Hanging with my BFF Catherine Tate: March 2 - 8

Monday, March 2nd:

This week I realized that I was actually attending school and that ALL of my assignments are due at the end of the month. So I unfortunately spent most of the day doing that. The rest of the day was spent watching Friends. 

Tuesday, March 3rd:

Today was a really exciting day that I had been waiting for since the beginning of the semester. I was going to see the musical Assassins through my musical theatre class. Assassins is a musical about the people who’ve tried to assassinate the president. I was really excited about this show because it seemed both really fun and really dark. Plus Catherine Tate is it and she is literally like my favorite human.
 We went to Chipotle first which was so good, a little taste of home.
 The show was amazing! It was definitely really funny but also really dark in the best way. The entire cast was phenomenal, Catherine Tate (Sarah Jane Moore) was so funny, Michael Xavier (John Wilkes Booth) was also really good despite not being Aaron Tveit. I loved the setup of the show, the way they used a carnival to tell the story.  If Assassins is playing in the area, even without Catherine Tate, I highly recommend you see it. It’s such a good show.

 Wednesday, March 4th:

Normally after London Theatre we go to see a show but our show is scheduled for tomorrow so Cheryl, Danielle and I bought tickets to see Once which is a show I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to.
 Once was beautiful, the show was amazing to see. It was a wonderful story and the music was fantastic. The acting was incredible and I definitely want to see it again sometime soon.

Thursday, March 5th: 

Today I had class at four where we talked about sponsorship and education in museums and galleries. It was really interesting to hear my professor’s views on sponsorship in galleries. Afterword, I had to go to a show for London Theatre.
 The show we saw was called Fiction, which was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. The way the show was set up was that it was made to seem like you were going to a seminar but then the lights were turned out so the whole show was listened to through headphones. The story wasn’t anything particularly brilliant but the whole experience was incredible. It’s amazing what happens when you lose one of your senses.

Friday, March 6th: 

Lauren and I on Friday Night

I had class today from 10 – 11, came back and took a nap, and then went back to class from 3 – 6. Fridays are so exciting.

Saturday, March 7th:

This week I was his with the crippling reality of the fact that I actually still am in school and this isn’t a 6 month vacation.  So I spent the whole day working on essays for one of my classes that’s due at the end of the semester.

Sunday, March 8th: 

Because I didn’t do as much work as I wanted to yesterday, I spent most of the day working on my essays.

Am I Famous?!: February 23rd - March 1st

Monday, February 23rd:

I had to turn in an assignment today so I had to get up and turn it in. Afterwords I had made some plans with myself to do some things around town but I literally just stayed in bed all day watching Friends because I was still so tired from traveling home from Wales and working on stuff yesterday.

Tuesday, February 24th:

Today I went to class. Not super exciting, but next week we’re seeing Assassins so next week will be SUPER exciting.

Wednesday, February 25th:

Today was the day that I’ve been waiting for since December. Lauren and I were going to the Brit Awards! It was hard to concentrate on anything beforehand but I managed to get it done when Lern came I was so excited.

We got to the O2 at around 5! We could hear some people screaming from the red carpet, which we tried to scope out but there was a line of people and we figured we might not even get to it, and figured that we were seeing the show anyway so it wasn’t worth it. So, instead, we walked the peasant red carpet and took some great pictures before heading to five guys for dinner.

We got to the O2 so early there was a lot of time to kill before the doors opened so I went to the Game of Thrones exhibit which I was convinced you had to pay money for but, pleasant surprise, you didn’t! Lern and I had a blast walking around the exhibit and sitting on the iron throne (a true dream of mine). 

Before we knew it the doors were open so we rode the escalator up to our floor but the doors weren’t open yet. Instead, we were given some preshow entertainment from a very talented Tom Butler before finally the real doors were open.

The show was amazing! Taylor Swift was pretty good (compared to other performances though it wasn’t exceptional) if you want a good performance of hers: Blank Space at the AMA’s was literally incredible, also Brits 2013 was excellent.

