Short Update

So my godmother, Kyriaki, and her two daughters, Sonia (9) and Olga (4), were here for the weekend! They are so adorable. It made me realize how rarely I am in the company of children. Sonia asked me what I was going to be when I grow up, apparently interior design doesn't really spark much interest in children. She told me that she is going to be "three things:" a teacher of 1st or 2nd year students "because she likes kids," a writer (she is currently working on a halloween story), and the third profession is a secret, which will be revealed on Friday. Olga is going to own a beauty salon. On Sunday I went on a walk with Kyriaki and Sonia. I like that walks around the neighborhood have become a part of my Sunday routine here in London.

Kyriaki and Olga, looking a bit serious, but beautiful no less.

I love these next three. They're not the greatest photos, but I feel like they are so representative of the life and mind of a four year old. They kind of remind me of three Calvin and Hobbes cartoon frames.

This is a photo of Sonia and Olga this morning before they left for Euro Disneyland!

I am going to go visit them in Dublin in December!

P.S. The other day I found out that under the kid-proof plastic tablecloth on the coffee table, there is an extensive teacup collection! Awesome.

That's all for now.

Oh goodness.

I have just gotten home from another long, long day. Since I have been home, I have eaten half of the can of mini cheddars you see to your left. That's right, that is a "Fun Party Size" container.

The day ended with my viewing yet another room I might possibly rent. It's one of the situations where the tenants choose the roommate (not the landlord), thus it's kind of like an interview. I can't say I am particularly good at those, nor do I imagine myself to be particularly memorable upon first meeting someone (after a long exhausting day), but I tried to put my happy face on and at least commit myself to their memory. Fingers crossed for the millionth time.

So, classes. I have already had two and a half of ten weeks of classes this semester. More than 20% done, woah. It just so happens that none of my professors are British. They are from Germany, New Zealand, and Russia. The kids in my politics classes are nearly all Americans, and the kids in my slavic studies classes are at least half slavs. So believe it or not, I haven't been hearing all that many British accents, bummer! On the bright side, a major pro of having a professor from New Zealand is that if I ever get bored, I just imagine her as Murray from Flight of the Conchords (because really, that is exactly what she sounds like). This is the first time in my life where I am only taking classes that I actually want to take. I am finding it to be a nice change.

This past weekend was fun, though highly unproductive academia-wise. This makes sense since level of fun and academic productivity are inversely related. Friday night I hung out with Sarah, a fellow Beaconite/Tulanian who was in town for a week. Saturday I wandered to London native Ben Lovell's neighborhood pub and later his abode where I proceeded to eat his family's entire supply of food. I also met his cat, Christopher. He is no Tytus, though, for in Ben's own words, Tytus is "a prince amongst cats." On Sunday I strolled through my neighborhood and went to the "Polish Deli," bought kabanosy and then went to the organic food store which was having a "spend £5 get a free gift bag" offer. Well, obviously I am the target audience for such organic food gimmicks. This one was quite worthwhile, though. I got a chocolate bar, soda, a bunch of tea, hot chocolate, and some sample bath products out of it. All the makings of a pretty good weekend.

Pretty view from the living room window. I love those trees.

Photos from Sunday's walk. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Play this in the background.

Trendy food packaging.

Fun fact, the other day I was denied the right to buy groceries at Tesco because my "signatures didn't match" on my card and on the receipt, even though I kept being like "I have ID" and showing it to them they were like no... sorry, the signatures need to match. UGH! I was so tired and hungry I almost cried.

Oh, last but not least. Yesterday on the tube I had a particularly uncourteous experience. A girl was PAINTING HER NAILS IN THE TRAIN CAR. As most of you probably already know, nothing makes me want to go homocidal on someone's ass more than nail polish-smell in confined spaces. What kind of evil, evil person does that? I wanted to swipe her nails with a brillo pad on the way out, unfortunately I don't usually carry one around with me. Since I am not much a fan of confronting strangers I resorted to dirty looks which were either ignored or went unnoticed.

What a day, what a day.

I am not sure how I have made it through this day, it has been an epic shitstorm. But hey, I am still alive! Presently jobless, soon to be homeless and trying not to let it get to me (but failing).

