Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I Got Free Stuff! I Got Free Stuff!

This week = crazy.

Friday was Disco/Karaoke pub crawl. Saturday was some B.A. ERSing (until really late, it's a legitimate qualifier for crazy). Sunday was Skype-day so I got in touch with the folks. Monday started Freshers week and all the mad activities. Sophia and Nuria and I watched This Is England, a British drama film written and directed by Shane Meadows. It's about skinheads in 1983 before the entire subculture was adopted by the white nationalists. It was pretty awesome. After that we went to a book-binding shindig with Dil. I was less than impressed with folding pieces of paper and sewing them together. Afterwards I grabbed some tea and honey and went back to the flat to nurse my sore throat. Later, Sophie made dinner and then we all headed out to the Darkroom which was hot, sweaty and unnecessary.

Then on Tuesday the internationals of JMH headed out for our orientation. A couple of lectures illustrated that my listening skills are still on vacation and in no shape to start school next week. However, my walking skills are on par and I greatly enjoyed our tour of the City of London. Lots of neat history involved. Also the tour ended at a pub whereupon UAL's Study Abroad program bought the entire group a pint. Back at the ranch I had another therapeutic cuppa and settled down for a nice evening in with Maxine. Ended up asleep by midnight - great success!

This morning Maxine and I were out of the flat by noon and headed to the Big Fayre where we received lots of free stuff. We had to fight tooth and nail for the Urban Outfitters goody bags but consider it Maxine's baptism into the desperate world of university students. Upon organizing my goodies I've found many-a good coupon and planned my nights out for the rest of my life, it seems. Apparently there's a student get-together again tonight but as it is raining outside I'm less than inspired right now. Maybe later.

Disco night at the Elephant & Castle! Our sezzy D.J.
Some quality Egyptian Rat Screw for Nuria's birthday.
Playing some foozball at the Darkroom.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

It Is Raining

Today I was looking forward to lounging in Hyde Park with a good book. Alas, it is not to be so. This is my first rainy day in London and I'm almost glad I woke up at 11 a.m. so that it's halfway over. I am not a fan of rainy days.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I woke up nice and early and went to have lunch with Helen (Clara's friend) in Covent Garden. We ate some delicious Cornish pastries while watching "The Tom Show" perform on the street. I'm a sucker for street performers - I gave him four pence...

Tom the street performer and a view of Covent Garden Market.

After lunch we strolled around Covent Garden and then put our walking shoes on and hit the city (I didn't actually change shoes, this was just a convenient turn of phrase). We blasted through Covent Garden and then hit Trafalgar Square, Horse Guards, Southbank, Chinatown, Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus. All in all, a good day. I thoroughly enjoyed the street performer and opera singer in Covent Garden, taking the a picture with the iconic lion in Trafalgar Square, seeing more street performers on the south bank, realizing that there was a cache of delicious but inexpensive Chinese food (my favorite), seeing the set up for the premier of Eat, Pray, Love, and knowing how to get home all by myself from Piccadilly Circus.
The Iconic Lion
The Queen's Life Guard at the entrance to Horse Guards.
Colorful lanterns in Chinatown.

I went all the way back to my dorm, got my running gear on, and then headed back to Hyde Park to do some jogging. In hind sight, I should have found a running route to Hyde Park and not taken the tube but I didn't want to press my luck. Also if it took more than thirty minutes I would have been done for but tomorrow I'll give it a try. So I ran around for about thirty minutes and saw a good deal of people and the water and geese and swans and whatnot. A lady actually stopped me to ask if I'd run past the Princess Diana Fountain as she was looking for it but could not find it. Unfortunately I had not. If I do, though, I'll take a picture and call my mom directly.

I thought about heading back to Leicester Square for the premiere of Eat, Pray, Love but I don't think sweaty and breathless me would have made a good impression on Julia Roberts. Heads up though, this is where I would suppose the cast of Harry Potter comes for HP7. Chea.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

I Have One Sock


I have one sock. I used to have two but now I have one and I don't know what's become of it's lonely mate. Therefore, I am standing in the kitchen in my Toms which are aggravating my blisters. It's difficult to discover how a British stovetop works when your feet hurt. So I'm staring dismally at the frying pan while eating a piece of toast. This puts a damper on how satisfied I felt after managing to purchase all the necessary groceries. I had compiled all the essentials of student life: cereal, pasta, pesto and brownies. It's all useless now because the darn range refuses to cooperate. I'll have cereal.

I compromised and made "porridge" (only 2 minutes to perfect porridge). It comes in Original, Apple and Blueberry, or Golden Syrup variety! Interesting, eh? I bet you're thinking, not really interesting and I do now realize that I dedicated an entire paragraph to food so I'll get to the good stuff.

Today I went back to the Thames (by tube this time) and came up on the London Bridge.

For all of you who did not know, the above picture is NOT the London Bridge.

I crossed the bridge with my pal, Jordan and then we proceeded to walk towards the Tower of London. On the way we passed St. Magnus-the-Martyr, Church of England Church, which was a gimmick because St. Magnus did not die for his faith and therefore is not a martyr. He was really executed in some political power struggle with his cousin. Tsktsk, St. Magnus Parish.
After we passed his outrageously huge monument and the church, we carried on to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. Tickets were outrageously expensive to get in (twenty pounds) and so in order to afford it I might have to forego foodfor a week. I desperately want to though so my history-loving side will have to reconcile with my stingy side.


By the way, this is the Tower Bridge.

