I love the smell and feel of the air right after it rains. Everything is so crisp and fresh and it brings a sort of calm to me.
Right now I'm in between tasks (I'm waiting for the laundry machine to finish) so I finally have a moment to sit down and write. So sorry I've left you all hanging for almost a week now!
This weekend I kept things relatively low-key and cheap, since my budget has become increasingly tight in the last week. A lot of my friends were out of town in Liverpool anyway, so I had some good time to myself. Friday I ventured down to Camden Market, about 2.5 miles away from where I live. I decided to walk there, which was nice exercise. I ended up getting lost in this place called Kentish Town, which wasn't exactly a glitzy area so I was speed walking trying to find my way back. Turns out I just took a wrong turn at the tube station and ended up way out of my way. I told you all before how easy it is to take a wrong turn and get lost somewhere completely different. When I finally found the market, I realized it wasn't what I had expected (vegetables, antiques, and trinkets like all the other markets I've been to). It was more of a subculture type place with lots of stalls and shops aimed towards people of a certain "genre," and by that I mean (and I HATE using labels, but this is to illustrate the picture I'm trying to paint for you) goths, hippies, and punks. Everything was black and smelling of incense... Even though I was a bit out of place, I enjoyed it anyway and took it for what it was. I stopped for a cup of coffee on my way back at this cute little place called Inhabition coffee shop and it was nice to just sit back and sketch in my book for a bit. I like that a lot of cafes and such here allow you to sit down and they serve you, rather than have you order at the counter. The twist on this is that you can leave at your leisure, because when you want to pay, you walk up to the counter and do so, rather than get a bill and be rushed out of the place like in the States. And you don't have to tip, which saves us poor kids some money here and there. I do try to tip when I have a little extra change though. Working in a sweaty ice cream stand all summer made me learn to appreciate the little bit of extra appreciation people sometimes offer up.
Saturday was go, go, go as usual, with my day starting around 9:30 (It was an early night for me on Friday). I spent most of my morning trying to hunt down a book to use for my history paper, which I eventually ended up buying because I couldn't find it in the library. I'm writing a sort of biographical paper on a historical person, and my history teacher pointed me in the direction of this book called "We Are At War," by Simon Garfield, which is a collection of journal entries written by people participating in the Mass Observation Project during WWII. I'm focusing on a woman named Eileen Potter (the name is a pseudonym) who was an evacuation officer for the London County Council. The interesting thing about this is that all the information I have and will be able to acquire about this woman is in this book, and this book alone. Since her name is a pseudonym there's no way for me to look up anything more about her. So it's kind of like piecing together a mystery in that I'm trying to figure out what kind of a person she was, how her job was, where she grew up and who she spent time with, all just by reading her journal entries. It's going to take some research but I think in the end it will be worth it. I'm devoting my entire evening, tomorrow night, and Thursday during the day to get this done before I leave for Belgium Thursday evening. My EEE paper is nearly complete, I just need to do a little fine tuning on it and I should be good to go with that.
Anyway, getting off of my little tangent, after I found the book I headed back to my flat when I came across the Korean Harvest Festival going on in front of the British Museum. Curiosity got the best of me and I meandered over to check it out. They had these little strips of Korean rice paper and I wrote a wish on one and tied it to a tree:
Korean Harvest Festival, 22 September 2007I also tried Korean rice cakes. Not a fan. I think I'm too used to our American style of rice cakes.
After the festival, I hopped on the tube and headed to Canary Wharf, where I went to a jazz festival in Jubilee Park. It was really small and grassy and there weren't loads of people there so it was kind of nice to sit and read my book with some jazz in the background. The only thing that eventually drove me away was the number of couples that were sitting around me. The amount of PDA in this city is starting to get on my nerves. I'm all for finding your true love, but please for the love of God I do NOT want to see you making out against a fence/wall/on the grass/in the tube/in the museum/you fill in the blank. Sometimes it's endearing to see a couple happily cuddling together in a public place.. but when you're about the only person there without a significant other, the situation can get a little discouraging! All that aside, the jazz fest was well worth going to.
