Fall Semester: A Wednesday Abroad on the Grinnell-In- London Program

7:30 a.m.: Roommate’s alarm goes off. Some vague memories of her getting up, and then I’m unconscious.

8:58 a.m.: Other roommate’s alarm goes off. Grr …

9 a.m.: My alarm goes off. Shower.

9:40 a.m.: First cup of tea of the day. Catch up on all of the American blogs.

10:30 a.m.: Walk to class. I close my eyes when I walk past the bakery with the Technicolor icing cupcakes so I won’t stop and buy one.

11 a.m.: Intro to Shakespeare. We continue discussing last weekend’s all-expense-paid fieldtrip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Patrick Stewart and David Tennant perform in Hamlet. Mostly we girls discuss how attractive David Tennant is. The guy next to me keeps nodding off, and I want to smack him with my book. I debate whether I could compose myself once again before he had a chance to look around.

1 p.m.: Walk home.

1:30 p.m.: Turn on the wrong burner of our electric stove. Wait for a long time for my skillet not to heat up.

1:48 p.m.: Move skillet to correct burner. Make lunch. Watch a rerun of Doctor Who while eating lunch. Mmmm … David Tennant.

2:30 p.m.: Second cup of tea of the day in the basement of a Starbucks-esque coffeehouse. Edit umpteenth draft of a screenplay I’ve been working on in my free time.

4:30 p.m.: Head out for our History of London walking tour of the East End. Do homework while sitting on the Tube.

5 p.m.: Class meets at Old Street Station. We explore the remnants of the 19th-century furniture factories and learn how the working class was exploited. All of us end the walk disappointed that we didn’t live in that era. Just kidding.

6:30 p.m.: My five flatmates and I fight over who gets to make their dinner first in our two-person kitchen.

7:25 p.m.: All six of us head out to the Duke of York Theatre where we join the rest of the program to see Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, starring Michael Gambon and David Williams. I’ve never heard of the second name, which reveals my ignorance of British pop culture.

10 p.m.: We all leave the play very confused.

10:05 p.m.: One of my flatmates and I wait at the stage door to get Michael Gambon’s autograph. We get David Williams’ too, although we still don’t know who he is.

10:40 p.m.: I look up David Williams on Wikipedia.

11:30 p.m.: Start going to bed. One roommate and I whisper for a long time while the other roommate who has to get up at 7:30 again tomorrow throws pillows at us.

Molly Rideout '10 is an English major from Madison, Wisconsin.