I started the day with a job interview (I shall return to this later). If I get the job, you will hear more about it and if not then we shall never speak of this again, you hear me?

Actually, backtrack, I started the day on the tube (subway). On the tube on the way to the interview I realized that I was having a hard time breathing. Impeding asthma attack? I wondered to myself.
To those of you not familiar with my medical history, I do not have Asthma—at least not to my knowledge. Nor have I ever had trouble breathing. Let me tell you, the tube is the last place you want to be when you think you're possibly going to die. And yes, at the time death seemed entirely plausible. I contemplated making an announcement, does anyone have an asthma inhaler!? but then I thought about how it would probably taste gross (as I hear they generally do). Then I got out of the train, inhaled some fresh air, and was fine.

After the interview I went to lunch with my friend Hannah. I have not yet mentioned her on this here official blog, but in short, Hannah is my sole UCL ally (a fellow American). Together, we conquer the plethora of sandwich shops around UCL by day, and by night we attempt to make friends with strangers which has thus far been a failed mission. But we are resilient and shall not be deterred by unfriendly Brits oh so easily!

That was a bit of a digression. After lunch I had class (yes, since my last post I have become a student!). The person I am currently living with at my godmother's is dealing with personal issues at the moment and therefore I have been looking for an alternative place to stay and I had found one a few days ago. So, after class I went to go sign a lease on the room—or so I thought. Turns out, the landlord was a pretty big  a******, I won't get into detail; the search continues. Afterwords, my uncle and I got wonton soup and spring rolls to celebrate our defeat.

Then I returned home. Waiting in the hallway was the only good thing about this day:

A package from Amanda! (You see that, mom? Step up your game).

I was convinced that my fate had turned around.

Waiting in my inbox, however, were two emails from my potential employer. One saying "good luck in your future endeavors" and the other saying "congrats!" followed by a date for a follow-up interview.

Um, what?

Since when did I become a cast member of Curb Your Enthusiasm? After contemplating for twenty minutes whether I should send an email saying "wtf" or just pretending I had never gotten a rejection email, I decided to go with the latter option. If you are going to make a major HR faux pas like that then you are also going to reconsider me!

I had originally planned to come home, eat dinner and do reading for my classes. This day, however, requires some good ol' TV and eating candy in bed. I had been planning to update my blog tonight; unfortunately the day's happenings have left me void of the energy required to write about anything else beyond this day—which I will from this moment on pretend never occurred.
Bite me, October 12th.
I promise I will update again very soon with a much more positive spin on my lifespan and the universe in general, though I figured you all deserve to hear not only my sugar coated London escapades, but my tales of woe as well.

Thanks to Amanda, at least my collection of wool socks is growing. These have llamas on them! ...or are they alpacas? You decide!

Cheers!

I am considering combining my love for updating livejournal with my... love for getting livejournal comments by extending my pool of possible commenters to the entirety of the worldwide web! Though, if afoxinchile is any indication, the worldwide web has very few commenters within it's virtual walls. A lot has already happened and there's no way I could walk you through all of the details but I will try to make this a somewhat cohesive entry. Onward!

It is amazingly the end of my twelfth day here in London. I am definitely much more London savvy than I was a week ago. I feel pretty familiar with the "tube" and I have taken the night bus a few times now. You see, the trains here stop running at midnight (crazy, huh?), which means all the drunks of London need to stumble on home. This is where the night bus comes in. The night bus is pretty much exactly like the Knight bus in Harry Potter thus I suggest you just watch the movie (HP3, or is it 4?) instead of me trying to explain it and failing miserably.

The lovely Steffani Bangel was in London for most of the time that I have been here; it's been nice having someone familiar to explore new territories with.

Steffani and I at the entrance to the Millenium Bridge, which brings you right to the Tate Modern!

We did a lot of wandering, touristy and otherwise, but sadly she has left me for greener pastures in Amsterdam (get it? they're greener? ...cause weed is legal?). So now I am alone in this big bad city. I am going to miss our night bus rides home together which involved singing the Scooby Doo theme song, making fun of street/stop names, and doing really terrible British accents (excuuuuuuuuuuse me surrr, which way to diagon alley?).

