Since we last
spoke...my roommate moved in! Her name is Rebecca she is an affiliate student
studying here for the fall term from Hong Kong. I was also able to sign up for
classes and take courses that fit into all the categories that I needed. I am
taking Regarding Pain (Medieval), Inventing the Americas (Modern), Rome: The
Making of Early Modern Visual Urban Culture (Renaissance/Baroque), Representing
Others in British Art (Elective) and I am going to be taking some
free Mandarin classes.
Leaving the Neighborhood
Rebecca and I headed out to Chinatown early last week.
We took the bus (because we didn’t realize how close it actually was). They
have lovely giant red lanterns that hang throughout the main boulevard. After we
had a cheap buffet lunch and went through the Chinese grocery we headed back
home. On the way back we sat the top front of the bus which was rather
thrilling because everyone drives like a maniac especially taxi drivers! The
day before Rebecca arrived I was able to meet most of my other flat mates. There
is a group of affiliate students studying here from Tufts University and all of
the rest are full times students studying here at UCL from Italy, Canada and the
UK.
On the top deck
Chinatown
Everybody Jaywalks
Which is exactly what
title implies, that and drivers are not at all shy about almost running you
over even if you are being a good citizen and crossing on the light which I
gave up doing after about a week. In the beginning, I was really worried about
getting a ticket, but then I learned that the term jaywalking doesn’t really
exist here and everyone basically crosses anywhere at any time.
Another Version of The Neighbourhood
Olivia Harloam recommended
that I see a free show by the California band The Neighbourhood who was playing in London for one night. (Olivia,
a guy in my flat had heard of them and said they were getting some radio play
over here.) I ended up getting lost on my own street because I got really
confused about which side of the street I needed to pick my bus up on. (I
always found the stop on one side of the street, but there never seemed to be
an equivalent stop on the other side of the street because there is a plethora
of one way roads). Anyway after 40 minutes of wandering in a circle, I got my
bus! It was a small crowd (maybe 60 people) and the band played a 30 minute set
which was fine with me because I was planning on leaving so I could get back to
my flat early.
The Neighbourhood lead singer
Going to the Fayre
On Wednesday I skyped
with Lindsay, explored the UCL art museum and the main library collections. At
some point in the week I went to the picnic lunch hosted by the CU. I stayed
for over an hour and learned all about the differences between the US and UK
military branches and school systems. (Public schools would be like private
schools in the US, but public schools are different from UK private schools,
which are not the same as state schools, which are further divided between
grammar schools and something else). I went to a morning prayer with the CU one
day and on Thursday Rebecca and I went to Freshers Fayre! (Involvement Fair).
We had to queue for 40 minutes to get in to the first section of the fayre and
in all it took us 3 hours to go along the whole path. We got free notebooks,
jump drives and pens, and signed up for different “taster” events put on by
each of the organizations. Every organization charges a membership fee, so the
first fortnight of the school year every org puts on free events for you to see
if you are interested in joining after the fortnight is over and paying the
membership fee.
Night Out on the Town
On Thursday night I was able to have dinner with the USC professor here in the UK and with a bunch of the other USC ladies studying at Uni’s nearby. We went to Wagamamas and I had a celery, apple, mint and lime juice drink, two entrees which got shared around the table and coconut ice cream desert. We then ran to the theatre just in time to see Matilda and to get really excited about Sherlock related events going on around town while we are here. The stage and set were fantastic (basically lots of giant lettered blocks that spelled out words related to the play if you looked close enough). Afterwards, we walked around together as a group and made it all the way to Trafalgar’s Square.
The theatre.
The square, complete with Lions and a double decker bus.
Two entrees, miso soup and my drink (the green one).
Afternoon Walks
Almost every afternoon
during the week Rebecca and I went out with our cameras and went walking in a
different direction away from our campus. The first day we went East and found
lots of little shops and gardens. The next day we went North to Camdem. We
found a graveyard, an awesome building with two giant cats guarding the doors
and cats lining the top part of the building, the 99 Pence Store! and a
multitude of charity shops. Lastly, we explored south and went down Oxford
Street (kind of like Rodeo Drive and Hollywood Blvd. combined). This involved
lots of looking stores, but we got free Burt’s Bees, which was pretty random
and we got to pass loads of fabric shops and bookstore after bookstore. The
streets even further south were small cobblestone boulevards that looked lovely
at dusk.
Just outside the entrance to the group of cobblestone streets and more buildings like this.
