Palaces, mushroom trees, free hip flasks, and countless impressions of a prof

So, Thursday night we tried another Chelsea pub around the corner. This one had more people our age in it, and it was pretty crowded, so we had to initially grab a table in the corner of the pool room and share stools. Eventually they closed the upstairs and we were able to get a table downstairs. Most of us had a cider called Strongbow, which is really good for all those who don't really like beer but aren't quite ready to be seen in an English pub with a Cosmo. I liked it a lot, but I also tried Guinness, which was a huge difference, obviously. Alison did have a cosmo, but when she ordered it, they laughed at her. Also, it had something like giner ale in it, which is just strange. It was a large group of us, 7 or 8, so we were conspicuous, but we didn't get any dirty glances like at other pubs. The pub closed at 11, though, like most pubs do, which we still think is weird. The "young people" here go to a pub, starting around 7 or 8, stay there until closing time or just before, and then go to the clubs, which are open until about 3am. After we got kicked out, we wandered around briefly and decided we were going to get on the tube and find some place to go. We all get our Oyster cards (basically like the ChicagoCard, for public transportation) and go outside, making it half a block down before it starts pouring. We made it about 10 more steps before turning around to go home and stay in for the night. Most people, including myself, didn't have an umbrella, and so we came back in completely soaked through. We all changed into our pjs and met back in my room, and just hung out until about 2am. It was actually a lot of fun, and we did lots of impressions of our professor and TA, who are total characters. Katie does the best of prof Von Nolken, who we love the most and have started calling her affectionately by her first name. We've decided that we are going to become BFF (best friends forever) with Christina during our trip to Cornwall next weekend.
Because we were up late, none of us got up to go to the Royal Courts of Justice, which none of us really regret. There will always be another time to giggle at people in wigs. We all met at the Waterloo station at 1pm to go to Hampton Court to see the palace and the gardens. There is a train that goes out there, and then the palace is a short walk from the station. It is this big, crazy palace that Henry VIII built and used. It has all these crazy chimneys and Roman emperors randomly stuck, gargoyle-like, along the exterior walls. Parts of it are as old as 1236, it was also used by Henry VII and Thomas Wolsely. Other parts were added on throughout the years, so it is an interesting comglomeration of architecture.
You can walk through many of the apartments, which are floored with either marble or hardwood (the picture to the left is of one of the interior ceilings, which I shot right before the guard yelled at me for taking pictures). I've decided that I like Hampton Court much more than Buckingham palace. It is not as ornate, or at least it is in a less flashy way. There is also so much more atmosphere. You can imagine Henry and his numerous wives using the palace (even without the random people standing about in costume), and they even have his velvet padded privy on the second floor open. The gardens are huge and there is also a fun shrubbery maze. It was raining sporadically throughout the day, but really started coming down the minute we were far enough into the maze not to be able to get out again. We all opened our umbrellas only to find they don't exactly fit, so the entire time we were in the maze was this incredibly comic scene of us getting stuck, trying to raise the umbrellas above the shrubbery, and getting wet. Not to mention the fact that Christina made an appearance and started hopping throughout. They also had this weird recorded woman saying in a creepy British voice stuff like, "So, its to be this way is it?" and "There's someone behind you!" We were there for about 15 min, but it seemed longer. Afterward, we decided to go eat at a pub across the street. The waitress was really nice, and patiently explained things to us, like what "chip butty" is (a sandwich of chips - fries - with butter I think). They had amazing apple blueberry crumble, and I had chips with vinegar. And, horror of horrors, I left my umbrella! I'm very upset about it, because it has lasted me longer than any other umbrella I've had, and it matched my bag. In fact, I bought my bag in the color I did because I had that umbrella. Sad day.
After eating, we went back to the palace for a bit longer, and I finished up looking inside while everyone else wandered in the gardens (where the trees look like giant mushrooms) and took pictures of ducks. It was much more eerie going through it alone (minus the occasional guard), at dusk, when there wasn't really any electricity on (it closes at 6). Supposedly Catherine Howard haunts one of the hallways.
We made our way back to the dorm, and half an hour later went out again, this time to celebrate our good friend Jack's birthday. Jack Daniels, that is. In all the tube stations, there are tons of advertisements for it, and several pubs in Leicester Square were giving away free hip flasks for every two Jack Daniels drinks. Of course, anything involving the word "free" automatically lures the college student into a trap, so we decided to make it into an event. We started out with four of us, and then grew to six by the end of the night. We started out at one pub, where the middle aged people sat downstairs, and the young people were upstairs. We sat downstairs because there were no seats upstairs, and everyone in there looked at us like they all knew each other and didn't want intruders. The next pub we went to was just down the street, and much more crowded. It was much prettier, too, with mahogany paneling and mirrored walls with frosted designs on them. Then we made our way to a pub/club, after stopping at Tesco (something like a minimart) for the much craved salt and vinegar crisps (chips) that we are all now completely obsessed with. Whenever someone buys a round, they have to buy the crisps as well. Anyway, this club was pretty cool, and played a crazy mix of music, from Prince to Kanye West, and everything in between. It was really fun, but British people don't dance! Even on the dance floor, its mostly them just bopping and bobbing about. We got a lot of (good) attention for actually looking good on the dance floor, something which wouldn't happen stateside. Finally, at 3 am, we got home.
I slept in today, and then did some laundry. I only had enough change to do one load, and I realized belatedly (as in after it all started) that I had bought fabric softener instead of detergent. Also, there is a little drawer for detergent on the side, rather than just putting it in with the clothes, because its one of the washers that opens on the side. Luckily, there was enough left in there from the person before me to get my clothes clean. Then, the dryer took forever and didn't dry my clothes all the way, so they are hanging on every available surface in my room in hopes that they'll be dry before I have to wear them tomorrow. I've just got to finish my reading for Monday tonight because we've got a full day tomorrow.

