Long Time No See

I know I've been horrible at keeping up with this thing lately and I will accept full responsibility. TO BE FAIR though, I have been sick, again (I'm telling you, I have the worst immune system) and I was reminded by my homework that I am in fact here to 'study'. Which means doing the odd, extremely irritating poetry assignment every once in a while, reading a boat load of articles and watching movies. But luckily, today is the start of my weekly four day weekends and I am here to rectify my absence.

I had my birthday a few days ago and I'll blog about that as soon as I get the pictures uploaded but a few weeks ago, J and I went sight seeing again. We're a really distractable couple who like to go down side streets and into little random shops that catch our attention. We also really like to eat. A lot. So while a normal couple might be able to see Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Chinatown and the Millenium Bridge, we were not so lucky. We hit four out of five and the funny part about that? We did it on accident.

See, what happens was that I really wanted to go here:

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Because it seems like one of the London sights I just have to see. It's a pedestrian steel suspension bridge and it was featured in Harry Potter. How could I possibly refuse? 

So after I had made up my mind to go to ^ that bridge, we decided we didn't just want to go see the one thing. We should go to Buckingham Palace because my mom insisted I had to see it. So I got directions from my flat to the Palace and then from the Palace to the bridge. Cool, right? Well, we got to the Palace as planned and then we saw a really nifty park across the street. 

So we decided to walk down this beautiful sidewalk instead of down the boring sidewalk to the Bridge. Fine. Dandy. Then we saw this arch. Wellington arch.

And we (I) decided we just needed pictures by it. After we had admired it for a sufficient amount of time, we tried to find the path we had veered from but out pretty sidewalk had gone. It was replaced with an entire park. Hyde Park. For some unknown reason, we decided that the right thing to do would be to walk through it and I think we honestly believed we would find our way again. So we did. It was a beautiful park complete with rose gardens, ponds, swans, fountains, horses and we even saw the Princess Diana memorial. A+ park, for sure.

 

There were randomly set up lawnchairs with a view of the river. I really wanted to sit down in them but no one else was so I opted not to.

Beautiful, right? Well, while we were lost in our little wonderland, the weather grew stormy and cold and it rained on us. LUCKILY, I was prepared with an umbrella but that didn't help much when it kept blowing inside out. So we ran and sought refuge on a bus. That took us here:

Yay for Piccadilly Circus! As you can imagine, we stopped at a good number of shops (there was even one with a giant bear standing outside of it!) and ate lunch and I think it was around this time where we realized we had absolutely no idea where we were in relation to our directions. So I let J follow his "man instinct" and instead of Millenium Bridge, we ended up here:

No complaints though :) We had a fun walk through, bought some candies and saw some beautiful cakes. When we finally left Chinatown, I asked a policeman where we could find Millenium Bridge and he gave us directions. I only understood them partially but for SOME REASON I thought J would mentally log all this. 

You guessed it, folks. We did not end up at the bridge. Instead, we went here:

It was absolutely beautiful and I was having the time of my life exploring all of the Square's little nooks and crannies but no, J wanted to make sure I got to my bridge. He said that if we headed towards the River, and walked alongside it, we would ultimately find it. So down to the river we went.

Including some cool grafitti...

A statue who moved!

Needless to say, we didn't find the bridge that day but we'll go back and we're going to find it. Rest assured.

And I promise to do a better job of keeping everyone posted :)

Double Faucet (???)

In the past five days, I like to think I've adjusted reasonably well to life in another country. I've got a handle on the lingo (however small that handle may be) and I've learned not to complain about walking to the grocery store and back every time I need something because buying excessive groceries makes for a HORRIBLE walk home. The one thing I have yet to understand is this:

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Ladies and gentlemen, the double faucet. Hot water comes out one spicket and cold water from the other. I thought this was cool at first because the hot water warms up super fast so very naively, I thought: "HEY, I'll never have to wash my face with cold water!" Wrong :| I have yet to wash my face with warm water. Why you may ask? Because the water gets hot. Super fast. And it scalds.

With two streams of water, the cold and hot water never mix. So it never gets warm. It's either really cold or really hot. And all the faucets are the same from the sinks to the showers. Except the one in the kitchen, which is what I'm used to. Even then though, the faucet is quite the cheater because there are two very separate and distinct flows of water from the spicket. This means that you might be thinking your washing your hands in frigid water but move them back a half inch and suddenly it's scalding which means back to the cold. It's like I can't win.

