O, the places you can go!

I'm beginning to realize I have entirely too much dead air in my days. My work schedule is like this: one week of 7:45-3:30 shifts, one week of 3:30-11 shifts, then back to morning again.

By the way, as I write this:
Scottish dancing class upstairs mixed with the screaming rock band downstairs and others filtering in and out to the bar on this level. So many people having fun, and I sit in the middle reading Watching the English, an anthropology of British behavior. Two regular bar-goers are standing at the counter, 40 something men from...somewhere in the middle east. One's been around the hostel for years and said that the hostel used to pay double for night shifts and double or triple for holidays, and now everyone is going to the American ways. The Americans screwed everything up.

I wonder if he knows I'm American. Some people can't tell.

Anyway, the shifts of this job make it difficult to get another part time job since it would have to go with the same hours system, so I've been literally just walking between 10 and 3, has to be at least five miles a day for the past few weeks, just looking like a tourist gaping at the buildings and parks. Usually I have something small to do to feel like I accomplished something. For example today I had to go to my bank to get my ATM (or as they say, cash point) cards, and instead of taking the bus I walked there. 4 hours later, I was back at my hostel. I could do that for the next six months, but I realized today that as much as I walk I'll need a little bit of substance for my mind. So here is my feat.

British Museum. One exhibit every weekday. I'll be a genius!

So. There are around 70 exhibits in the British Museum. That's 5 levels and 15 categories, the majority of which are divided by country or geographical region. There are also changing exhibits and themes. Babylon is coming next month and I can't wait!

I started with room 1 today, Enlightenment. Learned all kinds of things about the period in the late 17th to early 19th centuries to look at nature instead of the bible for answers to life's questions. It went through exhibits of the first collections of botany and fossils. Funny thing about fossils is they were discovered when people believed the world was created around 3rd century B.C., and since fossils don't fit into the bible anywhere, people believed they were just abnormal stones, even though the evidence pointed to obvious life forms based on the classification system developed by the Swedish natural philosopher Carl Lineus...and then of the desire for foreign "curiosities" as they were called, to learn of the underlying commonalities between cultures....

yes, I read every single thing in there. It took me an hour and 20 minutes to get through one exhibit. I figured I might as well, right? It's a free museum.

Things I've learned in London so far:

No mistake on the tube is unfixable
You can never own too much black
Be polite...say please and thank you almost excessively
Accept the fact that even though you should be polite, some people are extremely rude without reason.

I'll continue this list in later posts....