Ok I might be slacking a little at this blog. But, in my defense, I've been having trouble thinking of other posts to do because I only really do things on the weekends and I don't feel like I'm enough of a London aficionado yet to really give you guys advice on what to do here or what I've learned so if you want to give me advice on what to do for another post throughout the week my ears are open!
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| I love the brightly painted buildings of Shoreditch |
Monday, January 19th:
I use Mondays to get out and explore the city. So when I was deciding what to do I realized I hadn't been to Shoreditch yet. There was a street art tour there that some of my flatmates did but I couldn't go because I had class and they said it was cool so I decided to go there.
Shoreditch definitely didn't disappoint. It's lined with cute vintage shops and street art that I wandered around for a while until my feet hurt. While I was wandering around I found a CAT CAFE which made my entire life. I make lists of things that I like in places that I find and Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium is pretty much number one on the list. Although you have to make reservations to actually play with the cats so I didn't get to experience the beauty of the cafe, I can only imagine. I think I'm going to wait until Lern comes back to go because it'd be a little sad to sit in the cafe by myself playing with cats. Not that I didn't seriously consider it the day of.
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| found a peaceful area in the middle of the city |
As I continued walking I found a street filled with these beautiful brick buildings with a park in the middle. I sat there for a while contemplating life before I realized I was cold and went toward the Underground to explore a different area. But as I got on the train I realized I was cold and a little explored out so I decided I was just going to go home and have dinner. This would have been easy if I took the right train from London Bridge but I got on the wrong train, not just once, twice.
Needless to say, once I got back I was tired and hungry so I hung out in the kitchen for a while before Lauren got back and we decided that we wanted to go see a movie. If you live relatively near Greenwich and want to go to a movie I highly recommend the Greenwich Picturehouse. If you bring your student ID you can become a student member for 15 pounds which gives you two free movies, five pound movies on Mondays (student tickets without the membership are 11 pounds) and 10% off concessions. I think Lauren and I are going to make Monday night movies a regular thing, which I'm super excited about.
Tuesday, January 20th:
I always feel bad when I do these Tuesday - Thursday days because most of the time the only thing that happened was I had class. This Tuesday was a little different. I did have class, British and American Musical Theatre, where we talked about the evolution of early British Musical Theatre. We got a list of the four musicals we are going to see as a part of the class which is exciting because, similarly to London Theatre, I like that we get out of the classroom and explore the city. I'm also excited about the shows we are seeing: Miss Saigon, The Scottsboro Boys, Assassins, and Beautiful. All four look like excellent shows and I'm excited to see them (count the number of "excited's" in the last two sentences).
After class when I went to make dinner one of my flatmates came in and asked if I wanted to join her and her friends at a club called XOYO in Shoreditch for students night. It sounded fun and I don't have class until 4:30 on Wednesdays so I went in a big group of people. The club was alright, they really liked the fog machine and more electronic music with beats and no words which I wasn't a fan of. As a white girl, I like to sing along to top forty music at the club. I had a fun time otherwise! I was exhausted afterwards from dancing.
Wednesday, January 21st:
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| advert of my fave on the way to the Gate Theatre |
Today in London Theatre we discussed the show we saw last week, A Series of Increasing Impossible Acts. The discussion opened my eyes to some of the things that I missed about the show. The one thing I don't like about the class is that we go from class to another show, so it's hard for me to keep some of the discussion straight because I have to remember what happened in the new show and the discussion in class and write two separate reflections. It isn't a big deal, I would just prefer some time in between to write what happened in class.
Anyway, today we saw The Chronicles of Kalki which was about the Hindu god Vishnu being reincarnated as a teenage girl and her two friends having to retell the events of what happened the week she was with them after she's reported missing. It was interesting and starred someone who was also in Game of Thrones which was amazing.
Thursday, January 22nd:
Thursdays are days where I feel like I don't do anything particularly exciting. I went to class at 4 where we talked about the entrepreneurship of the Tate Britain and Tate Modern. We discussed our final project, creating a museum or gallery with the a list of the art you'd like to display along with an entrepreneurial plan of how to make it successful. The way that they do course grades here for most of my classes is that you submit a final essay and that is your entire grade. This is both extremely frightening (MY WHOLE GRADE IS BASED ON ONE THING WTF)and good because instead of cramming for tests and then forgetting the information right afterwards I have to understand and interpret in order to convince the grader that I actually learned and can apply the information from the class.
For dinner I made pancakes (I can make three things, grilled cheese, green beans, and breakfast so if you notice a lot of grilled cheese and breakfast foods that's why) only to realize that British pancakes are different than American. They were still really good! The taste of a pancake but the consistency of a crepe, would recommend.
