London in Pictures

Just thought I'd post a bunch of random pictures from throughout my time here. Tried to leave out all the pictures of trips to other places and focus on London.

Holly Ollie Molly and Holly

Noah's Arc party during Fresher's

Rachael at the Tate Modern

Hobgoblin!

Snow comes to London

Your average tube ride

Sports Cafe

Sian, Hannah and I being sharks

Holly, Me, Holly, Char, Hannah and Sacha

Night out at G-A-Y

Portobello Road

Louis and me at Irish folk night

St Paul's over the Millennium Bridge

Ice Bar

Parents came

Halloween

St Paul's

Tower of London

Flat Thanksgiving

Me and Hannah

Me and Caroline at a pub

Holly and Me

Snowed In

I'm sitting in my room and there's a (very light) blanket of snow outside. My bags are packed, I'm on hold with Orbitz, who never sent me my flight confirmation number so I can't check in, and I'm trying to figure out what I have left to do with this last night. Unfortunately the snow means lots of my friends have gotten stuck in their respective locations or at the airport since Europe doesn't know how to handle snow. Heathrow wound up shutting down the runways today. I'm praying that since I booked my flight for tomorrow night it wont be too delayed and will run smoothly.

I've said a lot of my big goodbyes so far, since a lot of people left today. Last night we had our last big night out and it was really fun: pre-drinks in the flat and some random club in Vauxhall. Pretty much all of us were together and that was definitely fun, but it was sad knowing that it was the last time that we all would be. Charlotte gave me a card that a bunch of people had signed and of course I started crying as soon as she handed it to me (having not even read it yet).

It's just so surreal that I wont be living and hanging out with these people anymore, considering they're some of the best friends I've made. I wont be riding tubes into central, taking night buses back, sitting around the flat table chatting for hours, laughing at the hilarity that is Ollie and Louis, crawling into Char's room in the morning to recap the night, going on Nando's chicken dates, sitting with F-Block in 4 or 6, or finding myself with all of London as my disposal. I'll miss London so much, since I've come to love this city like it's my own. But I'll miss it a thousand times more because of the incredible friends that I've made here. I was trying to think about how you could even possibly begin to explain what an amazing experience and came to no good conclusions. It's been indescribable.

Everyone's exhausted from last night so tonight will probably involve many cups of tea, a bottle of wine and not a whole lot of excitement. With any luck I'll be back in the states by tomorrow night and seeing my family. And it'll be sooo hard to leave, but I'm betting it's not the last time I'll be in London.

Just Good Night, Not Good Bye

In the words of a great camp song: I wanna linger / a little longer / a little longer with you. / It's such a perfect night / it doesn't seem quite right / that it should be my last with you. / And as the years go by / I'll think of you and sigh / This is good night and not goodbye

Christmas Dinner

I'm sure I'll do a last week recap, but I get too excited about food to not post about it. As a follow up to our Thanksgiving dinner we had a Christmas dinner last night. Once again, the girls in the kitchen, the boys on clean up duty. I (kind of) took the back seat, at least in terms of planning the menu, since they wanted a lot of the traditional food. We did turkey (3 turkey joints instead of a big one this time), roast potatoes, roast carrots, roast parsnips, brussels sprouts, cauliflower gratin, yorkshire pudding, pigs in a blanket, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. Pretty delicious meal in the end. I made another cheese pie for dessert, and we still have a christmas pudding that we didn't eat because everyone wanted to die from eating too much.

Hannah and her parsnips

Ollie did the table setting

Keeping it classy

Me and my Christmas cracker

Overwhelming amounts of food

We still have a third of the turkey left.. but that's about it, since we devoured most of it. Followed by a cheese plate! I'm gonna miss making dinners with the crazy fools I get to call my flatmates.

Entering the Last Week

I've got £8 in 20p coins and am ready to do laundry.. except there are no available washers. So instead, I'm finding other things to do while I hide from the cleaner, since she REALLY hates us. We know this because she walks into our flat most days relatively early and just starts yelling, sometimes for no reason, and on some days opts to just not clean the kitchen. The relationship has really deteriorated. Most of us just hide out from her in our rooms. As evidenced by me right now.

The last few days have been pretty good and the perfect balance between eventful and relaxing (much needed since I'm getting the cold/flu that's going around my building). I hate to detail every day, but I've done some fun things that have been a little off the beat from what we normally do.

Thursday were the student protests in Parliament Square. For those who don't know, there have been tons of protests throughout the semester since Cameron announced the budget cuts that are being made, which include 100% cut to funding for arts, humanities and social sciences in universities. Seeing as this is what Goldsmiths does best, that means a 60% cut (or something thereabouts) for Goldsmiths funding. Students (and many professors) are absolutely livid over this, especially since in places like Goldsmiths this could mean the possible disintegration of the entire school. Then on Thursday there was a vote in Parliament on possibly raising the cap on tuition fees from £3000 to £9000. While it's impossible for me to understand considering our tuition is already astronomically high, it's pretty easy to see why this would be such an enormous issue for students considering attending uni.

