone having to get in front of a camera for ten seconds and saying the first movie that impacted you as a child and what kind of movie you wanted to make. I chose Peter Pan for my first movie-with-an-impact, and explained how I sprinkled glitter on my head and jumped off of chairs for months after seeing it in hopes that I could fly. And of course, I mentioned something about wanting to do some kind of low-budget, cheesy sci-fi movie.
The prof ("Jane") showed us a fifteen-minute film where all the characters had Glaswegian accents. Most of the English students didn't understand half the words they were saying; I was completely lost. Had no idea what was going on. Didn't have a clue until someone explained the plot after the film was over. Oy.
Anyway. Kenyon seminar from 5-7 (why?), which was more introductory stuff that was less than thrilling but necessary (we talked about Frank Lloyd Wrong for a bit for some reason, and I think we might do something with Art Deco...although all in relation to literature, of course. Somehow.), and I was done with schooling for the week. Awesome.
Now. Pictures! This afternoon,
softstepshoes, rowdycamels and I treked up in a direction we've never been before to the duck ponds behind Lafrowda. We couldn't stay long because we had to get to the aforementioned seminar, but we're all planning to come back. It's very nice--peaceful, and there was nobody else there. Just the two ponds, one lone duck, an old building up on the hill, a field in the distance, and the wind brushing through the leaves. It was very much like Kenyon, and I'll admit to a sharp pang of, er, school-sickness.One thing that feels different on a very basic level about England is the amount of people packed into a relatively small space. Maybe it's that the school is near the center of a city, or maybe this is common to the entire country; I have no idea. But buildings here are placed very close together, often connected, and there's always a lot of people around. At Kenyon, there's great big lawns separating all the buildings--there's a lot of space between buildings everywhere I've been except in downtown areas, really--and there are only lots of people walking around during the ten minutes between classes. Every other time, it's like there's a low hum of activity, but you don't see crowds of people walking around every minute of the day. You can look down Middle Path at, say, 2:34 PM on a Wednesday, and there's only six or seven other people on the whole mile with you. Here, on the road in campus that goes to most of the academic buildings and serves as something vaguely similar to Middle Path, there's at least fifteen or twenty people around all the time. It's not cramped, because the space is used really well, but it is crowded, and at times I start to get a little...hmm...what's the word for claustrophobic, but it's people that are hemming you in, not a place? Anyway, like that. I think I'm finally starting to realize what Hyde (in the one useful thing he ever said in that class I took with him) meant when he called Kenyon a very Romantic, Thoreau-like campus. An intrinsic connection with the landscape is built into the layout of Kenyon's campus, and the buildings' architecture, for the most part, fits in with that, too. Here, that doens't happen so much, except at places like these duck ponds, and hopefully other places I havne't yet discovered. Maybe it's the fact that actual roads go through the grounds, whereas at Kenyon, they sort of go around the main body of the campus. I'm not sure. But while they both have their good points, I think I like the way Kenyon's laid out somewhat better.
Okay, now here's pictures. Sorry, didn't mean to go off on that ramble...
The upper pond
The lower pond
Random pond plant
It's Monet's waterlilies! Or, um, conifers. Reflected...in the...water...yeah...
Pretty old dorm at the top of the hill going down to the ponds
Scenic view
For Peter, who requested "more pictures of my friends standing in front of stuff in England," I give you: Becca the Wood Nymph 1 and Becca the Wood Nymph 2, courtesy of Ellen. (Note the Wood Nymph, not the Wood Ho. Sorry.)
We all had dinner in my flat after seminar. That was the dining room. Look how pretty our kitchen is, too. (And yes, there is a large fridge and a large freezer in a little alcove off the kitchen; we don't all fit all our food into those two tiny ones on the left.) Ellen decided she wanted to boil an egg. Only...it didn't turn out right. It turned into Spiderman Egg!
Yes, that was our night. Much fun.
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