A bit of fun, but mostly work.

Once again, course work has kept me indoors and busy for the last few days; the picture at left is some new housing along the Thames we saw while at Woods Bagot last week. Friday afternoon I went with the other girls to Oxford Street, Regent’s Street, and Bond Street – the three ID girls who are here with us needed to do research for an upcoming interiors project so we were traipsing around these big name stores. I felt like more of a tourist on this afternoon than ever before while wandering around with 7 other girls, three of whom were snapping pictures of Prada, Issey Miyake and Louis Vuitton. More jacket potatoes at the Black Lion pub (I’ve decided that the British version of chili does not agree with me) and back home for a bit. On a wild hair, the 8 girls decided to go see Brokeback Mountain at the Odeon on Kensington High Street at 11:00pm. We now know that an International Youth Hostel card gets you a pretty good discount and we should carry it at all times, that you’re given a seat assignment when you buy a ticket, and that the theaters only have 4 rows of seating. It felt more like dinner theater than a megaplex. I didn’t particularly care for the group’s choice of movie but the scenery was pretty. Since the tube quits running at midnight, we walked (with purpose!) all the way up Kensington Church Street and home on Notting Hill Gate, arriving around 2:00am. And of course, some drunk person pulled what we assumed was the fire alarm at 3:30am resulting in us all clamoring down the seven flights of narrow, steep stairs half asleep in our pajamas, wondering what was going on. (“I don’t know, just shut up and keep walking.”)

I felt the need to escape on Saturday and made the mistake of heading out to Tottenham Hale again to do some window shopping. It was wall to wall people and it was one of those days where I just didn’t want to be elbow-to-elbow with the masses. Even after being here for nearly a month, I am still having trouble dealing with the density of London – it’s irritating at times. I’ve come to appreciate more the wide open spaces of the Great Plains and the luxury of space we enjoy as Americans.

I must be looking or acting more like a Londoner, though, because I repeatedly get asked for directions… usually in English, although I quite proudly gave tube directions to a girl in German last week and she seemed to comprehend what I said!

Since the Circle, Metropolitan, and Hammersmith & City Lines of the underground are part suspended on the weekends through March for track replacement at King’s Cross St. Pancras, our planned trip to Islington on Sunday was made far more complicated so we set out to find another free wifi spot. In the rain, we trekked for a half hour through Notting Hill with our computers looking for a restaurant I’d read about, only to find that we actually walked in a circle and this place was really only just at the end of Queensway, a 5 minute walk from our hostel. Sometimes I miss the Midwest street grid! It was an Anglo-American restaurant called Harlem Soul Food and although on the inside it looked sufficiently English, my burger (made of Scottish angus beef) was decent and the Motown music was fun. It was slightly strange to hear people at the next table asking the waitress what New York Strip was.

Something amazing has happened: the guys in our group seem to have finally decided that maybe it’s not such a good idea to spend five nights a week closing the bar downstairs, blowing all of their money on booze and spending all of their days hungover instead of out seeing the city. I’m grateful for this revelation because I’ve just about had enough of their daily accounts of drunk antics (“Dude, you were so wasted”) and the tally of how many times each of them has gotten sick.

I leave for Scotland on Sunday! :-)