Day 28

Today was class as usual. We had yet another heated discussion about what certain people do or don’t like about certain aspects of the language. I swear every discussion just turns into story time about some experience someone had in high school in which they were the only white kid, or how someone was on the tube and they heard something funny. It is ok sometimes, I just get a little sick of it. But after class we went and bought tickets for some shows on Wednesday- it turns out we are going to go to two shows that day! That should be fun. We went to lunch at a pub on Drury Lane, which we realized had the exact same menu as a pub we went to by St. Paul’s earlier, except the food was cheaper. Weird. Then we walked over to meet the group for a tour at Samuel Johnson’s house. For any who don’t know who he is, he is most famous for writing his dictionary. I will spare you most of the details which I find really interesting, but he created really the first English dictionary in the sense of the dictionary we know today. It was really fascinating learning about his work and how he was able to accomplish making it- he finished it in just 9 years. Also since it was really just him writing it, it has some very subjective entries such as the one for Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people. Ha so he is totally dissing the Scots in his dictionary, and nobody does anything about it. We also learned about his personal life which was interesting. He was really witty and said some really funny things- one of his friends even wrote a biography of him after following him around and writing down the funny things he said. They had some fun time-period clothes there, and a bunch of people dressed up but I didn't because it was so hot!

After Sam’s house we went home. Today was freak hot! And soooo humid. It has been the first day that has been very bad weather like that. It rained for the first week and a half we were here, but since then has been really good weather. I can do heat, but I cannot do humidity like this. So we just went home and collapsed and finished the day reading and relaxing.