Straight after I left the festival I took the tube to Southwark, where I went to the Tate Modern. I'm such a huge fan of modern art so I obviously loved this place. Any excuse to look at real work by Andy Warhol and Claus Oldenburg is enough reason for me to visit a gallery. I realize that a good chunk of people think these two are freaks, and I'm in complete agreement with that (has anyone seen Factory Girl???), but I think they are geniuses. I'm also fast becoming a fan of Jasper Johns. I just find his work very powerful and eye catching every time I see it.
Sunday most of my day was spent working on my paper, but I took a little walk at night to finish up my film and ended up wandering into Covent Gardens. There's this charming little alleyway right off of Southampton Row called Neal's Yard and I was dying to walk through and once I emerged I ended up right in the middle of Covent Garden aka shopping central. Kind of depressing that all I could do was window shop, but nonetheless I enjoyed it. I came across this place called the photographer's gallery and stopped in because it was free and ended up browsing a whole bunch of really powerful photographs. The place is literally a hole in the wall and I'm lucky to have caught it...definitely a good find.
So now it's back to the regular routine. Class and work took up my day yesterday, and today was the same. For History we went to South Kensington, which from what I understand is a very ritzy part of London where a lot of celebrities live, and visited the Victoria & Albert Museum. The trip back was horrendous... I was stuck on the tube for almost two hours because the Piccadilly Line was backed up. I ended up having to back track and switch lines about three times before I finally got home. But once I got back out into the fresh air my antsiness quickly subsided. It's impossible to be in a bad mood when my life is just so, so good.
The laundry machine should be shut off by now... and it's also tea time. Kisses and hugs to each and every one of you.
Cheers!
After the festival, I hopped on the tube and headed to Canary Wharf, where I went to a jazz festival in Jubilee Park. It was really small and grassy and there weren't loads of people there so it was kind of nice to sit and read my book with some jazz in the background. The only thing that eventually drove me away was the number of couples that were sitting around me. The amount of PDA in this city is starting to get on my nerves. I'm all for finding your true love, but please for the love of God I do NOT want to see you making out against a fence/wall/on the grass/in the tube/in the museum/you fill in the blank. Sometimes it's endearing to see a couple happily cuddling together in a public place.. but when you're about the only person there without a significant other, the situation can get a little discouraging! All that aside, the jazz fest was well worth going to.
Straight after I left the festival I took the tube to Southwark, where I went to the Tate Modern. I'm such a huge fan of modern art so I obviously loved this place. Any excuse to look at real work by Andy Warhol and Claus Oldenburg is enough reason for me to visit a gallery. I realize that a good chunk of people think these two are freaks, and I'm in complete agreement with that (has anyone seen Factory Girl???), but I think they are geniuses. I'm also fast becoming a fan of Jasper Johns. I just find his work very powerful and eye catching every time I see it.
Sunday most of my day was spent working on my paper, but I took a little walk at night to finish up my film and ended up wandering into Covent Gardens. There's this charming little alleyway right off of Southampton Row called Neal's Yard and I was dying to walk through and once I emerged I ended up right in the middle of Covent Garden aka shopping central. Kind of depressing that all I could do was window shop, but nonetheless I enjoyed it. I came across this place called the photographer's gallery and stopped in because it was free and ended up browsing a whole bunch of really powerful photographs. The place is literally a hole in the wall and I'm lucky to have caught it...definitely a good find.
So now it's back to the regular routine. Class and work took up my day yesterday, and today was the same. For History we went to South Kensington, which from what I understand is a very ritzy part of London where a lot of celebrities live, and visited the Victoria & Albert Museum. The trip back was horrendous... I was stuck on the tube for almost two hours because the Piccadilly Line was backed up. I ended up having to back track and switch lines about three times before I finally got home. But once I got back out into the fresh air my antsiness quickly subsided. It's impossible to be in a bad mood when my life is just so, so good.
The laundry machine should be shut off by now... and it's also tea time. Kisses and hugs to each and every one of you.
Cheers!
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