hello loves!
So sorry I haven't written since Wednesday! I know some of you look very forward to reading about my life so I'm sorry to deprive you for so long :-P Things have been go, go, go since Thursday so I've barely even had a minute to take a breather. But like I said, I'm already procrastinating my homework, so this is a lovely moment for me to write!
Thursday was mostly a catch-up day... I ran a bunch of errands at Faraday to start, dropping my class and luckily meeting up with my photo professor about my camera. He was so nice to come in to meet me, and he lent me his personal camera for me to use for the weekend. I just hope my camera can be saved! After getting a new camera I was inspired to start taking photos so I went on a mini adventure by myself...I kind of scoured the area we walked through the other day with my history class, as I saw so many interesting places the other day I had to go back and visit them myself. I took a couple cute shots, but mostly just wandered, people watching and visiting shops and such. I stopped for lunch at Pret a Manger, a sandwich chain here. One thing I really like about lunch in London is that so many places sell sandwiches and you don't have to wait for them to make them. They make them continuously through the day and package them and you buy the kind you want without having to wait for them to make it, which can be a pain with the loads of people that are coming in and out of places for lunch. For some reason, I've found that every sandwich I've eaten has had chicken and bacon on it... chicken and bacon is a very popular combination here it seems. That and avocado with some sort of fish, and veggie. I tend to get the meat sandwiches because I'm too poor to afford to buy and cook meat for myself so I'm doing anything I can to get it elsewhere, haha!
Later on on Thursday we had a travel seminar at Faraday... mostly getting information about school-sponsored field trips around the UK and abroad. I'm getting nervous about my traveling because its so difficult to try to plan trips alone. I didn't come here with any specific friends, so I have to find people who want to visit the same place as me and plan my trips that way, which is also difficult because some of them have already booked their trips and now I have to play catch-up. I sat down the other night to try to figure out where I want to go and when, and decided definitely on Edinburgh (Scotland), Brussels (Belgium), Dublin, Wales, Paris, Italy, and Prague. The trips for Dublin, Wales, and Paris are all school trips, as I figured it'd be easier for me to just go with a group and not have to try to make travel arrangements, book a hostel, and plan where to go when it's already done for me. The biggest downside to this is cost, as both the Dublin trip and Paris trip are $440 each and Wales hasn't been confirmed yet (but I wouldn't expect it to be quite as expensive). But some friends of mine booked a trip to Paris through a travel agency and just the flight and hostel worked out to almost $400, so for $40 more I'm not only getting accomodations and travel arrangements (we're taking the Eurostar), but we'll be visiting all of the major attractions in Paris and we have complementary breakfast every morning. Both Paris and Dublin are actually class-oriented trips (Paris focuses on architecture and Dublin focuses on literature), but they are opened to the entire school so I fully want to take advantage of that. The flatmates and I are hoping to travel Italy for our fall break. Lucy's aunt has a timeshare option and offered to sell it to us for our break, so right now we're waiting to hear if it's possible to do it in Florence. If we can, it's only going to be about $40 per person for our lodging, plus the cost of travel to and from Italy. I'm crossing my fingers on this one because I want to travel Italy SO bad! I'm hoping to do Edinburgh, Brussels, and Prague with different small groups of friends, so I'm trying to work all the details out ASAP. The longer I wait to make travel arrangements, the higher the price gets! I actually don't even think I have enough money in my account to pay for all of these trips at once, so mom and dad, expect a call from me very soon about getting my money out of the bank!
Anyway, Thursday night some friends and I went to The Crown, a really popular pub nearby and had a few drinks. We had this crazy homeless guy sitting near us and he kept talking to some man about how he killed someone once (creepy), and another guy asked my roommate if she got her shirt in Zambia (is that even a country??) so we met some interesting characters, if nothing else.
Friday was a verrryyyy exciting day! We were up bright and early and off to Stonehenge and Salisbury, about an hour and 45 minutes away. Stonehenge gives you this really amazing feeling when you first see it, sort of spiritual and eerie at the same time, it's kind of hard to explain. I took a ton of pictures of it (postcard shots if I do say so myself) BUT on some unfortunate mishap, I accidentally deleted ALL of my photos from this whole day. I was more than upset when I woke up on Saturday and realized what I did. But realistically, everyone else I was with has about the same pictures as me so I'm just going to steal them to show you all.
After Stonehenge we drove to the town of Salisbury, about 10 minutes down the road. It's a really quiet church town, built around the giant, gorgeous cathedral that stands in the middle of it. There were lots of little school boys running around in uniforms which was kind of funny because for some reason it reminded us of the movies. We had a good amount of time to go exploring on our own, so Alli and I stopped at this little outdoor cafe for lunch (and again, I had a panini with chicken and bacon.. I don't know what it is with this combination!) and stopped in a bunch of little shops. We also went to Woolworth's so I could stock up on Chupa Chups, WHICH THEY DIDN'T HAVE, so it was a bust. They also had this place called Poundland, where everything was one pound, similar to our dollar stores at home. It was here I realized that I'm starting to think in terms of British Pounds instead of American Dollars. Really, everything here matches the price at home in NUMBER, but not in actual value (in that everything doubles when you convert it), so Poundland was actually a $2 store, instead of a $1 store, but one pound is considered cheap here, so it's a deal. A meal that is 5 pounds here is considered inexpensive, even though it works out to be about $10 American when you convert it. Eventually you just have to forget about the conversion and realize there's nothing we can really do about it. We can try to save a penny here and there and every little bit helps, but I didn't work my butt off all summer to come here and NOT spend my money. My attitude is that to my knowledge, I'm only going to be in Europe once (although now that I have fallen in love, I WILL be returning someday), so if it means having the best possible time I can have here, I'm willing to spend my money. There literally hasn't been a day that I haven't spent any money, but it's almost impossible not to, between travel, food, trips, and little odds and ends, not to mention the occasional shopping trip (which I have yet to take). Although one of my short-term goals while I'm here is to try to go a whole day without spending any money, which I think is do-able on one of my adventure days... if I pack food with me and just visit free museums all day. I am very scared of running out of money though, especially after I book all of my trips. But that's another story...
