I'm annoyed. I just typed a couple of paragraphs, and then my computer BSOD'd and restarted (thanks windows updater!) and I expected that I would be able to just pick up from the third paragraph or so, because it assured me it was saving my draft as I wrote it every few seconds. I open this page back up and all it saved was the draft. As in, it saved the title. And deleted all the words. Grrrr.
Anyways, you'll all have to guess how I spent last Sunday and Monday because I don't feel like typing it again.
Just kiddddding. Sunday I went and watched the Saints crush the Bears at Bodeans' BBQ, a southern-US themed restaurant/bar within walking distance of my apartment. It was lovely, I had a blue moon, watched NFL football and was, as usual, one of two Saints fans in the bar. Actually, it's usually just me. Monday I was awoken by a faint tapping at my door, while my still sleeping brain was trying to figure out if someone had actually knocked on the door, I heard my door being UNLOCKED from the outside! I freaked out, and was like WHAT?! I'm not dressed! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! The maintenance man, who has the same accent as Bricktop from Snatch, was all "Sorry sorry sorry I'll come back later. So I went back to sleep. The same thing happened again half an hour later.
After my morning ordeal I traveled to Camden to try out a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. Camden is a cool area, north across the river from me, that is easily accessible to me by Tube. It has a high street lined with stalls selling souvenirs, t-shirts, tattoos, food, etc. And a lovely canal that meanders through the neighborhood. It also has a surf shop! Really its a surf/skate/snow shop and the "surf" part is in the basement in a cupboard under the stairs (fer reals). It has four surfboards for sale, plus a rack of wetsuits and some hoods, gloves and booties. Actually they don't have any more hoods, I bought the last one at a steep discount, so no complaints here. The BJJ school is on the second floor of an industrial office block. It has the mats on the first floor and a changing area upstairs. Above it all is a really cool skylight, for all those days of sun here, I'm sure. I showed up for the 12:30pm afternoon class. There were about five regular students and another boy who was a prospective student like me. For the first time in my entire life I was the highest ranked person in class (other than the instructor)! Two stripes > none. Once we started rolling I held my own, but at one point I rolled no-gi with someone who either misunderstood my question (how long have you been training) or I misunderstood his answer (2 weeks) and he had me in a neck crank in like two minutes flat, which I had never seen before. I think maybe because most people don't use neck cranks? For safety? After class I hung around with the other prospective student and chatted with Nilton, the blackbelt who owns and runs the school. After an hour or so, he took us down the street to grab lunch and paid for it when we turned our backs! That, plus the fact that his wall of flags that indicate the countries of his students includes an Israeli flag (which he pointed out they will not sell in London, a fact he finds stupid), convinced me to sign up with his gym. In return he gave me the student price, the same as for three classes a week to train as much as I have time to train.
At home I had another weird encounter with that boy in #4 (who as of this writing has moved out and been replaced by a nice German boy), I was about to leave the flat, and I heard a key in the lock so I waited for the person outside to open the door (which locks automatically). A boy I didn't recognize walked in so I introduced myself, figuring he was a roommate. He introduced himself as a friend of the person living in room 4. So this weeks mystery is why the F did this rando person have the key to out apartment? Either way the kid moved out the next day, and I was glad to see the back of him. I don't need total strangers having access to the communal living space. That night I did get a chance to meet the other flatmates. A boy from Pakistan, a boy from India (who was moved to another dorm b/c ours is only for 50 week contracts) and a German boy (who has moved for possibly the same reason). We stayed up for a few hours in the kitchen/dining room chatting about the area and the school and adjusting to life in London. They were the ones who revealed that we could in fact connect to the internet without first registering at the school!
Tuesday we (my other American flatmate) put that knowledge to use and re-connected with the rest of the world! No longer will I have to haunt the High Street for wifi access. This meant I spent most of the day huddled over my computer researching cell phone packages etc. The only interesting thing I did was leave the apartment to go get some stuff for my apartment at Tescos (which is a Target-like store about a mile away), the day ended with a four-hour nap and the two final episodes of this season's True Blood.