Heaven in an orange and purple wrapper!

OHMYGOD. Cadbury's Double Decker chocolate nougat candy bar is my new favorite. Its amazing!

And while I'm at it, I might as well mention Branston pickle spread. Its this weird, brown goey stuff with chunks of pickled fruits and vegetables. Its decent enough; good on sandwiches. Apparently its a real tradition though.

Aimless wandering...

Yesterday all I did was go to class and then just walk around central London. I eventually found Covent Garden, the Strand, and made my way back over near St James park and Trafalgar square. Basically I'm trying to get a feel for the place, so I was definitely pleased to recognize a few things. London streets are still completely mad, though. I travel around with my London A-Z (Brits say "zed" instead of "zee"), and don't look out of place bc that is a map that even most londoners have, since the streets most certainly do not resemble a grid, and its all haphazard and jumbly. Also, I'm used to being able to orient myself by Lake Michigan and the Chicago River (like, the movie theater is just west of the lake and just north of the river), and here the Thames winds all around and is absolutely useless. Though I was definitely happy because within the past two days I've had three people ask me for directions, which means I look like I might belong here! Super exciting, except for the fact that I had to tell each of those people I probably had less of a clue than they did.
I also found that my bread had gone mouldy, so I guess that they don't put as many preservatives in it here. Also, they sell eggs on the unrefridgerated shelves of the grocery store, though it says to refridgerate after buying. Weird. Lots of organic food, too, though that might only be at the yuppie store near me. They do have street fruit vendors as well, but I haven't gotten anything there.
Tonight we are all having dinner here and hopefully going out, since we don't have class tomorrow. We are going to be going to Hampton Court though, and if I wake up early enough, the Royal Courts of Justice to see lawyers in funny wigs.
The pictures are of a Starbucks, a seemingly Celtic-themed Indian restaurant, and an old Gothic church near me in Chelsea.

I want to live in Buckingham Palace!

