Okay, so here's what happened.

Some of you may have heard that I sent my mom a rather strange text message today. 

So, here's what happened. I went to the Tate Modern with my friend Jessica because we don't have class on Wednesdays, so we thought we would take a break from reading to go culture ourselves. 

Another friend, Monika, was going to meet us there, but got held up doing her Econ homework with her study group. She told us to call her when we left so that, if she decided to come, she wouldn't be coming just was we were leaving. 

Well, because I'm an idiot, I forgot to call her when we were leaving. I remembered just as we were going down the escalator into the Tube (subway). She didn't answer, so I sent her a text message that said, "coming home." 

Once in the tube, I have no service, so I did this really quickly while on the escalator. 

When I got home I asked Monika if she had got my text message. She hadn't, which I thought was strange. 

I came into my room, signed online and my dad called me on Skype and asked me if I was okay. I could tell something was wrong by the sound of his voice. I said yes, and asked him why he was asking me if I was okay. 

Because, he said, your mom got a text message from you saying you were coming home. 

In my phone "Mom's Cell" comes right before "Monika." 

As my grandpa would say, ¡Andale! 

So, I basically sent my parents, and who ever they told from the time it took me to get from the south bank of the Thames back to my Central London dorm room, into panic attacks and states of heightened blood pressure because I don't know how to properly use my piece of honkey-ass crap cell phone properly. 

I'm incredibly sorry. 

I assure you, I am fine. I posted some pictures to prove it. 

This, my family and friends, is another one of many reasons why I HATE text messaging. 

Windsor and Eton

On Saturday the UCL students on home stays in Surrey got to go on a day trip to Windsor Castle. This was the first castle I have been to since coming here. And it kind of got me thinking. 

Also, if you'd prefer to not read some mildy critical ideas about riches and splendor, I would skip to the next post. 

First, like many things in England, this castle is older than my entire country. People have been coming and going since way before Columbus came and brought disease and death to the people that lived in the United States before we did. This, I thought, was kind of cool. 

Some of the things in the castle itself I thought to be rather ridiculous. What is the point of all the grandeur? As if vaulted gothic ceilings weren't enough, must you trim them in gold? I saw a whole hallway full of royal china, glorified cups, bowls, and plates arranged asthetically in cabinet after cabinet. I mean, what does it all mean? Why did fashion houses like Rochas and Lanvin create dresses and hats for toy dolls as gifts to princesses from the children of France? Did the children of France get such lavish gifts from the princesses? I mean, yes it's history. These sorts of displays document the past.  But, really, when it comes down to it, who cares about hundreds of years worth of china? And what is so great about vaulted ceilings painted with gold leaf trim? They're ultimately just ceilings. Fancy ceilings, yes. But they're just ceilings. And china. And clothing for dolls. 

Despite my grumpy rantings about the aforementioned, the paintings hanging in the different rooms of the castle were magnificent. I finally got to see this painting of Elizabeth I that I remember seeing in a history text book at some point during high school. (That woman wrote some awesome speeches and great poetry!) I didn't know it was there beforehand, or anything, but when I saw it I had a huge goofy grin on my face.

 

After we were through touring Windsor Castle, we went over to Eton to check out Eton College, the royal academy where Prince William and Henry went to school. It looked really interesting from the outside, but we weren't allowed in. Luckily, someone had left a small door open, so I was sneaky and snapped a picture of what looks like the main courtyard. I'm going to try to get more photos on here as soon as I figure out how to do it. 

The sky was blue. It was a lovely day. 

No. 4 Privet Drive

Last weekend I packed up my not so little overnight bag and headed out of London with the other UCL students on my program to participate in a weekend home stay with a British family. UCL students were put into groups of two so that we would have a buddy with us at our home stay. Kathy, a girl who goes to Smith College in the U.S., and I were paired together.

Our home stay was in Surrey, a county just 40 or so minutes outside of London. The huge nerd inside of me was REALLY excited to be going to Surrey because, as some of you may know, that's where Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and cousin Dudley live. Luckily, my home stay was not with the Dursley's, but the Scalans:  Tony, Diane and Harriet.

Harriet is seven. She laughs as much as she talks and was rather excited to have her picture taken.

For twelve years the Scalans have been opening their home to international students, but we were only the third set of American students they have hosted. 

Diane told us that Harriet had never been so excited to meet and play with students before. 

"That's because they speak my language, mum," she explained. 

