London Day 3

Today was much more relaxed than yesterday but we still toured around. Today, however, the focus was on exploring Regent's Park and the Primrose Hill neighborhood that's right beside it. After our classes we screened the first two parts of the movie 7 Up. It's a famous documentary in Britain that follows the lives of several 7 year olds from different social and economic backgrounds. Originally intended to be a simple snapshot of the 7 year olds lives, it was repeated in subsequent intervals of 7 years with the same participants. It was really interesting to view this glimpse of British life from 1964 and see the various kids. We all agreed that 7 year olds in Britain were much better spoken than 7 year olds in the US... or even 14 year olds. I personally got a kick out of all the prep-school kids and pre-prep school kids in their uniforms with House Captains and prefects - it looked just like Harry Potter or a northeast US boarding school. It was really fascinating just how many of their opinions the 7 year olds picked up from their parents - they were quizzed, and offered opinions about everything from gender to racial differences to academic and career plans.
Seeing the students 7 years later was even more eye opening. Some continued on their trajectories (ruthless politician), others got more angsty (Susie) and annoying to watch, and others started to back off from their family-learned opinions and decide for themselves (Andrew). We are all very excited to see the rest of the documentary and see what's happened to the characters. All of them are still alive and it seems they're going to make another 7 Up for 2013. They've already had installments in 1964 (7 up one), 1971 (7 plus seven) and then 1978, 1985, 1992, 1999 and 2006.
After viewing the two parts, we went out for a walk around Regent's Park and then crossed a really cool canal with several floating houseboats and a floating (we think) Chinese Restaurant and walked into Primrose Hill.

We saw the former home of Yeats (which is also the last home of Silvia Plath). We continued around Primrose and then hiked to the top of Primrose Hill where we got an excellent panoramic view of London.