Thanksgiving: London Edition

Thanksgiving came a little early to Flat F7 this year, but it certainly came extravagantly. I knew from the day I realized that I'd be missing Thanksgiving at home that I wanted to make a meal of my own. After all, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. So I may not get to go home and see my family, do the annual Black Friday mall trip with Emily or live off of Aunt Minnie's Potatoes for days, but that wasn't going to stop me from making a kick ass meal.

After encountering numerous issues with Turkey defrosting (which ended with us submerging the 15 lb Turkey in a trashcan filled with cold water because no other container was big enough), we were able to start in on cooking. Charlotte and I did a massive Sainsbury's run and started cooking by noon on Tuesday. I took on the sweet potato casserole and cauliflower gratin (recipes courtesy of Colin), the stuffing, the cranberry sauce and an impromptu cheese pie. Charlotte did roast potatoes, apple crumble and brownies. We both looked after the Turkey which Joey kindly removed all the gross stuff from (even the term giblets weirds me out). Then Hannah helped with chopping carrots that Joey peeled and making the gravy.

We sat down to dinner with the whole flat minus Sascha using the lovely Turkey napkins my mom brought us. I'm not gonna lie, it was a classy affair. The boys were in ties (albeit only Louis' was actually tied correctly and up around his neck) and we set out bread and oil and vinegar to start with our classy £3 bottles of wine. Then as we got ready to eat I even got to be the one to carve the turkey! I had to keep reminding people that the point was to eat as much as humanly possible and to feel like you're going to vomit at the end. We all succeeded on that front. Had to take a break before dessert but we all ate gross amounts there too. And then we had a cheese plate!

My first big kid Thanksgiving where I made a significant portion of the food was a resounding success and I was excited to get to introduce the Brits to my favorite holiday.

Much Food

Preparations afoot

So proud of my first turkey

The chefs (Hannah, Char and I) and the turkey

Carving the roast beast

Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Gravy, Stuffing, Carrots, Green Beans, Cauliflower, Roast Potatoes, Sweet Potato Casserole

F7 does Thanksgiving

F7 finishes Thanksgiving

I had copious amounts of tryptophan-induced dreams following the massive meal. And in the way that some people extend their birthday celebrations, I get to keep Thanksgiving festivities alive by going to dinner for Thanksgiving with Madelaine and her family on Thursday, by eating leftovers and through the promise of a skype date with my family on Thanksgiving day.

Just because I'm up and watching the celtics..

Yes I realize I just posted about traveling, but I’m not doing much so, hell, I’ll keep going. I haven’t written about just nothing in a while, probably much to the joy and delight of all 2 people who read this. I feel like between traveling and my parents visiting I’ve been insanely busy for the last few weeks. Having my parents here was fabulous, and not just because it meant I got treated to great meals. I've missed my family a lot since I've been here. It’s funny because in Philly I probably would’ve only been home once already for fall break, but it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen my parents or been home. Time moves very strangely here; I feel like I’ve been here forever, I feel like I just got here, I can’t tell whether days pass quickly or slowly and the only constant in this is that I know I'll have to leave way too soon. This week at Harry Potter themed Club Sandwich (the name of the club night at the Student Union) I had at least 4 or 5 people tell me I’m not allowed to leave London come Christmas. And trust me, I’m well aware that the next month is going to fly by way too fast. I don’t want it to end.

I have to keep reminding myself of the things I’ll be looking forward to and things I love about home. I’m excited to see all of my friends again, although it’ll be a few weeks before I’ll seen Penn people. I’m excited to see the family at Christmas and get to be an utter lazy bum during break. I’m excited to be able to watch TV shows and sports at normal hours (it’s 1:42 a.m. and I’m  watching the Celtics?). I'm excited for Blarn, Greek Lady and campusfoods.com. Ah, the small joys in life.

