Classes, Carnival

Yesterday was the last day of the Notting Hill Carnival. We got there pretty early before the crazy began" but we did manage to catch some really great parades. There was a procession of skeleton knights and a pirate ship and a giant plant woman and a Beijing Olympics caravan. There was also a lot of Jamaican and other Caribbean food, and I had curried goat (great) and drank out of a coconut that I watched a guy whack open with a machete (awful pretty much). By the time we left crowds were streaming in from miles away. I guess what impressed me the most about Carnival was how it made London seem to be a city with a really active, contemporary culture that's perfectly able to incorporate and celebrate outside influences (in this case Caribbean, but also South Asian, African, etc. etc. etc.) while simultaneously retaining such an innately British heritage. I'm not sure if every European city can do that so successfully (Paris, for example? Or so I've heard), and I'm not even sure if London can, but at the moment that's what it seems like.

We managed to do the most un-Carnival thing possible at night, which was to go to a BBC Prom concert here featuring Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony and selections from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. This was the only free concert that Grinnell-in-London provides, but considering music is cheaper than going out to eat or pretty much everything else, I'd like to see much more.

Thomas and I went to the British Museum today and saw a wonderful exhibit on American prints, with a lot of Pollock and Hopper and some prints by a guy named Martin Lewis who used the coolest lighting effects I've ever seen in printmaking.

Classes also started today. My Shakespeare class is going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe tomorrow. My Renaissance Art professor has the most over-the-top accent I have heard yet. But we're going to Bruges and Ghent!