Diane takes care of young children out of her home so she has a play room stocked full of every board game and children's book you could ever imagine. Our first night there, Harriet insisted on playing Monopoly Junior. When she saw that I was beating her, she started flicking all of my little green houses off the game board and into oblivion. She was vicious, I tell you. 

Harriet also explained to us that Winnie the Pooh was her favorite Disney Character, that she loves High School Musical (which she really wanted to watch, but luckily I talked her out of it and thus I continue, unscathed, in my refusal to watch those movies!), and she has a hamster named Bobby who Kathy and I saw trying to escape for his life Saturday night. 

I also saw Happy Feet for the first time. I found it a bit strange...

Though I was only there for two days, it was very interesting to see the interactions of this particular family, and just to hear the way they spoke to one another. 

It was also incredibly nice to be in a house. We slept in the attic, a very comfortable baby blue colored room with six beds (two singles, a set of bunk beds, and another single that is actually a trundle) where Tony and Diane always put the students that stay with them. We ate cereal and tea for breakfast and Diane made us an INCREDIBLE roast dinner on Saturday night. Roast beef, a ton of fresh veggies, Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes. Yum. 

One thing I really got a kick out of while eating there was Harriet's use of the word "nice." Instead of asking if something tasted good she would ask, "Is it nice?" I tried to imagine my cousins asking me this when they were younger, but simply couldn't. 

The Goat Man

I have a professor who looks like a goat. Like Dr. Dillamond from Wicked. Luckily, he doesn't have hooves for hands or we'd have a real problem, here. 

The Goat man, as Jessica, my fellow English major, calls him, gave the lecture today for my Shakespeare class. 

I have no idea what the lecture was about. The lecture was supposed to be on As You Like It. This man's topics of discussion ranged from cliches, to beards, to feces. There was also a point where I honestly couldn't tell you if he was speaking English. I think it might have been Dutch, but it could have been English. I'm just not sure. 

This is the same man who, two weeks ago during my seminar about women writers during the Restoration and the 18th Century said something along the lines of (and he was dead serious), "This woman's writing is interesting, and for a long time it was forgotten, so I guess some good did come out of the women's movement." 

(Let me clarify that this statement implied that this was one example of the little good that came out of the women's movement.)

I'm pretty sure my jaw had dropped to the table at this comment. 

"Pop!" went the Scripps bubble. 

All I wanted was an angry mob of Scrippsies to barge through the door with torches and pitchforks, pick him up and carry him to the bank of the Thames for a little swim. 

He's one of those old men, those old British Literature professors, who is incredibly intelligent and respectable in terms of his expertise, but is stuck in another era. He's like a walking time capsule whose constantly wearing the same plaid coat fully equipped with leather elbow patches. 

Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on him; but, still, I miss Peavoy and Kimberly Drake. 

Latto in London

Last week, my friend Lauren came to visit for a few days. Her lucky little butt has been traveling through Europe for a month, like a cute little vagabond, stopping to see a number of friends along the way. Her study abroad program in Argentina does start until the middle of February, so she's had some time to kill. 

She killed some of that time with me last week. When she arrived, I made fun of her for a good while about this truly stunning brown plastic irridescent bag with faux snakeskin trim that she was carrying. Her bag got slashed by gypsies when she was in Prague, and she was thus required to buy a new one. (Let me explain the slashing bit. In Europe, pickpockets sometimes use razor blades to slash open the sides of bags and purses in order to more easily steal your valuables. Lauren's wallet was stolen.) I guess this was the first replacement bag she could find. Isn't it stunning?

 

We went to dinner at this restaurant that I'm now obsessed with. It was recommended to me in Claremont by Sarah Erickson, one of the women who was working as an Admission Officer in the Office of Admission at Scripps. It's called Wagamama. It's a Japanese noodle restaurant, and it's incredibly delicious. 

On Wednesday, we went to Kensington and walked around. I finally went to Harrods which is one of the weirdest places I have ever been to. In one room you have $10,000 handbags, in the next you have a butcher and a dim sum place. What is that? 

After touring strangeville, went took a stroll through Hyde Park, which is now one of my favorite places in all the world. I saw a very cute dog that made me miss my cat. Strange, but true.

Finally, we went to tea at the Dorchester. Oh, it was delicious. We started with Rose champagne and moved onto tea sandwiches, followed by scones and little tea cakes and the Dorchester blend for tea. The service was wonderful, the dining room was incredibly comfortable. My kind of place. 