Sadly leaving will mean a host of things I’ll miss tremendously. There are plenty of little things: big clubs, tourist sites, tube rides, British accents, tea all day, SFG clothing (So Fucking Goldsmiths- aka extreme hipster-ness), silly British slang, markets, Sainsburys- the list really could go on and on. But it’s also the hilarious and amazing people I’ve met and the fact that I’ve gotten used to living in this city. Philadelphia was just starting to feel like home to me when I left and now I’m afraid I’ll have to get used to it all over again. Not to mention SEPTA can’t hold a candle, or really even a quickly burning match, to the tube lines here.

Luckily I’m working on doing more tourist things and working on getting all my “To Do’s” crossed off my list. Today Caroline and I went to the Tower of London, got some tasty fish and chips, went briefly into St. Paul’s Cathedral and walked across the Millennium Bridge. My general conclusion of the day: I want to be the queen of England. The crown jewels are insane, and really, who doesn’t want diamonds that big? Kate Middleton really got it right with the whole marry a prince thing.

Prague & Vienna & Bratislava (Oh My!)

It's been a while but I finally have time to write about my Prague & Vienna adventures. I absolutely loved my travels, even though it was sort of a whirlwind trip. We (Alyssa, Colin & I) had to leave before the crack of dawn on Monday in order to get to the airport on time for our early flight. The only problem with taking the ridiculously cheap flights out of London is that their at strange times, all the airports are far-ish and the tubes don't run that early. Getting to the airport on time pretty much becomes an adventure in and of itself. But we because of our early flight we were basically at our hostel in Prague by 12:30, leaving us most of the day, so I can't really complain.

The first day we did one of the New Europe free walking tours and walked all around the old town and the Jewish quarter. I didn't know as much as I would've liked about the history of the Czech Republic (and Bohemia in general) so it was nice to get to hear about it from someone knowledgeable. I also immediately fell in love with the architecture. It was so unique to Prague and unlike the architecture anywhere else I've been. Old Town Square was beautiful, and when we went there were booths set up throughout the square selling cheese, meats, wine and other food which felt really quaint (especially compared to what we saw in Vienna). We did some shopping and grabbed food by our hostel, but were also exhausted from having been up since 3:30. Between the bad news from home and the strange hours we had to wake up I spent a lot of the trip exhausted.

Luckily we slept in (by accident) the next day. We did Prague Castle and St Vitus' Cathedral (breathtaking-- possibly my favorite place I've been on my travels), walked down Golden Lane and then wound up by the Charles River Bridge. We made wishes off of it, followed the hoards of people who would touch certain statues even though we had no clue why we were doing it, and took the obligatory action shot of Alyssa and I jumping. We also went up the clock tower at night and saw Prague all lit up. What I was amazed by was how in general the tourist attractions were the only lit up things. It was by and large a dark city at night-- definitely different from big cities in the States where everything is blaring lights. We went out to this weird Czech bar that night, U Sudu, that wound up being really fun. You went downstairs and there was a maze of rooms all playing different music and with different bars. There were people with their dogs, people rolling joints and foosball tables. Just like Blarney in Philly? Not quite.. But it wound up being really fun and I was glad we went out.

Side Note: for anyone interested in going to Prague DEFINITELY look into staying at Sir Toby's Hostel. It was great, the people were so helpful and nice and it was one of the better hostels I've been to so far. 

The next morning (3 hours of sleep later) we headed off on a super cheap bus to Vienna. I loved Vienna too but it was different, and distinctly Austrian. I had been once with my Mom when I was 10 but it was fun to experience it 10 years later with a different perspective. We got bratwurst and sauerkraut, walked around the Hapsburg Palace and all of the beautiful old buildings, drank liqueur coffee at one of the famous cafes and stumbled across this strange little winter wonderland village that was set up for Christmas outside of City Hall (which looked 100% like a princess castle). We also rode the tram around the inner ring of the city and saw the buildings lit up at night, which was nice minus the part where the tram stopped, we were the only ones on it and we were slightly convinced that if we got off the tram driver would either abandon or kill us. It was a full day but it was really fun and I was glad we got a whole day in Vienna. I would've loved more time since we didn't make it to the beautiful gardens, but having been before it was okay.