Today, class was at 10am, and it takes an hour to get to classes on the tube. So basically I had to start my alarm ringing/waking up process at 7:30. Made it on time, though. This class is on the history of immigration to Britain. Its pretty interesting, and though the prof lectures the whole time, my interest held the full three hours. Some things I never knew, like the reason that London doesn't have many litter bins on the streets is because the IRA was putting bombs in them.
After class several of us headed over to Buckingham Palace for our tour of the State Rooms. Basically, opulent and beautiful. Not much to say that can be said without pictures, which we weren't allowed to take. There was one really cool secret door that was pointed out to us, which the Queen uses to get to the State Rooms from her personal apartments. They also had a collection of 80 of her state dresses from her reign. Some were incredibly beautiful, some not so much (basically everything from the 70s and 80s). What surprised me the most is how incredibly short she is. Also, when she was young she was very tiny. The waists on the 1940s dresses were ridiculously small. The tour let out in the gardens, though you couldn't go onto the grass. After the palace, some of us went to read in the park, and the rest went home. Now I actually have to do my homework...

Fire alarms, mummies, and botched garlic bread

Today I was rudely awoken by the most irritating, loud, painful noise. We had been warned repeatedly about the sensitivity of the fire alarms in the building, from day one. They don't even have fire alarms in the kitchens because the alarms in the whole building will go off if someone toasts their bread too dark. I'm surprised that they haven't gone off before, because we had to close the window in our room because someone kept burning stuff in a nearby kitchen, and their smoke was wafting into our room. At any rate, these went off at 8:30, forcing everyone in the building to groggily throw on minimal amounts of clothing and head across the street of the building, while the firemen routinely and nonchalantly checked the building. Since the fire department is right across the street, and college students burn most of the things they cook, its a routine occurence, though we are expected to always act promptly. One girl was out on the street in her bathtowel, and some guy had brought along his breakfast.
Since there was no hope of going back to sleep, and I had been planning to get up early anyway (our first and only class of the day not being until 1:30), my roomate and I took the tube over to find where our classes were, and then headed down the street to the British Museum, one block away. We spent the morning there, and I hope to make it a routine to do so before class every morning. Maybe then I'd at least get through most of it, though our tour guide said it that if you spend 30 seconds in front of every object, it would take you something like two years to get through the whole thing. I've got 10 weeks. My favorite things I saw today were an old lady head sculpture, because you never see Greek sculptures of anything less than perfect; the pharoah heads, because unlike any other depictions of monarchs and deities in the museum, they were all smiling; and the library with the mummy heads in it (just because I want a library like it, and mummy heads are cool).


Class went ok. I think I'm going to enjoy this one, as it is Arthurian legends, and we all know Arthur is just cool. Its a 3 hour long class, but we get a break, and our prof is ridiculously energetic and excited. She's a British woman who is the chair of the English dept back in Chicago, and she does things like act out the images of Arthure and Mordred killing each other in some Medieval painting she saw. I like her.
After that, my roomate and I went back to Chelsea to buy and make dinner. We had pasta with marinara with ground beef in it, bread, salad, and merlot. Aside from the fact that the pots and pans we have are total crap, it turned out pretty good, even if I burnt the garlic for the garlic bread. I started a dinner group, and we're going to have a pair of people cook twice a week, and rotate nights and all. It would have been nice if everyone would have been willing to do it 5 nights a week, because it would save a lot of money, but this way works too. Our individual schedules will be more flexible this way. After cleaning up, we all went to see "The Queen" which stars Helen Mirren. It was a fairly good movie, even if nothing much happened in it. I don't even know if its playing in the States, but its worth watching. British ads are funny, though.
Class and Buckingham Palace tomorrow...

Never be a groundling after a day at the market...

Yesterday was relatively uneventful. We got together for breakfast prepared by our TA Michael, which was sadly without pancakes due to the poor quality of the kitchen ware available. It was, and I quote, "a colossal failure." Nevertheless, free fruit and bread was made available. Afterwards, I went grocery shopping at this little mart called Tesco, apparently the cheaper of the stores in the area, with my roomate and another girl. We then went to explore Camden Town, where they have a giant market open on Saturdays and Sundays. It was heaven to me. So many places to buy things like cute clothes and shoes, for pretty cheap, especially by London standards. I made the observation that pretty much everyone under 25 got off at that stop on the Underground, so its definitely the place to go. Another thing that we noticed is that everyone in London is very trendy. Granted, the trends don't always work or look good, but everyone makes an effort. People of all ages look put together, or if their disarray were a fashion statement. On the other hand, in Chicago, slobs abound. Including and perhaps especially college students, who throw on some pajama pants and call themselves dressed (I include myself in this statement). One girl laughed at dinner that the UofC students were going to start a London trend of sweatpants.

