Fire alarms, mummies, and botched garlic bread

Today I was rudely awoken by the most irritating, loud, painful noise. We had been warned repeatedly about the sensitivity of the fire alarms in the building, from day one. They don't even have fire alarms in the kitchens because the alarms in the whole building will go off if someone toasts their bread too dark. I'm surprised that they haven't gone off before, because we had to close the window in our room because someone kept burning stuff in a nearby kitchen, and their smoke was wafting into our room. At any rate, these went off at 8:30, forcing everyone in the building to groggily throw on minimal amounts of clothing and head across the street of the building, while the firemen routinely and nonchalantly checked the building. Since the fire department is right across the street, and college students burn most of the things they cook, its a routine occurence, though we are expected to always act promptly. One girl was out on the street in her bathtowel, and some guy had brought along his breakfast.
Since there was no hope of going back to sleep, and I had been planning to get up early anyway (our first and only class of the day not being until 1:30), my roomate and I took the tube over to find where our classes were, and then headed down the street to the British Museum, one block away. We spent the morning there, and I hope to make it a routine to do so before class every morning. Maybe then I'd at least get through most of it, though our tour guide said it that if you spend 30 seconds in front of every object, it would take you something like two years to get through the whole thing. I've got 10 weeks. My favorite things I saw today were an old lady head sculpture, because you never see Greek sculptures of anything less than perfect; the pharoah heads, because unlike any other depictions of monarchs and deities in the museum, they were all smiling; and the library with the mummy heads in it (just because I want a library like it, and mummy heads are cool).


Class went ok. I think I'm going to enjoy this one, as it is Arthurian legends, and we all know Arthur is just cool. Its a 3 hour long class, but we get a break, and our prof is ridiculously energetic and excited. She's a British woman who is the chair of the English dept back in Chicago, and she does things like act out the images of Arthure and Mordred killing each other in some Medieval painting she saw. I like her.
After that, my roomate and I went back to Chelsea to buy and make dinner. We had pasta with marinara with ground beef in it, bread, salad, and merlot. Aside from the fact that the pots and pans we have are total crap, it turned out pretty good, even if I burnt the garlic for the garlic bread. I started a dinner group, and we're going to have a pair of people cook twice a week, and rotate nights and all. It would have been nice if everyone would have been willing to do it 5 nights a week, because it would save a lot of money, but this way works too. Our individual schedules will be more flexible this way. After cleaning up, we all went to see "The Queen" which stars Helen Mirren. It was a fairly good movie, even if nothing much happened in it. I don't even know if its playing in the States, but its worth watching. British ads are funny, though.
Class and Buckingham Palace tomorrow...