Has anyone else had experience with this? Because it doesn't seem to bother any of my British flatmates. In fact, when I mentioned how odd I thought it was, they looked at me like I had asked about a faucet coming out of my arm or something. Maybe I've just been living in my little bubble for too long.

ah-CHOO

It never fails that every single fall, I contract some disease. Last fall, I had the excitement of coming down with swine flu so I had to wear a surgical mask everywhere I went and I was more or less quarantined in my cesspool of a dorm room. The fall before that, I got pnuemonia that went incorrectly diagnosed so I ended up with cough suppressants that prevented me from coughing up whatever was in my lungs and making me feel like I was drowning in my own bed in the middle of the night.

Needless to say, even though I love the weather, this is very apparently not the right time of the year for my immune system. I had hoped (in vain, it would turn out) that I wouldn't get sick in London. Maybe something about the weather or the ecosystem or something would help me fight off the infections my body surrenders to every autumn and for a while, it looked like I was doing a pretty good job.

J got sick our first week here with a nasty cough and even though we're in a country with free healthcare and we have all-inclusive health insurance, finding someone who would see him when he wasn't registered with a General Practitioner was pretty hard. Our on-campus doctor didn't have time to see him and the walk-in clinic closest to us (a little over a mile walking) was agitated that he wasn't seeing his usual doctor. I mean, they saw him anyway but a diagnosis of: 'Idk, it'll pass' left much to be desired.

Here's a generally disturbing picture of J and I searching for healthcare. Please ignore the fact that I don't look so hot. This was a particularly nasty day outside and my body had already fallen ill to a virus.

Now that I'm sick with what appears to be an advanced version of what J had, I'm left wondering what I should do. Unfortunately, while I don't have a cough, I have fever, sneezes, wheezes, a sore throat and am, in general, a disgusting mucus factory. Hopefully it's just a cold that'll go away soon but with my luck and track record, it'll probably evolve into something heinous. And then I'll have to wander until some place takes pity on me and decides to see me. Woohoo!

On a brighter note, the flatmates and I attended a nature themed flat party the other day. The pictures are actually much more entertaining than the party itself but as improverished university students, going out to the bar/club every night is WAY too expensive. Did I mentioned I wasted (and I do mean absolutely wasted) £17.50 on a ticket to a club that shall remain nameless that threw the worst rave I've ever been to? Yes, I'm still recovering financially from that blow. Not to mention drinks were priced anywhere from £4 for a tiny shot to £121843710384 for doubles that got progressively more expensive. (I err on the side of exaggeration but I'd like to get my point across).

No one told me the party was themed so my costume is 'Texan/Londoner'

Translator

American to British Translator

v. 1

Chips = Crisps

Fries = Chips

Biscuits = Cookies

Jello = Jelly

Jelly = Jam 

Guido/Thugesque Individual = Chav

To be like aforementioned = Chavvy

Drunk = Wankered

Shrimp = Prawn

This is all I can think of off the top of my head but are the things that have most complicated my life as of recently. Especially the whole Chips/Crisps fiasco. Another odd thing about these "crisps"? The flavors:

(source)

There are also things like Prawn Cocktail, Cheese & Onion and Steak & Onion. I have not been brave enough to try any of these flavors yet but I'll let you know if that changes.

Happy Monday everyone!

British Birthdays

Last night, we celebrated by flatmate's birthday, officially making hers the first birthday I've celebrated in the UK. I didn't know what to do so J and I headed to the grocery store and pretty much bought out the birthday section to decorate our flat with.

We got lucky and ran into everybody but Lauren (who's birthday we were celebrating) so we got to work on the kitchen.

And we were just finishing when Lauren walked into the room and we all temporarily lost our minds and screamed. I was kind of disappointed that we didn't get to blow bubbles and make lots of noise when she came in but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

Afterwards, we all went out to go celebrate at some cute little pub about 3 minutes from where we live. All six people in our flat get along pretty well so we headed out together. Thankfully, it wasn't too cold or rainy so we got to lay off the umbrellas and heavy coats for a while. Apparently, the nice weather brought out all sorts of people and the normally reasonably-crowded pub we had anticipated turned out to be having a wildly popular Thursday night for no apparent reason. So, after growing alarmingly claustrophobic for about three hours, we decided to leave for the always mandatory late night meal.

The most popular kind of fast food joint around here are restaurants that specialize in fried chicken and curry and somehow, we managed to find a place that would welcome us with open arms at two in the morning. It was a pleasant experience at the time but fried chicken from this part of town is never a good idea. I spent most of the morning feeling like I had fallen into a life-size deep fryer. Not so nice.
At the time though, it sounded like a wonderful a wonderful idea. Don't we look like we're having a good time? Probably because this is pre-chicken. Just ignore the girl who looks like some sort of predator in the back. I was having a rough night.