Don't ask about the bill, please. 

And, I'm back

Oh, my poor little blog. How I have neglected you!

In my lifetime I have probably acquired something like 5 diaries with little metal locks, and 10 journals and notebooks that lay scattered in places where they are not meant to be found, and there have probably been 3 or 4 accounts on virtual diary sites. As for the diaries I have lost the locks. I have forgotten when I put the journals and notebooks. The websites unfortunately come back to haunt me every now and again, full of emo rantings from my adolescence, but I always forget the passwords. This, of course, poses a problem in trying to destroy them. 

So, you see, I have a problem with consistency. I always try to start journals and things because I have this romanticized vision of handing my daughter a box of them some day and saying, "No, really. I understand. Here's proof." She will then read them voraciously, and be occasionally inspired by the insightful bits and often amused by my ridiculousness, and then she will understand me. Or, something. That was the plan, anyway, when I was about 12. So when I write, I always write to some fictional girl with dark curly hair and big brown eyes. Maybe what I'm really doing is writing to a younger version of myself, hoping that by some twist of time and space she will get my messages. I don't know.  

ANYWAY, what I'm trying to explain is that it's incredibly hard for me, for one reason or another, to keep up with a journal, or in this case, a blog. I'm always really excited about it at first, and then get lost in my own little world and forget about keeping it up. That's not going to happen this time. 

So, rather than write one monstrous entry about all I've done since last we met, I'm going to write psuedo-episodes. They will of course appear on the blog before this one, but I guess when you have read this, you will understand the onslaught of posts, and why they are in reverse chronological order. 

Love and miss you all!

I think I know what aliens look like

I think I know what aliens look like because I'm pretty sure an alien came out of my nose this morning. 

Sick again. This time: sinus infection. 

My achy face and overall discomfort resulted in going to the student health center this morning. While I have heard horror stories of ineffectiveness and disorganization from my comrades back in Claremont about the much beloved student health center there, I must say that my experience this morning was not at all painful. The worst part was having to walk three blocks in the freezing wind. Once I got there, I sat in the waiting room with the other walk-ins, who were releasing their cooties into the room with every exhalation, until my name appeared on this little ticker telling me that it was my turn to see a doctor. 

Now, some of you may not know this, but I HATE going to the doctor. This sense of fear and anxiety comes over me that usually results in the nurse having to take my blood pressure three times in order to get a proper reading. So, needless to say, going to a doctor that is not at the Kaiser Lakeview medical office was a bit unnerving. 

I walked into Dr. Smith's office to meet a very small blonde lady with her hair in a messy ponytail. She invited me to sit down, and then asked me for the reason I came into the doctor. There was no freezing examining room. No white lab coat with stethoscope and cold handshake. Not even a tongue depressor in sight. We were in her office, she was sitting at her desk, and I was sitting in the chair opposite. She asked me a number of questions, told me that in the UK doctors don't generally prescribe antibiotics, and then told me that since I come from a healthcare system that generally does prescribe them (too often) that if I would like them, she would give them to me. So I asked for Amoxicillin. My antibiotic of choice. 

I don't want to make it sound like she didn't know what she was doing. She did the ear and nose thing and did produce a tongue depressor and told me to go "ahhh." But she was so nice. She actually talked to me and chatted about the time she spent studying abroad in New Zealand when she found out that I was studying abroad in the UK. And she commiserated with me about the confusion that can come with going into a new healthcare system. She was incredibly nice.

There was no charge to go to the doctor. No charge for the prescription. The only thing I had to pay for was to get the prescription filled at the pharmacy. It was incredible. 

Welcome to the world of national healthcare.

Now, to fight the aliens...

Mid-paper ponderings

I need a break from writing. 

I love making lists. This one is called: 

"Things that exist in London that I had hoped hadn't spread beyond the boundaries of the United States"

1. Hummer Stretch Limos

2. KFC

3. Girls who go to the gym in a pink track suit, a thick layer of make-up, obsessively styled hair, and too much perfume. 

Club Koko

So last night I did something completely out of character and went to this club with my friends. 

