London: I'm going!

Yes, you heard right, or perhaps read it on Facebook. I am going to London on Sunday. It's a two week, all expense paid class trip. Really, it's what sold me on my grad program. That and the Jane Austen references at interview weekend. If I only I had known that I would really be reading about furniture construction instead.

Of course, this will be a material culture trip, not your usual fun sightseeing. Our itinerary is long and detailed, exhausting just to read. There are dozens of museum tours, plus workshops on metal work, furniture construction, etc. We often will visit several sites in one day, sprinting from gallery to tube station to hotel. Oh yeah, we might eat lunch somewhere in there. Better pack a snack bar.

It's hard to get too excited yet. Right now I am mostly afraid of collapsing from exhaustion or dying of boredom in a ceramics warehouse. Getting our food allowances today did help. Look at how pretty their money is!!

I'm also learning that the Queen's English is ridiculous. They elide letters as badly as the French. Someone explain to me how:
Chiswick is prounounced "Chizzek" or Southwark = "Suthhuk."
Or how about the word "gimcrack" as in "The Hanoverian monarchs romped about their gimcrack palaces, creating scandalous gossip for the populace to enjoy." I do enjoy that there is a historian out there named Hermione Hobhouse, though.