Obama-Rama!!!

Thursday, November 6th

I woke up today not feeling great, maybe from Mr. Jameson or perhaps I’m getting sick, who knows. I made it through Brit Pop when we talked about synthesizer and Indie music of the 1980s. Then I went to my lesson where I didn’t play great. We had a discussion about how to approach new pieces of music: he told me to be confident in the fact that I have the ability to sight-read a new piece and get the main musical points across and to not go into it blindly trying to fix every note and run. I suppose that’s the next step of musicianship.
Later on, I went to see a production of Othello at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. It wasn’t a very enjoyable performance because the acting wasn’t great and there was a lot of random modern dancing going on that didn’t really make any sense. However, afterwards there was free pizza and wine/juice in the lobby, so I stocked up on OJ and cheese slices. That was the best part of the show. We’re leaving for the Liverpool trip tomorrow morning at 7am, so to sleep I go.


Wednesday, November 5th

Today is Guy Fawkes Day in England, celebrating his attempt to carry out the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It is also Hooray Barack Obama Won the Election Day, and we threw a party that celebrated both. There was a good amount of people that showed up, and it was really nice to have a fun night hosting everyone in our own flat. It was also great to get to know some other ICLC students that I haven’t hung out with yet.


Tuesday, November 4th

This wonderful day began with a tour of Tate Britain with the lovely Susan Bracken as our guide. It’s pretty humbling to see a roomful of art that consists of 300-500 year old portrait paintings that total up to somewhere in the hundreds of millions of pounds. While it’s sorta hard to stay focused for two hours listening to a proper British lady talk about men’s fashion in the 1600’s, it’s still really awesome to have this chance to learn about English history from an amazing art historian.
After an intense practice session, I went home to prepare some wonderful twice-baked potatoes before hunkering down and watching the election coverage via Omar’s laptop and streaming live video from msnbc.com. When Obama was eventually declared the winner, it was one of the most surreal moments of my life. It’s one of those monumental moments in life that you will always remember. We cheered and Eric opened up a bottle of champagne (and almost took out a police officer with the cork when he shot it out the window). We stayed up for Obama’s speech, and went to bed sometime around 5:30am. Luckily I had nothing to do the next day.
Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about the feelings of the people in the UK and Europe towards the United States, and they have definitely not been happy. After watching both campaigns through this international lens, it made me realize that 1) we are an extremely powerful nation, in everything from military strength to globalization of our popular culture, and 2) there is way too much at stake to hand the office over to a candidate who may die soon and whose successor is an idiot. When Obama was declared the winner, I could, and can still, honestly say that I am finally proud to be an American again.


Monday, November 3rd

I didn’t know what I was talking about in Shakespeare today…big surprise. And I somehow didn’t get charged for having two pieces of music overdue for two weeks from the Westminster Music Library. Go me. However, I did nearly fail my first attempt at making homemade alfredo sauce. I bought sour cream instead of double cream. Oops. Somehow I still made it work. Probably thanks to the overpowering garlic flavor and loading on way too much parmesan reggiano cheese.