This brings me to the subject of the English language. It is crazy how differently things are named here. I am beginning to question whether it's really the same language we're speaking. Though I know I've already mentioned some of these names in other places, some of my favorites include Imperial Wharf, Shepherd's Bush, World's End, Catford Garage, Cockfosters, and White City.

For now I've been living at my godmother's house in west London. She is in Dublin for the year and her husband's cousin (a 27ish year old woman, if I had to guess), is living here so I have been living with her in the house. I am not yet sure how long I'll be able to stay here but I am hoping that I will just be here indefinitely. We seem to have nearly opposite schedules so my goal is to be as invisible as possible and thus make her forget that I live here altogether! Although the house is quite far from my school, it's really nice to come back to a home. The area is really beautiful. The house is on a street called "The Common." A common is kind of like a small park or a quad—it's a public greenspace and I am right across the street from one! Here are some pictures of it:

Ealing Common

We've had blue skies almost every day I've been here!

Today I sat on this bench and read my first letter.

From Katherine!

My street from the common.

I live in the house in the middle!

My room.

I know you all know this but... this place is crazy expensive! I have been going to great lengths to try and be wise with spending (about time!). This includes the classy beer-in-my-purse routine during a night on the town—drinking on the street is legal here. Trashy? maybe. Economical, yes.

I've found that the cost of food (at grocery stores, not restaurants) is actually relatively reasonable here and offsets some of the other crazy expenses. Many of my staples (read: goat cheese and english muffins), are actually cheaper here than they are in the US! I have found some really good premade food at Tesco such as pierogies, wild mushroom tortellini, and chicken nuggets. Since I still have to fry/boil/bake these foods, it gives me the illusion that I am actually cooking.

On the topic of perogies, there are so many Poles here! It's pretty awesome, I think they are one of the biggest immigrant communities in London. You know what that means? It means there is a Polish food aisle at the supermarket! How awesome is that?

Needless to say, being of legal drinking age is great. I am not just legal, I'm two years over being legal! Social degenerate no more! I've gone out to a few different bars/clubs which has been fun but nothing exceptional just yet. Surprisingly, most of the bars here seem to close by midnight, and many of the clubs close by 2am. This is going to require some adjustment of my usual "going out" mindset. Starting and ending the night earlier sounds good to me, though.

I should add that they make up for the leniency in drinking laws in their identity theft prevention. They are really serious about comparing your signatures when you pay with a credit card and almost always tell me that my signature doesn't match.

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned school—this is because I haven't actually started classes yet and thus have little to divulge at this time. I had a few days of orientation last week during which I manically ran between my two departments—Political Science and Slavic Studies—trying to figure out my classes. This semester I am going to be taking Politics of the EU, Global Environmental Politics, Soviet and Russian Foreign Policy, and Intermediate Russian. I have managed to arrange my schedule so that I have Fridays off, which will give me the flexibility to travel on weekends—woohoo! I am planning to go visit my godmother and cousin in Dublin as well as my grandparents in Poland in the near future. The UCL campus is in central London and is quite nice, lots of pretty buildings and green space.

Here is a Picture of the library on the main quad.

A photo taken from the quad.


An intersection on campus.

Gordon Square, also on campus.

The crowds here are crazy. You'd think that as a New Yorker I'd be used to it, but I can't help but feel like they are exponentially worse here. It feels like times square on New Year's exploded all over this city. It can be a little bit stressful at times, but I am trying to counteract the stress of mass crowds with quality relaxing time in what is considered to be nature by New York standards. The weather has been really amazing since I've been here which has allowed me to spend lots of time outside. Can't complain!

While there are tons of details and pictures I want to share with you, it seems like it would be pretty impossible to channel them all through this neverending entry/wordvomit. I will leave you with this video Steffani took. A few days ago we went to see a free show of rising artists in Trafalgar Square, an older dude was dancing around with a tambourine and then this kid decided to join him. The video does not really do his skills justice, for he is Michael Jackson reincarnated. I apologize on Steffani's behalf for the rotating of the camera.

Much love from London!