Even though we were only in Camden for a few hours, there was so much going on we were soon exhausted. We got some food, because the food there is really well priced and pretty good (I had a falafel pita wrap). Seating is next to impossible, so when we finally did get a bench, we had to be crammed in between a British woman on one side, and a group of boys who were Spanish, Indian, and German. Everyone in our group keeps expecting to be surrounded by fun British slang, but the reality is that we hear "British" almost less than we hear every other language on the planet. We haven't decided if its because we are just going to all the touristy places, or if that truly is the extent of London diversity.

After eating, we made our way back on the tube to the dorm, where we had about 30 min to rest our aching feet before we all met to go see a play at the Globe. Not a Shakespeare, however. It was a play called In Extremis, about Abelard and Heloise, and it was very good. Despite the fact that we were all near tears from the pain in our poor feet, caused by the fact that we had been walking all day and had to stand in the yard. The play was opened with the rules "Please turn off all mobile phones and other instruments of the devil, and there is no sitting in the yard!" Our hopes were dashed.

After the play, we all tried to look for a pub, but the only one nearby was filled with middle-aged locals who eyed the group of 18 Americans infiltrating their sacred haven with annoyance. Half the group stayed, and the rest of us left to go find a place that was still serving food. This lead us to Soho, where there was an Italian restaurant we ate at. We ordered a bottle of white wine for the table, and the waitress was like, "Only one bottle? For the six of you?" She seemed very disapproving throughout the meal. By the time we finished, Soho was coming to life, and people were bustling to get to the clubs, one of which was across the street. Deciding we were all too tired for anything else, we went home to give our feet a break.

Today all I did was sleep in (or at least as much as I could, since a jackhammer started on the street downstairs at 9am and didn't stop once for the next two hours) and do my reading for tomorrow's class, my first here in London. To read I went down to the river, and it was really nice, warm, and breezy. The pictures are of the Albert bridge near me, and of the Battersea bridge a bit down...

Londoners must have pruny feet

Anyone who is reading this already knows I'm in London for a study abroad program. It is still University of Chicago, but in conjunction with IES (Institute for the International Education of Students), so we have three classes taught by University profs, and one taught by one of their guys, and we live in their international student dorm. The classes are Arthurian Legends, Windrush Generation, Canterbury Tales, and History of Britain.

I left on Wednesday. Left for the airport at noon, got there by one, checked in and got to my gate pretty quickly. The flight was scheduled for 3:45pm, and at 3:15ish they started boarding. Halfway through, they stopped us and said they still needed to check the planes for security measures. Of course, they were already prohibiting liquids and gels. About 30 min go by, and they start taking people who boarded off the plane, and said the pilot was requesting a mechanic. We wait another 30-45 min, and then they tell us that the flight is cancelled and they are rerouting us all to an American Airlines flight. (btw, I was booked on Air Canada - DO NOT ever use this airline). So, we all get in a line, get a little print out with the flight info, and get sent across the airport to another terminal, to wait in line again to check in. At 6:30pm we finally get on the plane and go to Montreal, were I had originally been scheduled to making a connecting flight. I was rescheduled to another, later flight. When I got off the plane in Montreal, I was pulled aside and told that I would have to pick up my bags at the baggage claim before heading to my connecting flight. After all the bags came out and I didn't see mine, nor a few others from my flight theirs, we waited about 30 min before coming to terms that they weren't going to come out. We talked to an Air Canada rep, and he was like, you're going to miss your flight, we'll send you the bags tomorrow. So, I run to my flight, which requires me to go through customs and back through security (where even the security guards were like, better run or you'll miss your flight), where I check in and discover I and two other girls from my flight fiasco, all born in 1985, were put into the computer as being born on January 27th, 1919, and all carrying small live animals. But the important thing is that we made it, and it was a pretty empty flight, so I had two seats by the window to myself. 5 sleepless hours later, we get to London, where after all that mess, it takes all of 10 min to go through customs and get my bags (which it turns out, were automatically transferred), where it is 10:30, three hours after I was supposed to get there and meet three other students from my program. I call them, and they've already left and gone to the dorm without me. Understandable, since I was so late and they really didn't know when I'd get in, but especially irksome because I was the one who organized us all meeting. So, I have to take a £50 cab to the dorm by myself.