Saturday was a very touristy day for me, unintentionally. I really wanted to go to the boat race but I didn't know what time the boats would be going by where we were going to stand to watch it. I got some groceries in the morning (I literally had no food left, which means I went shopping hungry, which is never good) and waited for the rest of the flatties to get ready and we got down to the River Thames by the London Eye around 2 or so. I thought we had already missed the boats so we walked around and watched the street performers. Some of them are really weird. One guy was like sitting under a table with his head in a dog crate, and he had his face painted like a puppy and had these stuffed paws in front of him so he looked like a dog. And he was panting and barking at people, it was just weird. How do you make a living like that? And why is that even entertaining? Another guy was dressed up like a lizard and riding a bike. Like, what? To each his own, I guess. There were an abundance of those living statues all over the place, I always love those... some of them were terrible though, mainly one guy who was painted blue, which was just... weird. Anyway, my friend Sarah met up with me and we wandered some more. I was excited to hang out with her since I've barely seen her at all since we got here. We ended up going back across the river to Parliament and Big Ben, then walked to Westminister Abbey, then to Buckingham Palace. It was quite a little trek! Then we went to a little pub we found on a corner and I had my first fish and chips experience! I must say I didn't mind it at all. I like the fish with ketchup on it instead of tartar sauce though... is that normal? We also enjoyed some half-pints of this delicious beer called Fruli, which is strawberry flavored and kind of tastes like a wine cooler (mom, this is a beer you would actually enjoy, believe it or not). It was a cool vibe because the Rugby World Cup started that day and we were in the pub for the beginning of the USA vs. England game. We didn't want to cheer for the US and make ourselves stand out though. And good thing too, because the US got their butts kicked!!
Despite being worn out from all of the walking I did that day, I stuck to my guns and went out with a new group of people. I went down the street to my friend Megan's flat and hung out there for awhile before heading out to a pub somewhere in SoHo. We really wanted to go dancing but the group I was with didn't really have a game plan, so Julie and I decided to do our own thing and went to MCDONALD'S!! It was the most hip, busy McDonald's I have ever been to in my life. They were playing techno music which was interesting because it was the first time I've ever had an urge to burst into dance at a McDonald's. Anyway I got some McNuggets and my night was complete. On the way out I saw this homeless man sitting by the door and he was shivering from the cold... I have never seen anything like that before so it just kind of caught me off guard and kind of burned an image in my head. But that pushed aside, it was a good night!
Today was by far my favorite day here so far. We went on a tour of the markets in the East End, including Columbia Road flower market, Brick Lane Market, Sunday UpMarket, the Backyard Market, and Petticoat Lane. It was amazing. The streets were just packed with people buying and selling things. I bought a really cute shirt dress for 3 pounds, and a little hand bag for 2 pounds. These markets have amazing deals!! I felt like everyone there was so hip and trendy, and that was the kind of stuff most of them were selling. Handmade jewelry and clothes, second hand stuff, vintage stuff. This was my kind of scene. There were also loads of merchants selling what I think was probably illegally-acquired things, like DVD players and TVs and tools and such. At one point I went to take a photo and they yelled at me, so then I was like OK this is definitely illegal stuff because why else wouldn't they want me documenting it? My favorite market was definitely the BrickLane/UpMarket (http://www.sundayupmarket.co.uk/)... I actually did some reading about this market before I came to London and didn't realize that's where I would end up today, so I was kind of excited when I found out. I didn't take any pictures but I intend to go back so I will certainly get around to it. I just love open air markets. I love the vibe, the deals, the people, the chaos. It's one of the things that, to me, IS London. There are so many more markets in town and I have every intention to go to each of them at least once. Thank goodness I have so much free time! I also finally got to eat Thai, which I have been craving since before I even left for London, so it was good to satisfy myself. AND I had a really cute cupcake, and for those of you who really know me, you know how excited I was about it. In fact, the girl who I bought it from has a cute little shop (http://www.crumbsanddoilies.co.uk/home.html) that I looked up, again, before I came to London, so it was kind of cool to put a visual to the research. She asked me what cupcake I wanted to buy, and I only said "that one" and didn't point to the one I wanted, but she somehow picked up the right one. I thought that was kind of funny, and she called it "cupcake psyche". Cupcake psyche... I LIKE IT!
In the tube station on the way home there was a kiosk selling candy, so we obviously stopped (I swear I have eaten more candy here than I have in my entire life), and I finally got my CHUPA CHUPS that I've been craving since I ran out last time. Once I got home I literally fell into my bed and passed out for a good two hours. It was like every tired bone in my body finally gave up and forced me to relax for awhile. I was abruptly woken by some random high pitched alarm going off in my building... I'm not sure if it was a fire alarm or whatever but none of us really got up and went outside so hopefully it wasn't anything too serious...
It's already 7:30 and I have yet to really start my work. Luckily, I don't have much- just a little paper for PR and some reading for EEE (I already did my History homework, go me) so it's nothing too stressful. It's just a matter of getting myself focused enough to actually do it! I'm so scattered all the time, I swear my roommates think I'm crazy sometimes!
I promise not to make you all wait so long to hear from me again. Miss you all so much!!!
Cheers!
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