Overall I thought the show was good and it was incredible

to watch the winners accept their awards! Ed Sheeran won twice, Taylor Swift won her first Brit, Mark Ronson was adorable when he accepted for Uptown Funk (literally the ultimate jam, I can’t stop playing it).The one place I thought that this award fell short was that they were far more understated than the blow out performances they usually have. They had Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, George Ezra, and Paloma Faith who were outstanding performers but they have very simple productions. Paloma Faith’s was beautiful with the falling rain piece, but hers along with the other 3 required on pure vocals and background. Royal Blood’s set was cool too, but once again was cool because they had cool lights and background. Where
 were the huge productions like Katy Perry, One Direction, and the Arctic Monkeys? Also, The Brit awards are famous for putting together amazing combo performances and this year there weren’t any. They seemed to put too much faith in Madonna to carry the evening and it (pun intended) fell flat (get it? Because she fell?).

But, I feel like I’m being a little too critical. It was an amazing night! I loved it so much and I’m so excited that I got to go and all I want to do is come back next year (that’s a casual weekday trip from Des Moines, right?).

Thursday, February 26th:

Today I was thrown back into the school atmosphere with a trip to the Victoria and Albert museum to have a talk there with my entrepreneurship class. The V&A is a beautiful Museum! I definitely plan to go back and see more of it, especially because I could take a lot of inspiration from it for one of my papers due at the end of the month!

Friday, February 27th: 

I had early morning class today where we just had presentations all day so it was a nice break from real learning and was cool to see just how much everyone else had done on their projects.
 That night a couple people hung out with some people downstairs before heading out to a pub down the street, which might not have been the best idea because we had to leave New Cross at 8:30 in the morning tomorrow.

Saturday, February 28th:

Today we went to Oxford! Oxford is such a cool town and the way that their school is set up is AMAZING. I would love to go to a school like Oxford in the states, even though prob wouldn’t make it in, lol.
 Afterwords, we had lunch and did some shopping downtown. I bought these really cool vintage rail promo posters that are now proudly displayed in my room right next to my huge union jack flag. You all really should be here; it’s like a giant promo for the UK but also a dorm room. Crazy. 

Sunday, March 1st:

I woke up today to the sound of the fire alarm. What a beautiful wake up call, right? But I had to wake up close to then anyway because I attended London Fashion Week today! 

I didn’t spend that much time there because most of it was shopping for clothes that I couldn’t afford. But I did buy a cute handkerchief and found a new love for the designer Emma Shipley! Also, the interior designer Anna-Grace Davidson gave a talk which I attended, it was very interesting to hear what she had to say about interior design. I possess a secret love of interior design and after the talk all I wanted to do was buy a cute London apartment and design it for myself.

I was going to spend the rest of the day doing homework but I decided to give myself a break because the rest of the week was so action packed. 

London Fashion Week -- Somerset House

My Arms Hurt: February 2 - 8

Monday, February 2nd: 

I normally like to spend Mondays getting out and exploring London, but, after getting back from Scotland I was so tired that I wanted to sleep for about two more weeks that I just didn't feel ready to get out and explore. 

Instead, I spent the day catching up on the homework that I missed on Friday. Exciting stuff, I know. Living the high life in London. After dinner, the squad, Lauren, Cheryl, Kitty, Tanner, and I went to quiz night at New Cross Inn. Once again, the team was doing really well until the song category came up. We ended up being 6th to last, I think we got about 7th place. It was such a fun night, I love going to quiz night, one day we'll win. After quiz night, we were all feeling really hungry and wanted Dominos so Lauren, Tanner and I walked there only to realize they were closed. Such a disappointment.

Tuesday, February 3rd: 

Today was a weird day because I remembered that I actually had to go to class. Going to Scotland made this trip seem more like an extended vacation so having to go back to class was a really weird experience. But, nonetheless it was fun to go back and talk about Miss Saigon after we had seen it among other musicals. Now we are starting to get into the ones that I know more so I'm finding the class to be a little more relatable than it was before. Not that it wasn't to start out with because I've heard of everything we've talked about but we are getting into more of music that I've heard or shows I know the plot to, etc. etc.