The club, Koko, was in Camden, about a 20 minute walk from my dorm. While I am the type who much refers to stay in and laugh too loud with a group of friends instead of subjecting myself to premature hearing loss in these loud public places, I must say that I had quite an enjoyable time. The building, in itself, was awesome. Koko is housed in what used to be a theatre. The inside reminded me sort of a less art-deco version of The Pantages. And very red. (Think Moulin Rouge, Syd.) All of the seating is removed from the orchestra and the mezzanine and the open space that is left behind is used as the main dance floor/ lounge area. In front of the stage was this huge screen, onto which some random old black and white movie was being projected. The whole experience was highly post-modern. In an old theatre young kids dance to indie British rock music, while an old movie plays behind them. And, of course, there is a disco ball shining overhead. At about 1 this band unexpectedly began to play on the stage, which was really fun. Dancing and rock concert all in one night. Not nearly as nice, though, was the putrid scum left on my shoes and feet after a night of being unintentionally doused with beer, and random mixed drinks on the dance floor. 

I woke up today, later than expected, after having  a dream that the gang was having a loud party in Taj and Tyrus' suite. I kind of just laid in bed after I woke up, trying to fall back into the dream. Sadly, I was awake as awake could be. So I read The Mysteries of Udolpho for a while until Jessica and I departed for the super market. Today's expedition was quite the learning experience. 

In Southern California, when you go to the super market, you don't necessarily think about the weight of the items you buy since you just throw them in the trunk and merrily drive yourself home. Well, when you live in a city that requires you carry all of your groceries home, weight becomes incredibly important. My shoulders will not be happy tomorrow. Luckily, I have a ton of delicious food that I'm going to try not to ruin in my thus-far futile attempts at culinary genius. Mom, I need your help! I can't cook! AHHHHHH! (I did manage to make rice tonight. Thanks for that lesson, Mom!) 

I made stir fry tonight. With tofu. It was okay, but the seasoning stuff I put in it was kind of gross, which is rather unfortunate considering the price. Now I know not to buy that crap again. 

I have a brownie waiting for me for dessert though. Excellent. 

Now, I have a paper to write. Lauren's coming into London on Tuesday. We're going to afternoon tea at the Dorchester. My paper is technically due on Tuesday, so tea is my motivation to finish it early. So here I go! 

This is why my room smells like garlic bread

So, I don't cook. Well, I mean, I can make eggs and pancakes, ground beef, and guacamole, a rather unfortunate mixture never to be eaten all at once. But, if given a pile of ingredients, I can't promise much.

 

Here, in London, I don't have a meal plan, so I have to cook for myself. And this is totally fine because I like the challenge (yes, for me it's a challenge) of getting off my lazy behind and walking into the kitchen and actually making something instead of going to a cafeteria with a bowl and expectant stomach, not having to do any work beyond standing in line. 

Well, Tuesday, in my attempt to liven up some rather bland chicken (and yes, I must confess I bought it pre-cooked from the grocery store) I managed to spill "garlic granules," because I couldn't find garlic power anyplace at the grocery store, all over my bedroom floor. 

Second part of the story:

My radiator doesn't work. I mean, in theory, yes, it's on, but it's not actually producing heat. This is a problem when I have a huge window that permits a rather icy draft to float across my bed. Luckily, I have a acquired a small but efficient space heater from the manager of my building until the maintenance guy makes his way up here to infuse some warmth into my radiator. 

So, at about six, I turn on my space heater so that I don't need to put on Underarmor, and two pairs of socks, a puffer jacket and beanie in order to maintain a comfortable body temperature. 

Well, the space heater sits on the floor. There are garlic granules on my floor. Combine the two and what do you get? The sweet aroma of roasted garlic. Yummy in theory, kind of gross in reality. But at least this way, I'm keeping the vampires away. 

Of course the simple solution to this unintentional culinary feat is to vacuum. The thing is, I have to request a vacuum from the front desk. Takes a while to reserve one from what I understand. So, while I'm waiting, I'll just continue to crave Italian food. 

Weekend Update

So after building the world's tallest tower of used tissue in my trash can last week, I am finally feeling better! I'm still coughing a bit, and my sinuses are a bit confused, but overall my potential for contagion has subsided. Unfortunately, I managed to get a couple of my friends sick in the process. I've been saying "sorry" every time Jessica coughs. Luckily they've been pretty nice about it. 

Saturday morning, after my first tube ride (in London "tube" means "subway") some friends and I ventured into Notting Hill (a ritzy sort of usually quiet neighborhood made famous by the Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts movie of years past). Saturday morning the main road that runs through Notting Hill, Portobello Road, hosts a sort of antique market where every American within a 10 mile radius congregates in mass, thus disrupting the quiet and the (usually non-existing) traffic in the area. That doesn't seem to phase some residents, though, who insist on driving down the street, in the middle of the market, at what must be no faster than 5 mph, with incredibly unphased looks on their faces. 