The Big Adventure and All Things Touristy
Rebecca found out that
Buckingham Palace was closing Oct. 7th and all the online tickets
were sold out, so we decided to go early Saturday morning and see if we could
get tickets at the door. We left our apartment at 8:20AM and walked through
Piccadilly Circus and part of St. James Park to the Palace. We were way too
late for tickets, but we decided to keep exploring and exploring we did. We did
not get back to our flat until 7:40 at night and we figure we stopped walking
for an hour and a half total the entire day. This is the route we took: around
Buckingham Palace, up the Mall back to Piccadilly Circus, back to the Mall, to
the Horse Guards Parade. We watched the change guards and then continued
walking through the Admiralty Archway, down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament
and Westminster Abbey, down to Lambeth Bridge back up to Westminster Bride, saw
the London Eye, went and looked more closely at Westminster Abbey, walked down
Victoria St. to Westminster Cathedral, explored the Cathedral, stopped for the
first time since we left for ice cream at a very posh McDonalds (they had live
roses in vases at each table and lots of plants), continued walking up
alongside the Buckingham Palace gardens to Hyde Park Corner then walked across
Hyde Park and around it. At 5:40ish, we bought chairs for an hour at a pound
fifty and sat down to watch the sunset. It got really cold so we kept moving
our chairs into the ever fading patches of sun. On the way back we saw a place
called Fortnum and Mason which has the official Jubilee Tea Salon and which has
hosted the Queen and the Duchess of Cornwall. (All these pics are on my FB
page).
Post Adventure
On Saturday evening, we
thought we would get up at 5am on Sunday to queue early for tickets to Buckingham
Palace, but either my alarm didn’t go off or it did go off and neither of us
woke up, so we woke up too late to head over. This worked out because we ended
up going to Chinatown for the Midautumn Festival and ate mooncakes. I did
laundry by hand in our sink because it is ridiculously expensive here. In the
evening I made guacamole for our flat dinner and then went to Church with the
President of the CU. It is a very small congregation and the Rector and Curate
were very nice as were the four other staffers that I met. The Church was
celebrating the 10 anniversary of when the Rector was planted in this
congregation and old congregation and the new congregation from the main larger
local church merged. There were two “charismatic” worshippers which I had never
seen/heard of before, so that was interesting. After the service, everyone went
to the kitchen and had tea and biscuits and after that I went with 3 other
members of the CU to dinner at the local restaurant.
Dragon in Chinatown.
ReCap: This Week
This week I started
classes which look like they are going to be fantastic! I am really excited by
my Representing Others class, the professor seems especially great. I also went
and had dinner with the University Chaplain at the main Anglican Church for our
parish area and I went to the CU general meeting which is similar to Thursday
Challenge except it is a different guest speaker every time. I got to meet a
couple more girls from the CU and we had tea and snacks back in the flat next
to mine. Tuesday, I had lots of reading to do so I started working on that and in
the afternoon two of the CU girls who I had tea with invited me rollerblading
and we went all the way around the center and outside of Regents Park. At one
point we finally hit a patch of smooth concrete so I starting “blading” (is
that the proper verb?) faster, but didn’t realized that we were on a hill so I
was flying down and I couldn’t stop myself. We were approaching a crossing and
all I could picture was a crazy taxi careening through the intersection one way
and me flying across the opposite way, so I ended grabbing a pole, my legs flew
out from under me and I swung myself into a bush which was not as painful as it
sounds, but I was successful at stopping myself and I will live to survive more
instances where black cabs will try to run me over.
When out walking anywhere you inevitably run into things like this.
Yesterday I continued
reading, got some Swiss francs and had tea with the Chaplain which I think is
going to be part of my weekly ritual. I then went to the Writers Society
Meeting and went with a girl from my flat and her sister to the Book Club
meeting. They went on a pub crawl and we all went to the first pub because its
previous patrons included Virginia Woolf. It was very crowded so we left after
a bit and went to Tesco Metro to buy all the ingredients to make a Nature’s Own
Cocktail (heavy whipping cream, nutmeg, and ginger ale [courtesy of the Cat Who
cookbook]). We then chatted in the flat, I watched Downton Abbey and then today
I went to class and came back to write this.
This is going to be my
last huge blog post hopefully. I am going to work at making them much less of a
long catalog of what I have done and more entertaining like I said last time,
but until next time thank you for reading this!
Finally, in the coming
weeks/tomorrow, I am looking forward to visiting Michelle this weekend, listening
to the full release of Skyfall by Adele and the UK release of Sweet Nothing by
Calvin Harris feat. Florence and the Machine!, watching more Downton Abbey and standing outside of
the Royal Albert Hall for the Skyfall world premiere!
Ah!
Best,
Amy
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