Did they really make a song about Monday? Why? Mondays stink, haha. Well, they aren’t that bad, really.
I spent the first half of today finishing Jane Eyre. I’ve been reading it feverishly since Thursday. I wasn’t quite halfway through when the weekend began, and I had to finish it by today. Let me tell you; that is a long book. I love the book, thankfully, and didn’t mind pushing through it. I would have preferred to take it at my own much slower pace. I am a very slow reader–20 or 25 pages an hour. That’s pretty slow, considering that Jane Eyre is 420 pages long! For this week, I have to read half of another novel (for next Monday), a 90-page play, 80 pages of history, and a chapter of art history (I haven’t looked at how long THAT is–I’m afraid to). Oi. Four very reading-heavy classes. I must be insane. Oh well. I think I can manage it by glossing over bits of it.
I would have written over the weekend, but that didn’t work out. Friday I was out all day and didn’t have time to get to library; Saturday I decided I would do it Sunday, and then yesterday/Sunday the library was closed. The reason I was going to do it from the library was the crappiness of my computer. I was going to upload my pictures and write this blog there, because it would go much faster. Well, I again planned to do it today but I managed not to have the pictures with me, so I just came back here to the dorm and am doing it here. I will add pictures here–it’ll take a while.
So, Friday was Hampton Court Palace. I love that place–it’s really pretty. It isn’t like Versailles, huge and amazingly cold. It’s large, but it’s very pretty and has a real livable feel. I loved the Tudor kitchens, all set up like they would have been in Tudor times, with real cabbages and garlic and so forth. We went through the hedge maze and on a few of the guided tours (I thought those were fun). Generally, we (me and Olga) enjoyed ourselves. We got back to the dorm around 5:45 and then gathered our stuff and went downstairs to cook dinner. I made a really tasty sauce–I cut up tomatoes and added some cheese and let it boil a bit. It turned out really well, actually, to go on our pasta. Julia joined us, and we struck up a conversation with a Scottish man, a jazz guitarist.
I went back down at 9:00 to watch The Tudors, because it’s on BBC2 here. I’ve seen two episodes, because they were online; this one happened to be one of those two. It was so ridiculous–Henry (VIII) wrestles with Fracois (I) of France. They were kings! They would have never done that. Jousting, maybe. Impromptu wrestling? Never. And Princess Mary shoved the Dauphin! What a diplomatic nightmare THAT would have been. Not to mention the girls are all running around with bare heads, which would have not been allowed. There are some historical tidbits, but mostly it’s a soap opera set in Tudor times with Tudor names.
As I mentioned, the rest of the weekend was pretty well taken up with reading Jane Eyre. And as mentioned, I love that book so much. Mr Rochester is pretty much my hero, an Charlotte Bronte is a goddess. Seriously, Mr Rochester is a horrible husband: he can be mean and severe; he romped around Europe and had a bunch of mistresses, probably begetting an illegitimate daughter; he’s twenty years older than Jane; he was married already and tried to commit bigamy. And yet, Charlotte Bronte succeeds in making me love him and wish he were real. He may be brisk and sharp, but he is really kind, as evidenced by his measured treatment of his mad wife, who he keeps safe despite all. He left behind the dissipated lifestyle, having found it distasteful. He was forced to marry Bertha and she was a bad woman from the start. And being twenty years older isn’t always a huge impediment. Now, trying to get Jane to marry him while he was already married was definitely stupid, but no one’s perfect. But, anyway. My love for Jane Eyre could go on and on, alas, I don’t intend to write on and on.
I have been doing some creative writing and I’m really quite excited. I think I’ve finally hit on a way to reconcile certain parts of my story and make them work. Well, truthfully, it isn’t my story but that of Jeanne de La Motte-Valois, so called Comtesse de La Motte. I am just putting it into a fictionalized account. I won’t go into too many specifics about the story. I will just say that I think I hit upon how to make it all work, and it’s very relieving.
That is all for now. Tomorrow, I will add pictures from this week. Hasta luego.