A few of my friends went to the protests. From what I gathered from them, the media coverage of it wasn't too off, although I think they really played down the intense level of police violence. Students were being pretty shit to the police, but police responded by charging on horses, violence and kettling in (basically cooping them up and refusing to let them leave). Louis, my flatmate, got stuck on Westminster Bridge and didn't get home until about 1 a.m. after having been stuck since 6 or 7. It was pretty crazy, and there was definitely some violence on the part of students and of (apparently) anarchist groups that peppered themselves throughout. I wasn't involved but it reminded me of what an interesting time this is to be here.

Friday night we went to Venue, this club that happens to be right up the street. I'm not sure how we went a whole term without going there since it's literally the closest thing to us. But it wound up being a really fun night. The funniest part (sorry Holly..) was that our friend Holly got turned away at the door because she wouldn't give up a pack of gum that she had just bought. She kept yelling to them that she had just bought it across the street- they didn't care. Finally she just got kicked out on account of a bad attitude.

Then Saturday night Madelaine and I had our long-awaited night of playing beer pong with other Americans. It was strange to be around so many Americans, 'cause I think it was literally the most I've been around other than in my theater class since I've been here.

Sunday I finally made it to Brick Lane with Elsa and Charlotte, which was nice. Other than the frigid cold it was a fun day, involving curry, markets, bookstores and the great image of 3 pretty small girls trying to carry a huge vintage trunk that Elsa bought back on the tube. That night we went to this great little place up in North London, past Camden, that has a bunch of guys playing traditional Irish folk music on Sundays. The bar had a great atmosphere and the music was really fun. Elsa made friends with two old guys who were the owners of the place, and they were probably the nicest, least-creepy old men that have ever been in a bar. When one of them found out I was from Rhode Island he started in telling me about this dear friend of his from RI who is related to the Kennedy family and graduated from Brown. I was impressed he even knew where RI was.

All in all it's been a fun past week, and now commences the countdown of my final week here. We've got an itinerary all drawn up of my final things to do, and hopefully I'll get it all done!

50's Winter Ball

Last night was the 'ball' (basically a fancy dance or a formal) and most of the kids in my block went. And obviously I love any excuse to get dressed up and dance. The music was fabulous, we danced pretty much the whole time (real dancing, with dips and swings and everything, none of this newfangled grinding the kids do these days-- at one point Ollie picked me up and swung around). It was such a fun night and sadly it was poorly documented on my end, since the camera's broken still, but I do have a few. Only complaints: heels are the devil, and my new biggest fear in life is having my feet stepped on as many times as they were last night. Also I lost my shoes at Club Sandwich after (I'm surprisingly good at losing shoes), but I'm pretty sure they're still there. Fingers crossed.

Madelaine and Me in F4 before

Amee and Me

The band

Procrastination

I'm in the library (the libs, affectionately) putting off my essay, so of course I thought I'd blog. I've actually been pretty productive in the last week or so. I've turned in two of my essays and am currently working on my third and final. It's somewhat of a joke that people here think 2000 words is a long paper. My longest has been 25000 words which seems like a pretty standard paper for a class, but for some of them they only have to be 1500 words which is hilariously short. Luckily the topics I have to write on are relatively interesting too, ranging from a comparison of Richard Yates and Vonnegut (my homeboy) to various topics related to media and representation. Thrilling stuff, f'sho. 

I'm trying to balance out actually getting my work done with going out and not putting any nights to waste. Last night, for example, Madelaine and I really wanted to go out but no one could actually commit to anything so we were gonna have a pub night. Lucky us though because Charlotte popped out of the shower and decided she wanted to make us all go out, so we went to Soho to one of the well-known gay clubs for what turned out to be a hilarious night. Hopefully tonight will be Sports Cafe for one last dose of being super American in the UK. Tomorrow there's some ball going on for Goldsmiths. I don't really get it but I'll probably go. Basically every night it feels like there's something to do (don't make me leave) so that's been really nice for the last couple weeks.

The only disappointment in the last few days is that my camera randomly broke last night and the lens won't retract properly. I'm bummed since I really want to be able to take pictures while I'm here, but I guess I'll just have to steal from everyone else. I wanted to take pictures of the library today to post because students are doing a 24-hour "occupation" of the library to protest the cuts. The protests are a huge deal here and Goldsmiths students have been really passionate about it. Currently there are signs covering the outside and inside of the library and everyone is planning on skipping class to go to another big protest this Thursday. It's kind of cool to be here at a time when people are so involved in what's going on, but also a  little hard to relate since tuition fees are already insane in the US.

Anyway I guess I should stop listening to Jagged Little Pill and get back to writing my paper though.. 280 words down, 1720 till freedom.