The Tower of London is insanely cool for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's more than 900 years old. That's right, older than our entire country. Shazam. It's been a royal quarters, held prisoners guilty of treason and espionage (think the World Wars here) and housed a royal menagerie (other than the prisoners). This is also where they keep the Crown Jewels which are another epic part of history. The Crown Jewels is also a box-set by Queen. How about that for trivia?

Here is the whole Tower kit'n'kaboodle. The Tower was so named because of the White Tower inside the structure which was built by William the Conqueror in 1078. Although, it wasn't the White Tower then, it was just the keep. It wasn't until Henry III whitewashed the whole thing in 1240 that it became the "White" Tower.
You can sort of see it to the right of the frame.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

The First Night Out


The station from which many adventures will begin.


There must come a time in everyone's life when they recognize they are not good with directions. That time was last night - Sarah's friend, you are not good with directions. I hope that you now recognize this. Sarah and I, of course, are impeccably good with directions.

To kick off my story I will illustrate just how good at directions we both are. We began the night by planning an epic trip to the Gloucester Arms pub right off Gloucester Road (my first pub)! Gloucester Road is about halfway between the two of us so we planned our tube trips accordingly. Let it be known that I had to exit at one station in order to get on a whole other line that took me to the Gloucester Road station. Be impressed, I pulled it off without a hitch. And when I got to Gloucester Road I actually walked around the block and figured out where things were before Sarah even got there. As I said, be impressed...

So when Sarah arrived we jetted off "left" from the station which, as it turns out, was not the "left" direction that we were supposed to be jetting off in. We were actually supposed to go more of "straight" down Gloucester Road (I will never understand why road names always seem to be absent from directions...) So after about 45 minutes of trekking around South Kensington, Sarah Googles it on her phone and we are put back on track. We wind up at Gloucester Arms at 11:13 p.m. which is a great success because the tube closes at midnight and other means of transportation are beyond me. So we catch up, have a pint (my first pint), and head on back to Gloucester road to catch our trains home. All in all, successful.
There you are, you tricky devil.


First pint!

Upon exiting Elephant & Castle in my neck of the woods I stride out confidently in the direction of my dorm only to realize (twenty minutes later) that it is not actually in the direction of my dorm. So I head back to the station, much to the delight of innumerable groups of guys that I had passed going in the opposite direction. I make it back to Elephant & Castle only to realize that it is not my beloved Elephant & Castle! Where is the tacky elephant and castle sculpture on the roof? Where is the kebob stand? And all the buses? So I worked my way around the traffic circle, walking up a few blocks and back a few blocks down each road that I came across, and finally found my Elephant & Castle (the "good" Elephant & Castle) on the opposite side. From there I could direct myself home which I did.

When I got home I realized that sometime during the night my keycard must have been misplaced as it was not on my keychain and therefore not able to let me in my building. Fortunately there were people standing outside my building. Upon entering my building I also realized that the elevator was broken and six people were stuck in it. Tres amusing. Since I had such huge blisters on my feet from all that extra walking I decided to take a seat and I ended up meeting some people in my building. Sonny, the security guard; Bill, the conspiracy-theorist from America (who, if he reads this, will probably object); the guys whose window is caddy-corner to mine (We waved to each other earlier today); Philip and person with Philip and Sophie. After about 45 minutes they unlocked the elevator and everything was fine and dandy and now I have people who can let me in the building and/or escort me around the seedier parts of town. A successful night!

This is not a very good picture by me but here is Bill helping out the poor souls in the elevator.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Walk


Today I decided to take a walk. I had goals for this walk but I shan't tell you them now because none of them came to fruition. Sadly, this has been a trend for the whole two days I have been abroad. Anywho.

I set out from my building and decided that, although I have an excellent sense of direction, I would stay on one sidewalk. Just walk up and down and see what I could see. Well I saw what I assumed to be a Catholic church (only Catholic churches have "Mass", right?) that was a regular, small, ol' little rectangular building behind a tremendously impressive, ancient looking facade. I'll have to take a picture when I decide to bring my camera on my little walks. I don't usually like to go walking around with my camera because it makes me feel like a tourist. I already feel as if I have the American flag branded on my forehead. Apparently I don't, though, because I was asked for directions to Elephant & Castle (I should know where this is - but I don't yet). As soon as I started talking the lady said, Oh and then just walked away. But the good news is that I wasn't attracting any attention. Or I wasn't attracting attention as a poor, lost tourist seeing as I did get whistled at. I was unaware that the wolf whistle was an international thing but it is alive and well so that is that.

I also saw a few parks on my walk and (Kegan, you'll be excited to hear it) there were quite a few people playing football. I think we all know what I mean by football. The most exciting bit was that in one of the parks (probably more but I only saw the one) there was a group of people playing football in a basketball court that was really more like an indoor soccer court that happened to have basketball hoops on either end. I'm not kidding, it was constructed with goals on either side embedded in the fencing. Huzzah for being in a country that respects the game! As I continued walking I saw a dead pigeon and quite a few live ones and then someone gave me an odd look for having a notebook out and writing all of this down. Sigh.

I went around the block (getting back to my original sidewalk, of course) and kept walking and saw about 3000 fish bars, a KFC, a McDonalds, a Dallas Chicken House (do they have chicken houses in Dallas? I doubt it) and nowhere that I wanted to stop and find a top-up card. I also did not see my dorm. Don't ask me how I did it but I did it - I misplaced my dorm. All was well though, I simply turned around on my sidewalk and walked back until I found it. I don't know how I missed it - it's a huge blue building.
The view from my window, the blue building on the left is more of my dorm.

Cheerio!