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...