Wednesday I walked to LSE, the path takes you up the Borough High Street, through Borough market, down past the Southwark (pronounced Suffolk - its also the name of my area) Cathedral, through narrow cobblestone streets, past ruins of banquet halls and the "Clink" prison (where the term "the Clink" comes from!) then out along the Thames, past the Globe Theatre and then once you reach the TATE Modern, across the Millennium pedestrian bridge, up to St. Pauls cathedral, at which point you turn left and walk along Ludgate Street until it become Fleet street, and past the Royal Courts of Justice which are right next to LSE. It only takes about half an hour and it's not difficult in the slightest. I think from now on I will aim to walk to school as much as I can while the weather holds. At LSE I inquired as to my registration fate, having forgotten the REQUIRED official offer letter, buried somewhere in my grandmother's garage in Venice. Turns out "required" didn't actually mean required and I would be allowed to register. With this good news I walked back to school, stopping along the way to pick up a mini-heater, glassware, more school supplies, etc. I was quite weighed down by the time I tramped across the millennium bridge. I did have one strange incident on the way home, when I stopped to exchange money at a Barclays and a hundred and forty of my dollars were refused because they had a bit of pen or a stamp on the bills, and thus could not be sold back. Luckily the post office wasn't so picky. That night my American roommate and I went to Covent Garden (an area near LSE) via Double Decker bus for a night out, grabbing dinner and drinks at a few pubs in the area and walking around the square. We also walked by the National Opera House (I think) where I noted that Rolls Royce in Europe are literally half the size they are in the U.S.
Thursday I met up with Valerie, the other USC girl on my program who is also living in Sidney Webb. We got lunch at the Borough Market and then walked all. over. the. entire. city. in the search for bedding. I'm not sure I've ever been so footsore in my entire life. I was literally limping the last two blocks once we caught the bus back to the residence hall. BUT look how beautiful my room looks now! What follows is a virtual tour of my room. To begin, the view from the door, looking in from the hallway.
The closet is behind the open door to the right. Note that the window is covered in faded red and green checks and imagine how that looked next to the old bedding, which was NEON GREEN and blue squares. Below is the current, significantly improved, bedspread. It has made getting out of bed in the mornings almost completely impossible.
On the other side of the room, as in a four feet away, there is this lovely desk
Anyways, you'll all have to guess how I spent last Sunday and Monday because I don't feel like typing it again.
Just kiddddding. Sunday I went and watched the Saints crush the Bears at Bodeans' BBQ, a southern-US themed restaurant/bar within walking distance of my apartment. It was lovely, I had a blue moon, watched NFL football and was, as usual, one of two Saints fans in the bar. Actually, it's usually just me. Monday I was awoken by a faint tapping at my door, while my still sleeping brain was trying to figure out if someone had actually knocked on the door, I heard my door being UNLOCKED from the outside! I freaked out, and was like WHAT?! I'm not dressed! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! The maintenance man, who has the same accent as Bricktop from Snatch, was all "Sorry sorry sorry I'll come back later. So I went back to sleep. The same thing happened again half an hour later.
After my morning ordeal I traveled to Camden to try out a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. Camden is a cool area, north across the river from me, that is easily accessible to me by Tube. It has a high street lined with stalls selling souvenirs, t-shirts, tattoos, food, etc. And a lovely canal that meanders through the neighborhood. It also has a surf shop! Really its a surf/skate/snow shop and the "surf" part is in the basement in a cupboard under the stairs (fer reals). It has four surfboards for sale, plus a rack of wetsuits and some hoods, gloves and booties. Actually they don't have any more hoods, I bought the last one at a steep discount, so no complaints here. The BJJ school is on the second floor of an industrial office block. It has the mats on the first floor and a changing area upstairs. Above it all is a really cool skylight, for all those days of sun here, I'm sure. I showed up for the 12:30pm afternoon class. There were about five regular students and another boy who was a prospective student like me. For the first time in my entire life I was the highest ranked person in class (other than the instructor)! Two stripes > none. Once we started rolling I held my own, but at one point I rolled no-gi with someone who either misunderstood my question (how long have you been training) or I misunderstood his answer (2 weeks) and he had me in a neck crank in like two minutes flat, which I had never seen before. I think maybe because most people don't use neck cranks? For safety? After class I hung around with the other prospective student and chatted with Nilton, the blackbelt who owns and runs the school. After an hour or so, he took us down the street to grab lunch and paid for it when we turned our backs! That, plus the fact that his wall of flags that indicate the countries of his students includes an Israeli flag (which he pointed out they will not sell in London, a fact he finds stupid), convinced me to sign up with his gym. In return he gave me the student price, the same as for three classes a week to train as much as I have time to train.