Surprisingly, London is blazing hot (well, ok, maybe upper 70s/low 80s). Such a shock after the brisk, jacket weather in Chicago. I get to the dorm, and am immediately bombarded with information, things to sign, packets to read. Once I finally get to my room, I see that my roomate is someone I vaguely know through our correspondence trying to meet at the airport, which is comforting. But the rooms are SO SMALL. Like, smaller than my single in the dorm in Chicago. And what looks like a closet is the bathroom, which is closet-sized. I'm terrified of having to share a room, especially one that small. I haven't had to with anyone but my sister, but even then, the majority of my life I've had my own room. The shower is a box, and it took a while to understand the faucet. The water is automatically lukewarm, and you adjust the flow with the left knob. Then, if you want hot water, you push the red button while turning it and adjust it to the temperature marked in Celsius. Of course, even at 42 degrees, you get pleasantly warm water but with sudden bursts of scalding water that you can't avoid because the shower is too small to move out of the way. Good fun.

We have really narrow, uncomfortable beds with only a fitted sheet (no top sheet, which has all us Americans quite scandalised) and a comforter that is rather shabby. But at the same time, we're all too cheap to buy the ones they sell in the dorm. It also hasn't mattered much because after our orientation yesterday and brief walking tour of the neighbourhood (very posh and expensive; Hugh Grant lives around the corner and down the street is Johnny Depp's favorite pub), we were so tired we barely made it across the bridge to a pub for dinner without falling asleep at our tables. The river is two blocks away, and the pub we ate at was ok. I had bangers and mash for dinner, and we all felt so silly because we got a giant pitch of water instead of beer. We decided that we'd all go back to the same one when we weren't jetlagged just to prove we could drink.

After a pretty good sleep (I woke up randomly at 3 am and was wide awake for about an hour, and fell just as quickly asleep, lulled by the drunken singing of German students outside my window), we got up and downstairs by 10am for a trip down to the center where our classes are held, an old 18th century house converted into classrooms and such. We were given lunch and then had about an hour to walk around. Despite the fact that it was pouring, I and several others went and walked a bit. Shockingly enough, rain actually falls down in London, rather than sideways as it does in Chicago as a result of the wind. Nevertheless, the streets are paved with flagstones on the sidewalks, and cobblestones on many of the roads, so puddles are many. My feet were soon soaked through, and stayed that way all day. Hence the title of this post. Afterwards, we all met back at the center and went on a two hour tour, where we saw the highlights of London by bus, and got out to see Buckingham Palace, which closes to the public on the 24th, so we are trying to get tickets for a tour inside soon. Then we had tea at the British Museum, which is only a block from where our classes are, and walked through part of it briefly with our lovely tour guide, Brit. We were then left on our own, so a few of us made it to Leicester Square to check out tickets for plays. After finding out that tickets to Mary Poppins, which is a musical our guide highly recommended, were £48 for students, half of the group went to get Indian food. There is a whole street of Indian restaurants in the theater area, and one of them offered us an additional 10% off, so we went there. I only at half of my dinner, and asked for the rest to go, whereupon the waiter laughed at me. Apparently Londoners don't believe in leftovers. But I got a bag of chicken tandoori and nan for lunch tomorrow, regardless. After dinner we wandered around and sat on the monument in Trafalgar Square and watched the cars go around the circle and took pictures of Big Ben in the distance. On our way home, there were fireworks on the river, which three of us ran to try and catch (since we could only see glimpses down the street and over the buildings), but missed all but the last couple of seconds.

The pictures of the dorm room are the only that I have, since I forgot my camera today, but more should come soon, once I have my brain about me. Parting shot of the night view from my room...