Wednesday, February 4th:

On Wednesdays I don't have class until 4:30 so it's easy for me to get out and do things in the morning. So I took the bus to Deptford High Street to get some cleaning supplies at Poundland. I'll tell you, having your own space is a glamorous life, especially when you get to clean your own bathroom. When I got back I had just enough time to run to Sainsburys to get some groceries for a quick dinner before class. 

In London Theatre we talked about the show we saw last week, Peeping Tom, and honestly I didn't understand anything about that show so I wasn't very active in the discussion. But, afterwords I had a lot to think about on the way to our next show, Islands. Islands was a play about the rich people who get away with paying taxes by putting their money in offshore tax havens. This was shown very well in this play and I really enjoyed it, even if at points I felt uncomfortable or the show felt over the top. 

Thursday, February 5th:

 I woke up a little early today to get ready for my entrepreneurship class at the Tate Modern. Lauren and I got on the train a little early so we had time to stop for lunch and walk through a really pretty part of town with a market that I definitely want to go back to. Class was alright but once again we go right up until the museum closes so we don't actually get to look at any of the art. 

Afterwords Lauren, Tanner, and I ordered Dominos and it was excellent. 10/10, would recommend.

Friday, February 6th: 

I have class pretty much all day on Fridays, and after missing last Friday I definitely had to go and learn some coding. Overall it was a pretty uneventful day. Went to class, took a nap, went back to class. So exciting.

Saturday, February 7th: 

Today Lauren and I woke up a little early (12:00, super early right) because we had booked a taster session at a rock climbing wall in Mile End at 2. It was so fun and so tiring. My arms still hurt from it. It's definitely a workout but still extremely fun. I'm looking at maybe buying a monthly membership and trying to go to the rock wall as much as possible.

Afterwords, Lern got in from her day at Stonehenge so I met her at the underground stop near Goldsmiths and we went to dinner with Lauren and Tanner at the Big Red Pizzeria, which was good, but not quite as excellent as I remembered. When we got back from dinner Lern and I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist as a part of my attempt to watch 365 movies in 365 days, a challenge I stole from one of my friends here. The movie was pretty good, I enjoyed it for the post part.

Sunday, February 8th:

Lern had most of the day here but she had to leave for Cardiff again at 6 so we didn't have an infinite amount of time for activities. I made pancakes for everyone in the morning (I make pancakes every morning, it isn't that much of a feat) before Lern, Lauren and I headed out to the British Museum. The British Museum was really cool! They had a lot of interesting exhibits featuring mummies and vikings and money and clocks (oh my!) and it was fun to walk around the building. I saw the Rosetta Stone in real life which was so cool to look at seeing as it was the way that we learned how to read hieroglyphs. Lauren and I got masks for a Masquerade Ball we are (hopefully) going to later. For dinner, we came back to New Cross to eat at New Cross House. I had wings and chips which were excellent. Then I watched another Netflix movie and went to bed.

          

London ➞ Edinburgh: January 26 - February 1

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late post. I'm still recovering from getting no sleep in Scotland but I felt if I waited to post this another day I wouldn't ever do it so here it is!

Monday, January 26th: 

I didn't really do anything today, which is a little bit of a disappointment because I usually spend Mondays exploring the city. But, instead I stayed in and worked on some homework and my CV and researched switching from a student visitor visa to a tier 4 student visa. After dinner, Lauren and I went down to New Cross Inn, a pub close to campus, to participate in Quiz Night that they have every Monday. We were doing pretty well until they played a round where you had to name the title and artist of a song from a 10 second clip and then we moved down the rankings significantly. One of us brought up wanting pizza so we ordered Dominos at like 10:30 which was an excellent decision. I ate pizza in bed at 11 o'clock and it was amazing.

Tuesday, January 27th:

I spent the morning catching up on homework (nerd alert!!) before heading to my British and American Musical Theatre class. Today we talked about concept albums that were turned into musicals which I enjoyed. What I like most about the class is that we watch clips of songs or parts of shows/movies and discuss them afterwords, it's a good way to break up the lecture from just being talked at.