At home I had another weird encounter with that boy in #4 (who as of this writing has moved out and been replaced by a nice German boy), I was about to leave the flat, and I heard a key in the lock so I waited for the person outside to open the door (which locks automatically). A boy I didn't recognize walked in so I introduced myself, figuring he was a roommate. He introduced himself as a friend of the person living in room 4. So this weeks mystery is why the F did this rando person have the key to out apartment? Either way the kid moved out the next day, and I was glad to see the back of him. I don't need total strangers having access to the communal living space. That night I did get a chance to meet the other flatmates. A boy from Pakistan, a boy from India (who was moved to another dorm b/c ours is only for 50 week contracts) and a German boy (who has moved for possibly the same reason). We stayed up for a few hours in the kitchen/dining room chatting about the area and the school and adjusting to life in London. They were the ones who revealed that we could in fact connect to the internet without first registering at the school!
Tuesday we (my other American flatmate) put that knowledge to use and re-connected with the rest of the world! No longer will I have to haunt the High Street for wifi access. This meant I spent most of the day huddled over my computer researching cell phone packages etc. The only interesting thing I did was leave the apartment to go get some stuff for my apartment at Tescos (which is a Target-like store about a mile away), the day ended with a four-hour nap and the two final episodes of this season's True Blood.
Wednesday I walked to LSE, the path takes you up the Borough High Street, through Borough market, down past the Southwark (pronounced Suffolk - its also the name of my area) Cathedral, through narrow cobblestone streets, past ruins of banquet halls and the "Clink" prison (where the term "the Clink" comes from!) then out along the Thames, past the Globe Theatre and then once you reach the TATE Modern, across the Millennium pedestrian bridge, up to St. Pauls cathedral, at which point you turn left and walk along Ludgate Street until it become Fleet street, and past the Royal Courts of Justice which are right next to LSE. It only takes about half an hour and it's not difficult in the slightest. I think from now on I will aim to walk to school as much as I can while the weather holds. At LSE I inquired as to my registration fate, having forgotten the REQUIRED official offer letter, buried somewhere in my grandmother's garage in Venice. Turns out "required" didn't actually mean required and I would be allowed to register. With this good news I walked back to school, stopping along the way to pick up a mini-heater, glassware, more school supplies, etc. I was quite weighed down by the time I tramped across the millennium bridge. I did have one strange incident on the way home, when I stopped to exchange money at a Barclays and a hundred and forty of my dollars were refused because they had a bit of pen or a stamp on the bills, and thus could not be sold back. Luckily the post office wasn't so picky. That night my American roommate and I went to Covent Garden (an area near LSE) via Double Decker bus for a night out, grabbing dinner and drinks at a few pubs in the area and walking around the square. We also walked by the National Opera House (I think) where I noted that Rolls Royce in Europe are literally half the size they are in the U.S.
Thursday I met up with Valerie, the other USC girl on my program who is also living in Sidney Webb. We got lunch at the Borough Market and then walked all. over. the. entire. city. in the search for bedding. I'm not sure I've ever been so footsore in my entire life. I was literally limping the last two blocks once we caught the bus back to the residence hall. BUT look how beautiful my room looks now! What follows is a virtual tour of my room. To begin, the view from the door, looking in from the hallway.