Did I mention that it was sunny on Saturday? It was still only about 50 degrees, but the clouds opened to reveal that there really is a sky over London! It was fantastic. A terrific day only improved by the fact that we came across The Hummingbird Bakery on Portobello Road, a small little place filled with overpriced cupcakes. (It reminded me of the Magnolia Bakery, Zo, but cuter!) I got a couple red velvets. (My favorite.) They did not disappoint. (But Sprinkle's frosting is still better, Mom!)

On Saturday evening I ventured out to meet up with Litza who was in London for the day visiting with some of her friends from her high school in Taiwan. We sat in a subterranean lounge in a Starbucks on west Oxford Street. It was great to see her, and also great to say goodbye (in the middle of a crowded subway car) since I wasn't able to say goodbye to her before leaving Claremont. Unfortunately Litza got Shaker songs stuck in my head. With the addition of her facebook post, I have been singing "hop up and jump up and whirl round whirl round" in my head all day. This, of course, makes me miss all my Heaven girls. 

Tonight our entire floor went out to eat at an Indian restaurant. There were 21 of us. It was hysterical leaving the building together because it looked like Astor College (which is the name of my dorm) was being evacuated or something. The food was delicious (I had Tandoori chicken with garlic nan) and it was really nice to talk to some new people who I hadn't met before and "bond," as Monika put it, with some of the other people on my floor. Magically, we figured out the bill without incident. 

At the end of dinner I had this overwhelming "I miss Tyrus!" feeling. I think I will make him take me to Sprinkles upon my return in June. Make it happen, Ty. 

I have my first seminar tomorrow, and I have high hopes. My lectures thus far haven't been all that inspiring. I hoping that my fellow students will have more interesting things to say than some of my lecturers have. Tomorrow's seminar is for my Shakespeare course. The topic: Gender Play and Female Power in Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor. I'm excited, needless to say. I hope it doesn't disappoint. 

Class, Day 1

The wind is blowing and I am coughing. Sucks. Seriously. My friends are out at a pub right now, and unwilling to subject my already rebellious lungs to a shock of air at a brisk 48 degrees, I am holed up in my room about to crack open the Norton. (The new Norton. Norton II, if you will.)

First day of class today. My first lecture on Post-Modernism wasn't anything all that new, and wasn't exactly presented in an exciting way. The lecturer was a very fidgety sort of woman. A bit scatterbrained. No Kimberly Drake, for those of you who know what that means. My second lecture focused on Shakespeare and his language. This lecturer had an accent that was difficult to follow, but what he had to say was fascinating. He was basically talking about the fact that no one really knows what Shakespeare sounded like when he spoke. He used instances of off-sounding rhyme in some of Shakespeare's works to propose possible "correct" pronunciations of certain words at the time during which he wrote them. I don't know if that explanation makes any sense... but it was quite interesting. 

The overall lecture experience was rather bizarre, though. It seemed so detached and impersonal. I guess I'm just very used to seminars, and love shooting off my mouth in class. Today's experiences felt rather empty. 

One of the major differences between the British and the American educational systems is that the British system places the emphasis on independent study and learning; whereas, the American style is more interactive between the student and teacher. I guess it'll just take a bit of time to get used to. 

I'm ready to stop coughing and start exploring. And reading, of course. 

Sorry for the boring post. Just wanted to offer an update. Love you all! 

Books beat shoes--who'd a thunk it?

I went shopping today. I really needed a duvet cover to brighten up my depressingly dull room, and I found one on Oxford Street, which is basically the place you go to find practically anything you could ever want or (to some extent) imagine. It's about a 15 minute walk from my dorm, which gave me the opportunity to have more of a look around the neighborhood. I found a "Mexican" restaurant on my way down. I won't even offend anyone by reporting the sort of items listed on the menu. Luckily, I also found "wraps," or what I prefer to call "tortillas," at the super market, so I will be making myself quesadillas for lunch this week. And I will make them with mozerella. (I was amused to find that they don't carry American cheese at the market I went to. I guess it makes sense...)

Boring, boring, boring, UNTIL I went to the bookstore.

So I've been having this dilemma about whether to buy my books, or try to borrow them from the University of London library system. The majority of university students here do not buy their books, they get them from the library because of obvious cost issues. BUT I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF. I AM WEAK!

