The Land of Cold, Rain, Snow, Fireworks and Burning Effigies

Hello from the land of cold, rain, snow, fireworks and burning effigies. The atmosphere of London has drastically changed over this past week or so. For one, the weather here is turning into a stereotype of itself: very grey, cold and rainy. We actually got snow though the other day. It was crazy no one predicted it. I was actually walking out of a restaurant and all of a sudden it started to hail like crazy. I was on my way to an exotic teashop but even though a good cup of tea would have been great after being stuck in the storm, I could not make it being hailed on as I was and so I jumped into a nearby pub to have a pint and wait out the storm. By the time I finished my pint it had stopped hailing but it was snowing now.
Apparently it hasn’t snowed here at this time of year since 1938 (A year before England entered WWII). It was very pretty despite being a cold, wet nuisances. People were freaking out though, like it was a sign of Armageddon.
Perhaps this mood carried over to the latter part of the week, or maybe this is the normal atmosphere of Brits this time of year, but the last several days have been wild. Constant huge fireworks being launched at all times day and night. I’m not talking about firecrackers but large professional quality fireworks being shot off from random courtyards and side streets (no wonder London has such a intimate history with fires). Also, I have not seen one yet, but I have heard talk of effigies being burned all over the country. There was even one of Sarah Palin burned in the town of Battle.
This last example of eccentric celebration speaks to how obsessed the Brits are with the US election right now. It is hard to imagine that people in the US are paying any more attention to the presidential election then people are here. Every day there are programs on every station about is, several articles in every newspaper and people talking about it every café and pub. My office is even having an election party tomorrow night. Not surprisingly the chatter and media coverage here is always pro-Obama.
I have had to resist getting too lost in the excitement here and keep at it with my work. I finished up the youtube page for the Giving Nation program, http://uk.youtube.com/user/GivingNation for those that might be interested. I am still working on fund raising and also doing some new research into local economic issues that could be used in regional active learning programs. The foundation has a program called ‘Paying for it’ that encourages young people to examine and engage with economic issue of importance to their local communities.
Other then that I am working on a paper for my British Lit class about the relationship between the individual and society in the context of the novels we have been reading. And also starting to do some research on my independent study that I am doing. I have finally decided to focus it on the evolution of the concept of citizenship in England.
Saturday I took a little break to take an ‘urban hike’. I went around the St. Paul’s Cathedral area and ended up walking to the area around the Tower of London. Since it was the day after Halloween and the city was engulfed in a quite dramatic gloom I decided to visit some old graveyards and allegedly haunted places, including a very bizarre outdoor wall dedicated to those who died trying to save other people's lives and failed. Their are about 50 plaques on the wall all with random and unusual tails of this sort of heroism that all date back more then a hundred years. I didn’t see any ghosts but it was still eerie walking through some of the old chapels, ruins and grave sites and such. I ended my walk with a visit to the Museum of London, which is dedicated to the history of the city.
More to come about the reaction to the elections here, Guy Fawkes Night and life in London…