The closet is behind the open door to the right. Note that the window is covered in faded red and green checks and imagine how that looked next to the old bedding, which was NEON GREEN and blue squares. Below is the current, significantly improved, bedspread. It has made getting out of bed in the mornings almost completely impossible.
On the other side of the room, as in a four feet away, there is this lovely desk
To the right of the desk is the closet - note that the two rods are in the closet from front to back
And finally, the bathroom, which is across from the closet:
Hope you enjoyed the tour!
To continue with my rambling, Thursday night, after meeting two new Chinese roommates, CeeCee and Ting, my new German roomate, Daniel, old German roomate, Chris, Pakistani roommate Sayd, Kazakhstani roommate Yarshon, American roommate, Marissa and my friend Valerie and I went across the street for some get-to-know-you drinks. It was a chill night, just sitting outside, drinking beers and chatting, although at one point a very drunk lady with a very confused accent approached us to complain about the American tradition of eating really fattening foods at Thanksgiving and then to rant about the over-protectiveness of British mothers. Otherwise it was uneventful.
Friday Valerie and I walked to LSE for registration, which I was pretty sure was going to be a nightmare, especially without an offer letter. But instead we just walked right in, they scanned my passport, handed me my LSE ID and we were back outside, blinking in the bright light of day within 10 minutes. We used all the extra time to take a campus tour, then grabbed lunch with a couple of Turkish LLM students while we waited to pick up our orientation packets. Once that was done I decided to walk down to Buckingham palace, a couple of miles away. It was a nice day and I just strolled along, down the Strand, past Trafalgar Square (which was hosting a Malaysian cultural festival) and then through the Victory Arch and down the Pall Mall, which is pronounced Mal. Like if you were saying something was "bad" in Spanish. Mal. Hahaha those British.
Anyways I meandered under a gorgeous covering of trees, past Clarence House (residence of the Prince and Duchess of Cornwall - I think) and then to Buckingham palace, which is pretty big and impressive and does in fact have guards with funny looking hats and big guns standing, and at times marching stiffly in front of it. The gates are big and gold, as is the front door and it's all very alien to me, the idea of living some place like that. They do have tours for the next week or so (only July through October) so if I have time I may try to go back and see some of the state rooms. On the way back I walked the other side of the street which is (maybe) St. James park. It looked like a beautiful place to spend a nice day, but for some reason I kept going until I was back at LSE before I pulled out my orientation packet to read. After a long day of meeting people, I decided to skip the US students mixer and went to train instead :).
On Shabbos I didn't do much, just walked up to the Borough Market with Valerie, which has things that look like this
Gooseberry and elderflower jam! Which you can put on your
"Cholla Bread" or
Big freakin English muffins. And in a "wow it really is a small world" twist, as we were walking out of the market someone yelled "Valerie!" and it was a couple of USC students on their bar trip! I spent the rest of the afternoon resting and then that night went out with a Canadian LLM student and Valerie in Shoreditch, which I have heard can be compared to Williamsburg in Brooklyn. It was pretty hipster but the people were generally pretty helpful, like when we were standing there looking at a map and a bunch of British guys gave us directions. We ended up at Huxton bar, where we managed to queue jump thanks to Valerie's slick be-friending of a boy near the front of the line and in minutes we were inside. Where they played things like "Florence + the Machine" on the dancefloor. It's really hard to dance to songs like "rabbit heart." So that was not my favorite part of the night. But it was a fun night out and on the way home we stopped to ask a policeman for directions, by interrupting the three friends who were trying to ask him how they could find what hospital their friend had just been taken to. I still feel a little guilty about that, but the real question is why did the policeman answer us instead of them?
Anyways that brings us up to today! Today I played soccer. The end. No really, that's like all I did. I woke up, I played soccer, I was still the only girl. I did not play nearly as well as I did last week but I was a BOMB goalie this time. I met our last roommate, an American boy from Iowa (or maybe Idaho, but I think Iowa) and now I'm going to go watched some NFL at the Sports Cafe.
