Wednesday, 4-10-96
11:40 PM London
5:40 PM E-Town
This week has pretty much been full of my preparing for & taking finals! I am gonna copy into here highlights from an e-mail I wrote to Mom, Dad, Meg, & Kelly about this weekend & early this week cuz I am tired & don’t feel like thinking up new words to describe stuff!
Oh, I was able to sweet talk Jill & my way into the computer lab yesterday afternoon & I had received 22 messages since I last checked about this time last week! A few from the fam! The rest from: Kelly, Hillary Hunt, Maureen, Jim, Lloyd Bradford, the Ma-Wan-Da chica, Deborah, Joe, and a random cool surprise (Noah from NFK #48 Team)! Among other things Noah shared that he’d broken up w/ his girlfriend!
Okay, what’s the deal w/ blokes of my past suddenly writing me after having broken up w/ their gals?!
I also got a message showing me that Gwen had successfully registered me on UI-Direct Monday! She got me 3 LEIST classes I needed & a RELST class I wanted!
Yesterday I also got a fax (3 pgs. long) from Lori! It was such a great surprise to see it yesterday morning in our mailbox & nice to know she made it home safely & is settling back in!
When I got home last night from replying to all those e-mails Ruth & Nick were sitting out front on the steps & so I shared it w/ them for Lori had mentioned them a few times in it!
After the hours doing e-mail (some sorta business related — a-phi housing stuff etc.) I treated myself to a happy meal (my 2nd since Lent had been over… :))! I ate it while chatting w/ Nick & Ruth on the front steps!
Oh, other snail mail this week: a letter from Dynamite, a thoughtful Easter card from M & D, letter from Suzie in France, & a postcard from Meg when she was in South Africa! The postcard had elephants on it! 🙂
Today I took my London History paper & then pretty much devoted the rest of the day to studying for Architecture tomorrow… I did take a few breaks to eat, run errands, & return some snail mail correspondence.
I finally wrote back to Helen & Simon Barnes (my host family)! I also sent a post card to one of Mom’s colleagues classes @ Lincolnwood that has a map on their wall of the world w/ postcards they have received from different places! She had suggested & I agreed it’d be fun for me to sent them one from here! 🙂
I also wrote Ron & his awesome family thank you notes. Tonight I called Graham & we are going to meet @ Leicester Square at 2 PM in front of the ODEON! It will be fun to see him! He got off the phone quickly & I had 30p credit left… So I called Ron! It was short & sweet, but he seemed happy to hear from me & I was glad to hear his voice too! He made me promise I’d send postcards from Ruth & my travels. He also said “look after yourself” in a really sweet tone. He had been given today off & said he’d slept in & was still recovering from this weekend!
So without further a dew… Excerpts from my fam e-mail:
As of yesterday I had 2 finals down & 2 to go! (Now I have 3 down & 1 to go! :))
My British Society one yesterday went pretty well! I wrote about (for my choice 3 out of 10 essay ques.): the decline in Britain’s Economy; Social Class Divisions in Britain; & the influence of Media in Britain. Today’s History of London had a similar format & I wrote on: the Dissolution of the Monasteries; the development & impact of Bloomsbury Square; and the living & working conditions in Victorian London! Tomorrow’s architecture final is a slide comparison test w/ essays as well.
This morning w/ my final I handed in my history essay/paper! What a load off… I ended up getting to type it after all which was awesome! Ron’s family had a computer & I typed it there on Sun. afternoon before their extended family showed up!
Well, my hand is exhausted & cramped from all the writing I have been doing these last few days! So I think I’ll review arch a bit more & try to get some sleep…
I will pick up where I left off about this wonderful weekend at Ron’s & eventually Scotland ASAP!
CHEERS! 🙂
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Note from Present Day Kathy: I have gotten back into a grove with my London Semester Journals and am really enjoying revisiting and reflecting on them 30 years later, especially as the dates are corresponding so closely this week. I find it hilarious that back then I thought 22 emails in one week was a lot to receive! Not to mention that (not her real name) Lori sent me a fax!
Also, it’s fun to recall how back then I enjoyed trying to sound British at times — sprinkling in terms such as “blokes” (in lieu of guys) in my entries, after having been in London for over three months. Related, it was something that an old flame and a former crush both reached out to me while I was across the pond to connect, after having broken up with their partners.
