I slept very solidly last night (I think I was so tired from being up so long yesterday). I got up and worked on my essay then headed to NYU to print it out.

At NYU I met Allison and we decided to take the buses together to Tate Britain (where we were meeting for class). We met two other girls from the class at the bus stop. THe 1st bus we took terminated before it was supposed to, so we walked to Trafalgar Square to pick up the second one. Yet again it wasn't coming any time soon even though it was supposed to run every 5-10 minutes. So we got a cab instead. It was pretty cheap because we weren't that far away and it was split between 4 of us (love that london taxis don't charge you for multiple people). We weren't the last ones there either, so all was good.

Class today was very very interesting. 1st Allison and Caroline presented about the 2 planes hanging in the main gallery, then we went and explored the "Coral Reef". This was incredibly interesting. It is this maze of rooms that you traverse with no guide or specific path to follow. There are doors everywhere and each room has different objects in them, as if indicative of a previous resident. There was an arcade game, a clown mask, Lenin books, arabic writing on a ceiling etc. Overall the experience was rather creepy - as if you expected someone to jump out at you at any moment, or catch you looking at their stuff. Luckily when I went in, with Allison and Brian, they only other people in there were from our class, which made it fun (with Jason scaring Alli at one point). Overall it was very interesting and I have never experienced anything like it. I still can't make out what I think of the name "Coral Reef". It seems completely unrelated. I just don't understand it. After the presentation on Coral Reef Jane gave us our tickets for the Turner Prize exhibit and let us wander through this on our own.

The Turner Prize is awarded every year to a British Artist. What we saw were pieces from 4 nominees. One was a series of paintings, all with some broken imagery (my favorite piece was one a background of Florida or California, an American flag in a cement wall, broken ground and a hookah). The next was a room with a bunch of videos (they seemed mainly historical and/or documentary). The next was a room with canvases that were broken and rearranged and reassembled. The last, and my favorite among the four, was a sound piece, just three speakers playing the artist singing a Scottish folk song "Lowlands".

Back at the flat I made pita chips and burritos for myself and spent the evening watching tv and eating too much food. I finally received the package from Babs. It was a basket of sweets: chocolate layer cake, chocolate dulce de leche, lindt truffles, fruit/nut/chocolate candy and a chocolate hazelnut bar and banoffee cookies. Needless to say this should satisfy my sweet tooth for quite some time.