Afterwords, we got tickets from our class to see the show Miss Saigon which I was extremely excited about. We got to leave class a little early so our class had dinner at Chipotle (the promised land) before the show. I couldn't wait to see the show after I had seen a preview of it when Lauren and I saw Into The Woods at Greenwich Picturehouse last week. It looked like such an amazing show and I was not disappointed. The staging and performers were amazing and I loved the story. All I wanted in my entire life was for Kim and Chris to end up together. My favorite part was the immigration scene with the helicopter OMG IT WAS SO INTENSE. If you are in London looking for something to see on the West End that isn't, like, Wicked or Les Mis I would highly recommend Miss Saigon. 10/10, A+. 

Wednesday, January 28th: 

After the amazing show yesterday I was excited to see how the show we see for London Theatre would compare. This class is interesting because we see more fringe theatre it's less commercial and usually a little more avant garde than I was expecting when I signed up for the class (and when I say usually I don't really know what I'm talking about because this is the third show we've seen). We spent the class period discussing the show we saw last week, The Chronicles of Kalki, and when we finished discussing I ended up liking the show a lot less than when I started the discussion, which kind of stinks but I think that I understood parts of the show that I just kind of relaxed through the first time.

After the show we went to the Barbican Theatre to see a show called Peeping Tom. Our professor basically set it up as "you might not like this, it's kind of out there" so I didn't have that high of hopes. Overall, the show was really weird and confusing and I didn't know what was happening most of the time. I felt like I needed someone sitting next to me telling me "ok now they are doing this which represents this" in order to know what was going on. Overall, I didn't really like it, wouldn't recommend. 

Thursday, January 29th: 

Today I woke up and pretty much stayed in bed before Lauren and I had to leave for Cultural Entrepreneurship class at Tate Britain. It's an exciting life here in London. We went to class and talked to the head of Visitor Experience which was interesting. I wish we had gotten more time to walk around the exhibit because by the time we finished class the museum was closed and so we just went back home. 

Fun story though, we went to the Victoria station in order to take the national rail home to New Cross Gate, but we got there so late that the train was about to leave and Lauren got on the train but then the doors closed before I could get on so I was abandoned at Victoria station and had to wait for the next London Bridge train, which wasn't for another 30 mins. So moral of the story is don't try and beat the train because one of your friends will be left behind. After I (finally) got back to Goldsmiths I had dinner and then started packing because I spent the weekend in SCOTLAND!

Friday, January 30th: 

I'll still tell you what happened each day, but, I filmed a video chronicling the weekend which is this:

I woke up this morning at the ungodly hour of 7 am because we had to take the tube into Kings Cross and be there by 9:15 which means we had to leave at about 8 due to the fact that we were leaving at rush hour. When we got everyone down to New Cross Gate and the London Bridge train came Lauren and I forced ourselves on it hoping to not repeat the incident that happened yesterday but, in the process, we left the rest of the squad behind (oops). The underground to Kings Cross wasn't terrible, I felt bad though because my backpack was so full it could have literally been used as a weapon (and probably accidentally pushed a couple people

over) so trying to allow people onto the underground when you were taking up the space of two people was awkward, but we got there. 

Our train left for Edinburgh at 10:00 and we got there with plenty of time to get some food and prepare for the 4 hour ride north before we boarded. The train was really nice and the ride was beautiful, I think it really made me realize that I was spending time in another country because we passed over rivers and cute towns and farmland and saw the sea and everything was beautiful. 