Biggest purchase of the day? Nope, not shoes. BOOKS!

The Norton Anthology of Shakespeare

Persuasion, Jane Austen

The Monk, Matthew Lewis

The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg

Unfortunately, those books are only a very small portion of what I actually need. So, I will be going a la biblioteca for most of them. Especially the plays for my Modern Lit class. (The Birthday Party, for example, costs 15 pounds at the particular store I was at. Sorry, Pinter, I will not be paying $30 for your play...)

I must say that it's very comforting to have some books on my shelf. And now Middlemarch has some friends. 

Oh yeah, for those who are interested, I will be taking the following classes:

"Shakespeare" 

(We will be examining Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello, Kind Lear, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.)

"The Restoration and the 17th Century"

(Authors include: The Earl of Rochester, Behn, Richardson, Pepys, Dryden, DeFoe, Swift, Fielding, Gray, Hogarth, Sterne, Johnson and "Woman Poets"...)

"The Romantic Period" 

(Authors include: Byron, Austen, Hazlitt, Shelley and Keats)

AND

"Modern Literature"

(Authors include Nabokov, Beckett, Bishop, Williams, Miller, Pinter, Bond, Mammet and Art)

My eyes are going to be begging for me to stop reading by February. I'm very excited. Classes start Tuesday. Woot!

This is London

The Plane

As we began to descend I looked down onto what appeared to be the surface of a martian world made of cotton and fluff. There were ridges and valleys in the clouds, and I swear I saw what looked to be a replica of the Grand Canyon, though its usual browns and reds has been replaced with soft grey and white bits of fluff where sand should have been. 

The first thing I saw when we came though the clouds was a soccer, or football, stadium. And then there was some very regal and ancient looking structure. Would it be too terribly silly to say that I saw a castle from the sky? 

And then there was the Thames. 

It feels like I have been reading about the Thames non-stop for the past three years. It serves as such an integral setting in British Literature. It was incredible. I saw the Thames, this fabled river that has served as such an iconic marker in my mind for the sort of dichotomy between the new and the old, the civilized and the wild, the rural and industrial diaspora of Victorian England. When I saw the Thames, the beginning of this adventure felt real. But it wasn't terrifying or overwhelming. I was instead overcome with this sense of "Yes." This sense that finally I would be able to see the places that I study. (Though the landscapes have transformed dramatically from the times when Charles, John, Joseph, Charlotte and Jane saw and loved them.) 

Meeting London

At the moment, London is appearing to me to be some sort of parallel universe. The people and structures look, at first glance, to be exactly the same as they are at home. Well--not exactly "at home," but in a city. A big city. One might even compare it to certain places in The City of New York, though I am not familiar enough with this place to name a comparable neighborhood off the top of my head. The first glance is sort of where this comparison stops, though. 

Maybe, think of this: You know those drawings that you sometimes get on paper place mats that double as children's menus at restaurants? They are really more like puzzles than just plain drawings. The goal in looking at them is to pick out all of the little things that you don't see at first, but upon revelation create something very bizarre out of what at first appeared to be very familiar. You see that a chair leg is in fact a baseball bat. And that the kitty cat in fact has two tails, and that the man standing beside him is not holding a cane in his left hand, but instead the second of the two tails at a clever sort of angle. 

Anyway, London seems to be sort of like this in my mind. I am so conditioned to see things in a certain way, and am so expecting of a certain image, that it sort of takes a little while for my mind to catch up with what my eyes are actually seeing and realize that I can't just look left and then right before crossing the street because if I do that I might be hit by a storming red double decker bus--or should I say, "coach."

Freezing London

It is DAMN cold here. 

"My first night sleeping in my dorm room:" two pairs of socks, my Scripps sweatpants, two t-shirts, my Cinderella sweatshirt, my puffer jacket, and my pink beanie with the ball at the top. Mix together and heat with radiator through the night. 

And yes, my radiator is on. 

Unfortunately, the huge window in my room is rather permeable to the biting temperature outside. The window is rather fantastic in the daytime, though. It looks out upon some brick buildings that contrast fantastically to the grey sky. My dad says it looks like a jail cell. It's definitely NOT Scripps. 

I don't mean this to sound so negative. I guess it's just all so incredibly different that it's kind of off-putting. I'm really looking forward to classes starting, though. I have this sort of craving for British Literature at the moment that is sure to be fulfilled about ten times over.