As for “snail mail,” as we used to refer to it, once email came along, it was nice to see who I was hearing from — including (her real nickname) Dynamite (my paternal grandmother who started being called that as a cheerleader when she was in high school). My sister and I used to call her Grandma Mite (for short). She died in May of 2000, four months before Bob and I married and three months after my maternal Grandma Dee died that February. It was really sad that they both died the year of our marriage. I also appreciated that Meg sent me a postcard with elephants on it from her trip to South Africa. As I likely mentioned her before and know I will in future London Semester Journal entries, I have collected elephant figurines since I was in grade school and in more recent years display them in my parents’ glass display cabinet in our eat in kitchen.
When I saw that (not his real name) Graham and I were planning to meet up at the ODEON in Leicester Square, it reminded me that an ODEON was one of the tour stops on a Rock n’ Roll London Walk that I went on during my work trip there in September 2024. However, I looked it up and the one I saw on the tour was the ODEON Covent Garden. It was pretty run down at that time (as you can see in the photo here, with the “OD” missing from the sign). This is what I posted (via Facebook and Instagram) about the walk on Friday, September 6, along with some photos:
I went on my first London Walk this afternoon = Rock n’ Roll London. Our tour guide was Adam and it was awesome! Adam showed us so many significant spots around London for music groups/artists, such as Denmark Street, SoHo and Carnaby. Adam shared London centric stories about The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, Ronnie Scott, David Bowie and more. He even showed us where the famous Oasis album cover photo was shot! For those who have seen the movie Last Christmas, Adam also showed us Phoenix Park, which is featured in it. I appreciated being able move more after sitting on the plane for so long/overnight. This particular tour also happened to leave from near to the hotel where I was staying, which made it easy for me to do, soon after I checked in. I plan to go on one or more of these walks during my time here, as there are so many interesting topics and it is such a fun way to learn about London! 👟💡🎸😍
Friday, September 6, 2024, the day I arrived in London for that trip (my second time back to London after my semester abroad), was also the 10th anniversary of (not his real name) Ron’s death (from brain cancer), which felt serendipitous and very bittersweet. I appreciate what I shared in this entry about Ron and my brief phone conversation the night I wrote it. I do recall how much I liked the sound of his voice and when he would say, “look after yourself.” As I know I will share in a future entry, I did end up sending postcards to Ron and his family, along with my family and a few others, from each country (not her real name) Ruth and I traveled do on our Eurorail adventures through France, Spain and Italy. I also found it amusing that Ron told me he “was still recovering from this weekend!” We did pack a lot in to my Southampton visits (both that Easter weekend and my last in England, before traveling home in early May 1996). Ron took me on many fun outings/showed me some really interesting places in and around where he lived/grew up and went to school in the south of England.
I cracked up when I saw that I wrote “without further a dew” in this entry, instead of “without further ado!” I got it right in a previous entry, which makes it even goofier that I got confused in this one. It reminds me of the time my sister and I were hanging out, when I was around the same/college age and I asked her if she wanted to go buy pints of ice cream. However, I pronounced “pint” as if it rhymed with “mint” and my sister still teases me about that to this day!
I also found it interesting how long it took me to get to the email excerpts, after I suggested that was going to be most of the entry.
I thought it was so cool see the essay questions that I chose to answer for my final exams and can only imagine how tired my hand must’ve been from hand writing all those essay questions and journal entries. I am not sure if ever got the graded exams back. I imagine if I did, that I would’ve kept them. So, I’ll add that to my growing scavenger hunt list of things to look for in the coming days. I especially got a kick out of knowing that I chose an essay question having to do with media in Britain, since 30 years later I work as a Career Advisor with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
I believe the photos above were taken around the time I wrote this entry, with my friend (not her real name) Jill — who I had all of my London Semester courses with — and three of our four professors.
It’s also funny to me that I was still determined to write more about Scotland, which, as I shared in my last entry, I am fairly sure I never got back to in my London Semester Journals.
I am sharing this one day shy of the exact date that I wrote it 30 years ago, as tomorrow (4-10-26) is my 19th Blogoversary and I plan to share my annual post celebrating that then. That said, I will likely transcribe/share more of these entries in the coming days/weeks since I am really enjoying doing so close to the dates I was living them three decades ago. Until next time, as I used to often sign off my London Semester Journal entries… CHEERS! 🙂
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Reminder: Unless I’ve been given permission to use people’s actual names, in most cases I’ve removed or replaced the names of the real people who were part of my journey/experience there, in effort to protect and respect their identities/privacy in my London Semester Journal entries. I will also not share details that I think and feel are too personal for anyone I interacted with, my loved ones, and me.
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Here’s the back story of My London Semester Journals from 1996, including what prompted me to revisit and decide to share them here in 2018. And here’s a list a list of the entries, which I will update as I share them.
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