Friday, January 23rd:
Today was the first day that I had a full day of class and the lab for my Computing class. The only thing that annoys me about this class is that the lecture is from 10-11 and usually the seminar directly follows so you have a long class period but you're done early, for example from 11-2 and then you are done with class at 2. Instead, this class' seminar is from 3-6 so I have 4 hours free but that really isn't enough time to do much and then I have to go back to class from 3-6. It's annoying that I essentially can't do anything on Friday until after 6.
Lauren, Cheryl and I made plans to go out for dinner. We originally had planned on going to this place called The Barnyard because they had warm cornbread on their menu but when when we got there the wait was too long so we looked for somewhere else.
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steak tacos on the left and rajas tacos on the right
just looking at this picture makes me want
more of their chips and guac |
Across the street was this cute restaurant called Wahaca which served Mexican food, as this is my favorite kind I pushed for this one. There was a little bit of a wait so we went upstairs to the bar for drinks. I had one of the best Mojitos ever and as we waited for a table to open I couldn't stop thinking that I was going to have chips and guac soon. The anticipation was killing me. When a table opened we ordered and the food was delicious and relatively inexpensive. We shared chips and guac, I had steak tacos and vegetarian rajas tacos (the steak tacos were better but they were both good).
We headed back to new cross for one of the orientation leader's birthday party at a pub down the road my flatmates went to go celebrate for a while but Lauren and I weren't really feeling it so we left at like 11:30 and went to bed like the party animals we are.
Saturday, January 24th:
Lauren and I made plans today to tour the Tower of London and go on a ghost walk which we were both super pumped about. For me, the Tower of London was something that was something that I knew I for sure wanted to tour because I am fascinated by the history behind it. I also weirdly know a lot of facts about it? We got there at like 3:30 and when we bought tickets we were told that the tower closes at 4:30 which I think is so weird because you'd think it would have been open late on a Saturday? I don't know the businesses in London confuse me. Lauren and I still had plenty of time to see everything that we wanted to see. Mainly the world's biggest cut diamond (which we weren't allowed to take pictures of). The Tower was amazing and so interesting. I most definitely want to go again and am seriously considering becoming a palace member which is 46 pounds for unlimited yearly access to the 5 London palaces (Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, and Kew Palace). I love the history behind that stuff though and just walking through the palace made me feel like I was in Game of Thrones or something. Also I've decided that I officially want to move into a palace, preferably the Tower of London.
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| tower wall featuring London Bridge |
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| the ravens of the tower were so cute |
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| looking down upon the peasants from the tower |
When they shuffled us out of the Tower promptly at 4:30 Lauren and I were starting to get hungry but we didn't want to find something right away because our ghost walk didn't start until 7:30 so we walked around tower hill until about 5 when the hunger became unbearable. We ate dinner at this place called All Bar One where we ordered 5 small plates for 25 pounds. We ordered amazing breaded chicken, calamari, pomegranate hummus beef, cauliflower, and some cheese bread that had a weird name I don't remember. It was a great meal for 12.50 and I was stuffed afterwards!
We walked toward St Paul Station to meet up with the tour guide and we were a couple minutes early and we didn't know who exactly our guide was so we walked around the station looking lost before eventually we found the tour guide. The tour was pretty good, very interesting and informative, my only problem was that I wish that we could have gone into places and gotten a little more scared, we talked outside of places about the hauntings going on inside which wasn't immersive enough for me. Also, online it says that apparitions are guaranteed and I didn't see any. But for 7 pounds it was an entertaining tour.
After the tour Lauren and I were going to meet up with my friend from home, Maggie, who was in London for orientation before she leaves for Spain. But, the genius with directions I am, directed us to the wrong hotel twice. At 11 the tube starts closing so we gave up trying to get to the right hotel and decided to get something to eat. Lauren had never been to a casino before and there was one attached to one of the wrong hotels we went to so we decided to go in there for a little while. I was underwhelmed by the selection (Nowhere near Mystic Lake standards) and they had this weird thing where you could reserve a slot machine and all of the slot machines that didn't have people at them were reserved so we played roulette for a little while before Lauren realized that gambling isn't that fun. We were still hungry so on the way back to the bus stop we were on the lookout for something to eat that was still open (it was about 11:30 at this point) and we found a diner! We had midnight shakes and fries and it was amazing before heading back home to bed after a long day of walking (over 6.5 miles).
Sunday, January 25th:
Today I actually have homework to do. Yuck. It's almost like I'm actually going to school in London. So I'm going to get that done and watch something on Netflix. It's going to be a pretty uneventful day featuring some grocery shopping, typing reflections, and attempting to understand a coding assignment I got on Friday, so I'm going to go ahead and publish this before the day is over so that the people that want to read it and are badgering me about not posting things on this blog (Hi I'm talking about you Mom!) can read this. But if something eventful happens tonight none of you will know until next week. It's something you'll have to live with.
I hope everyone back home is having a fantastic week! I know Drake starts spring term this week so if you're someone that starts school tomorrow good luck to you! Have a good semester and I'll talk to you for sure next Sunday, hopefully earlier!
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