Once we got to Edinburgh the first thing I realized was that it was A LOT colder than London is. I was shivering with my hat and mittens, I was having war flashbacks to the Minnesota weather. Soon, we were on our way to our Hostel. Now, when they tell you Edinburgh is a walkable city, they mean for those used to climbing mountains, not for someone who's farthest walk is a flat walk across the street to the tube station. The trek from Edinburgh Waverly station is basically a long incline up windy paths and by the time we got to the top I could literally taste blood. It definitely made me appreciate the 4 flights of stairs I have to my flat. 

selfie @ edinburgh castle

After we checked in to the Castle Rock Hostel we had some free time to explore so some of the squad walked up to Edinburgh Castle. I love the fact that they have castles here because that isn't something we have in America so basically any time I see something about castle I'm like foaming at the mouth excited. I was not excited when I realized that we had to pay to explore the castle, but I was informed that we were getting tickets tomorrow which made me excited. Then we walked down to St. Giles Cathedral which was beautiful and one of the only churches in Edinburgh that hadn't been converted into a restaurant which I think is funny. 

hot chocolate @ elephant house

We continued our walk and stumbled across The Elephant House, which is where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Obviously as president of the Harry Potter club it was necessary to go and get something there. I got a marshmallow hot chocolate and it was divine. If I could marry a drink I probably would've married that hot chocolate. 

We headed out to dinner at about 5 at a traditional Scottish restaurant and wine bar. I tried haggis and despite trying to keep an open mind about it I just couldn't eat it. Plus I wasn't a fan of the texture. For dinner I had a burger which I wasn't a fan of either. But the chocolate torte I had for dessert was very good. 

Later everyone was excited to get out and explore Scotland so we walked around and found a club we were looking at online called Liquid Room which was SO FUN. One of the things I'm not a fan of here in London is that the clubs play all electronic/techno music with all beats and no top 40 white girl music, like I don't know about you but I like to sing along when I dance and that can't happen if there are no words. But, Liquid Room played all my faves including Taylor Swift and Fancy and Ignition and it was excellent. 

After I got back to the room I was feeling less than excellent though because my room had 12 people in it which made it literally the temperature of the sun. I sat in bed sweating so much and I couldn't sleep because I just felt so gross, it was not nearly as fun. 

Saturday, January 31st: 

We had a walking tour scheduled for 10 am so I got up at like 9 with pretty much everyone else in our room and got some breakfast before heading out. The tour guide was informative but he talked so much and it was cold and we just kept walking downhill and I kept thinking about walking back up. In the video above you can see exactly how far away we were from Edinburgh Castle and then we walked back up to it and I think by the end I had walked a marathon. 

After the tour we had the rest of the day free so we went to Nando's were I had a chicken sandwich on pita bread which was great but I was tired and everyone was tired so we went back to the hostel to take a nap before dinner. The squad ate at Greyfriar's Bobby which was named after a dog that after it's owner died used to come and eat where they used to eat lunch together and sleep on it's owners grave which is the saddest story I've ever heard. I had a stake that was cooked through and wasn't that great. 

Afterwords we had made plans to on a pub crawl but apparently the pub crawl they were advertising in the hostel hadn't been going on for a couple years so instead we had squad bonding at a local pub before we came back and played heads up before going to bed where, once again, it was literally what it must feel like to burn in hell.

Sunday, February 1st:

Today was almost completely a travel day. We got back at like 5 and then some of the squad went to Whole Foods and then Tesco to get food for dinner which we ate together before I went to bed super early. I was hoping to stay up for the Superbowl but that was definitely not happening because I was so exhausted from being out and about all weekend.

4/5 of the squad @ edinburgh castle

Throughout the weekend I fell in love with Edinburgh and even grew to not despise the stairs (even though I'm still sore from walking so much) and I can't wait to go back hopefully very very soon. I hope you all had an outstanding week and I'll be back posting at the regular time next week!

          

Scotland: Jan 30 - February 1

Hi friends! For those of you who are looking for the weekly recap I do every Sunday, I'm sorry to inform you that I won't be posting today because I spent the weekend in Scotland and am so tired right now that writing that post seems impossible. But, in an attempt to satisfy your craving of an update on my life I made a vlog from my weekend in Edinburgh that will hopefully tide you over. I'll post the week recap tomorrow. Hope everyone had an excellent week!

Still Getting Used to This Blogging Thing: January 19-25

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!

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. 

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: 

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. 

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.

tower wall featuring London Bridge

the ravens of the tower were so cute

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!