If the Phillies somehow make it to the World Series this year, I will be torn between being ecstatic and furious. Of course I will be happy that my team makes it to the championship, but the fact that they had to do it the one fall that I am in a baseball-less country will be quite frustrating. Who even understands Cricket anyways? The good news is that I am able to watch the games at various venues around the city. The bad news is that they start 5 hours late and there are approximately 17 people that give a damn in this city. Oh the sacrifices we make.
We toured Parliament this morning and it was very interesting...no George Clinton sightings though, unfortunately. My recent binge of watching the West Wing over the past few months has gotten me rather interested in politics, so learning about Britain's political system was pretty cool. I've also always been a sucker for history, and despite my love for Ben Franklin and the likes of America's brief historical context, the fact is that it is just that: brief. Britain has faced over a thousand years of turmoil, invasions, political upheaval, and bad teeth, so there's obviously a lot to take in, especially in a building like Parliament. I won't get into the nitty gritty, but their system is very in tradition, which in turn makes it seem rather flawed. Granted, they are getting away from the tradition of the monarchy and into more of a democracy, but I definitely see two main flaws through my limited understanding. The first is that the people don't directly elect the Prime Minister. Britain has a general election every 5 years (or sometime in between...they can just decide to have elections whenever, which is weird) where they people elect the members of the House of Commons; there are currently 646 members of the House, along with 2 political parties, the conservatives and the labor party. Whichever party ends up having at least 324 members, or the majority, for you disinclined math people out there ;-), is then considered to be the governing party. The head of whatever party is the governing party then automatically becomes Prime Minister. So essentially the people vote for the party, not the candidate, which doesn't makes sense to me, especially since he or she has the power to send Britain to war. The other main issue with the system is that they don't really have a good system of checks and balances. Their legislative, judicial, and executive "branches" all fall into Parliament, with certain people actually acting as all 3. So essentially there aren't any solid checks and balances. Sorry for the history/politics lesson, but I just feel like you all should be enlightened. At least I know Madison will enjoy it ;-)
Quick Heroes update: we successfully finished Season 1 and have moved onto Season 2. The only thing that sucks is that the shows that I have saved on my computer have French subtitles, so we never know what they're saying whenever they speak in Spanish or Japanese or whatever other random languages they use. Damn the man.
I have all of my trips abroad planned out and paid for, which is a relief. I'm going to Dublin on October 10th for a weekend. Definitely going to visit the Guinness Factory. Brilliant! Hooooray Beeeeer! Then, for our midterm week-long break (ha! you suckers at Drexel don't get this) we're going to Italy. We'll be there for 10 days, visiting Florance, Rome, Bologna, and Venice. The following weekend I will be going to Amsterdam for 5 days, where I'm meeting up with Jeremy, which should be sweet. And then for the weekend of November 21st I am going to Madrid to visit Kurt in Spain. Gonna see a Bull fight. Sweet. If any of you readers have ever been to these cities and have places for me to check out, let me know. I'm pretty much up for anything.
We learned about these things called Bear Gardens in my Shakespeare class. Basically, to warm up the crowds before plays back in Shakespearian days, they would chain a bear to the center of the stage and make it fight dogs. The people would make bets on how many dogs the bear would kill. Bears that were exceptionally awesome at killing dogs would essentially become celebrities, complete with names and retirements. As inhumane as this is, I have to admit that I would love to see this. As would Michael Vick, I'm sure. Oooo I did not just go there...
I'll leave you all on that thought: Bear Gardens.
5 comments:
Interestingly enough, Bear Fighting was Queen Elizabeth's favorite pasttime. Go figure.
The bear may be able to kill a bunch of dogs, but how many dogs would it take to kill a dragon? What if they were skydogs?
hey love. i lived in madrid for a while so i know all the hot spots. obviously you should go to el prado, and if you can make it to any other museums, def do it. but if you get a chance to go out at night, go to Kapital, its a disco and its AWESOME. also you should check out el rastro, its a market that opens every sunday and takes up almost all of down town madrid. you can find literally anything you need at this place and everything is super cheap. just beware of pick pockets. if you get a chance to make it outside the city, check out toledo, i think you can take the bus there. its an amazing little town. their knives and their gold jewelry are world famous. its also where don quixote is from. have fun, im super jealous your going to madrid... i cant wait till i can afford to go back.
dude you can buy the rest of the postseason games on mlb.tv for pretty cheap. you also get the games archived so you can watch them later and if your clever and cover parts of the screen, you can start to watch the game before you find out the outcome so its still a surprise.
Way to update your blog
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