Five months in

So today happens to be the five-month anniversary of my arrival in London, and I don't think I've written for about the same amount of time - due to my mother bugging me about it during her visit, I feel that I owe the world (or all five of my readers) a post.

Sorry for not updating. Really. I've meant to do it for so long but a confluence of events made it impossible to do so for the longest time. First of all, grad school is hard. Second, working in an internship is hard. The transitive property states that if grad school is hard, and working in an internship is hard, working while studying is hard as shit. That's my math for you.

But that's my life. LSE, truth be told, isn't everything I dreamed it would be. It isn't an bastion of intellectual debate and many of my classes at Miami were much more difficult and demanding than the London School of Economics and Political Science. Kids in grad school are just as stupid as kids in undergrad, only there's less beer pong and more crying about our futures. I only have class on Mondays, a schedule I engineered in order to be able to work in an internship the other days of the week, which now leaves me with a horrible schedule on Mondays and four days a week to cry about my future.

My course, a master's in Political Sociology, is surprisingly good in that while I normally don't understand a word of what we're reading and discussing in my core course, I was able to go into the government and international relations departments and take classes that vaguely interested me. I seem to have forgotten how to write a coherent essay, but whatever. I made some good friends, including a few who enjoy drinking and crying as much as I do.

Working at Demos, a think tank who focuses on the far right, was a dream come true, but it wasn't good for my time management or sanity. Being in the office 10-6 two to three days a week didn't leave me with much energy or will to study when I got home. However, my bosses were great, and I'll miss it a bit, but I love being able to catch up on TV (priorities?) and bum around. Bumming around is nice. I also walk dogs at an animal shelter but I haven't been able to go for a while. I need puppy cuddles. I've also been seeing a ridiculous amount of theatre (but not nearly as much as I COULD be seeing), and I've been slacking on going to the cinema. British English is also essentially a completely different language from American English. I'm now proficient, but I didn't understand a word my fellow Birthrighters said for the first few days of the trip to Israel.

Otherwise, London is lovely, exciting, and horribly depressing most of the time. Seasonal affective disorder hit hard, and the weather sucks. Every time I see the sun I get confused and disoriented. I know they said it would be grey and dark, but this is really ridiculous. It's making me almost miss Miami, which is so unnatural and weird and equally as disorienting.

I haven't been traveling as much as I did when I lived in Prague, which may be shocking to many of you, but I seem to have run out of funds. I went to Israel on Birthright which was lovely and fun and left me with a number of really great friends whom I love dearly (and a boyfriend, which is a better souvenir than another IDF shirt). I became really tan on Birthright, which lasted for about a month, and now I feel mildly albino. I also went to Cardiff, which was surprisingly nice, and then Helsinki, which was dark, cold, rainy, depressing, boring, and expensive (but it was lovely to see Amanda!), and then Tallinn for a day, which was even worse. Joel and I spent two days in Dublin, but we didn't see the National Leprechaun Museum so it was a waste of a trip. I'm desperate to go back to Prague, and I need to go some place warm and sunny, preferably a place with fruity cocktails and a beach. I'll try to update normally about my upcoming trips to Edinburgh and Venice.

Otherwise, not much else is happening. I'm kind of coasting through this term, am in a state of panic about my dissertation, and really need to go home for a little bit. But this is my life. How odd that I want to stay here permanently.

Oh, I also saw David Hasselhoff play Captain Hook in Peter Pan, which was not only a highlight of my time in England, but of my life.

Also, my new obsession in life (besides my own dear Golden Retriever, Lady Toby Ziegler) is Uggie, the undisputed star of The Artist: