last day of class (walking into street fights in one of the largest commercial districts in the world)

I almost died on the last day of class.

Not because we had to individually present our research proposals (based on the hair-pulling, teeth grinding work at Kew), not because I finally keeled over from sleeping 4 hours per night for the last month (unfortunately not because of partying and living up my youth, but because of a variety of circumstances including the cardboard box in which we slept)--but rather because I almost walked into a street fight a few hours later, on Oxford Street at 4 in the afternoon.

We had all become delirious by the last day of class. The National Archives had managed to consume our souls, and like the victims of Rowling's dementors, we existed lifelessly between the past and present, the threshold crossed as we perused dusty documents for the missing clues to a mysterious treasure. The presentation of our research proposal seemed to be some mess of nervous giggling, strawberry scones, falling off chairs, and making cherry stem knots with tongues, all during the serious explanations of the Royal Niger Company, the exodus of Indians from East Africa, and the role of the United Nations in dissenting the Apartheid.

After class, I collapsed onto my bed. Forgetting that the hostel is actually a training ground for a future in which we will have no feathers, no springs, no down, no general comfort, I rose from my unyielding bed, bruised, and went to my friend's room. He had made the same mistake, and we both decided to attend the debates at Parliament, for remedial purposes.

The line was almost 3 hours when we reached the grand building around 2, so after sitting around for 30 minutes wondering how to handle ourselves without Kew, we decided to go back underground and take the Tube to Abbey Road to kill time.

We walked about 20 minutes on Abbey Road before realizing we had passed the legendary crosswalk. At one point I had remarked the beautiful graffiti on the opposite wall, but did not assume that to be the marker for one of the most famous crosswalks in the world.

It was the only indication--we were supposed to have realized the location of the crosswalk from the "give peace a chance" and "all you need is love" and "jill and eric 4evaaa" spray painted on the once white wall. The pedestrians sprinting across the road would have been another indicator. Though cars paused for the hopeful tourist wishing to imitate one of the Fabulous Four, (and a pause is much more than one could ever hope for in this city of Man Meets Lamburghini Round 1), there was still a general (homicidal) sense of impatience and it would have been risky to stroll across the walkway as though for enjoyment. That's just silly.

Instead, my friend and I raced across the crosswalk, only to run into a chubby Asian toddler and her father trying to enact the same scene.

After our 500m dash across vestiges of the first British invasion (save Plymouth Rock), I requested we go to Harrod's. Being the directional whiz that I am, I took my friends to the wrong shopping area. We ended up roaming around Oxford Street, which fortunately for me (in appeasing my sweaty and irritated friends) at least earns a superlative title as the largest concentration of retail in the world.

It is also home to gang violence, apparently. As we got out of the Tube station and realized our (my) directional error, we suddenly turned to see a crowd of people breaking up to allow two thin boys beat and curse out another. Oblivious to the gravity of the affair, I began walking through the fight, so that I could get to the next shop (it's currently sale season.) My friends grabbed my hand and pulled me back, just in time for one of the punches to go astray.

I decided to be overwhelmed and distraught so that my next purchase--a hot waffle smothered in what appeared to be a jar of Nutella--was justified. I like the "feed your feelings" concept.

We finally headed back over to Parliament in the evening, when the lines were supposed to be much shorter. We went through security and were photographed for paper IDs. We argued about where we should pose for our obnoxious tourist shots and then argued about my being a vegetarian.

The House of Commons seemed to be having the same types of arguments. The substance was legitimate (Immigration), but the members employed sarcasm and chuckles and yawns and big words to make their points. Interestingly, many of the arguments made, concerning high skilled workers from Asia and then the ambiguity of Irish citizenship, were relevant to my research on Indians in Kenya. I kept forgetting that I was watching a conversation of 2009, because I had just read dozens of files from the 1950s. The same fear of highly skilled immigrants "stealing" jobs is present in every industrialized country in the world. The false, arbitrary borders upon which we found our nationalist ideals and values render people on the outside to be foreigners, "thieves" of employment.

It began raining hard as soon as we stepped outside the Parliament building. We were to meet our friends for dinner at some pub and decided to run through the rain, like Hillary Duff. We missed dinner, but we felt spunky and famous and blonde, so it was well worth it.

We slept soundly and without any dreams, as the entire day had seemed to be one REM cycle after the next.