Our last day we decided to get up early and since we were flying out of Bratislava we planned to go there and spend the early day there before our flights. Bratislava, by the way, is in Slovakia. Important things to know before you leave: the country in which your city is, and the language that country speaks. We got to Bratislava and all of a sudden realized we had no clue what language Slovakia spoke. Once again, my Penn education serving me well. We pulled up the wiki page and discovered that it is in fact Slovak.. duhh. Bratislava turned out to be a really cute town (city?) and there were beautiful buildings and squares, so we wandered around for the morning. It was nice, and now I can say I've been to Slovakia, so that's a plus. The only downside was I went to the airport at the same time as Alyssa and Colin, but their flight was hours before mine because they were going on to Rome and I was heading back to London to meet my parents. So I spent 9 hours in the Bratislava airport. Add that to the list of things not to do in Europe. In no particular order my activities were as follows: catching up on all my school reading, listening to Harry Potter 7 to refresh my memory for the movies, being stared at by a Slovak man for 3 hours, drinking Slovak beer that tasted vaguely like Natty Lite, drinking coffee, ordering a sandwich that looked like cat vomit, not eating the sandwich and wandering through the duty free shop for about an hour. If that doesn't look like 9 hours of activities it's because it wasn't. I also sat. A lot. All in all I can't complain though- 3 countries in 4 days and I loved all of it.

I think I might still be catching up on sleep from all of it, and I'm not actually sleeping full nights, so I'm exhausted. But that was also from trying to get up at real people times for my parents while they were here. Having them here was great, but I'll save that for a time when I haven't already written a ton of what I can only assume is mindless blather.

Fireworks and Flashes of Brilliance

From really really bizarre fringe theater and Bonfire night celebrations to traveling to continent, a lot has happened in the last week and a half. I'll probably split this into a few chunks, because I don't want to sell any part of being here short. But in case you don't want to read through this, I'll start with the summary: I'm absolutely in love with London in a way that I never thought I'd be, but was recently reminded how insanely far I am from home and how difficult that can be.

To start, I haven't been to class since last Thursday, because this week has been reading week. All of my flatmates and the people in my building went home for various amounts of time, but all the Americans have been gallivanting across Europe on various excursions. I myself made plans to go to Prague and Vienna with Alyssa and Colin. We wanted to do Budapest too but Colin was sick so we pushed the trip back and left early Monday (basically late on Sunday). It was actually nice because it meant that I got be around for Bonfire Night on Friday.

When Bonfire Night initially came up I was generally met with one reaction: "How the hell do you not know what Bonfire Night is!? Guy Fawkes?? Fireworks!?" I mean, obviously when you put it that way I'm going to know what you're talking about. I had just never known the name of the day. Basically it's a day for celebrating the failure of Guy Fawkes attempt to blow up the parliament building and people light bonfires and there are fireworks shows all across the country. We decided to go to Primrose Hill because from there you could see bursts of fireworks all across the city. I went with Sascha, Hannah, Lewis, Joe and Ollie, all from my flat, and we met up with Gub, Rae and Katie, all from our building. I was so glad we decided to go to Primrose Hill because we had the most amazing view of all of London-- at one point I was just spinning around getting the full view (until I got dizzy and fell down). We brought cider and sat on the hill for a while watching the fireworks, but it got really cold and started raining so we made our way back, which involved a slight detour in Notting Hill, a quick pop into McDonald's (classy, I know) and only a few instances of taking the wrong tube.

Saturday night a lot of people had left for trips already so I got to hang out with a bunch of people who were around in the flat downstairs. We've been overstaying our welcome in that flat recently because, lucky us, the ovens and stoves were broken in our flat so we needed a place to cook. Wound up being a really fun night though of hanging out, playing games (they call Kings "Ring of Fire" where instead of a middle beer you have a middle cup that you pour into, and we didn't have a cup for the middle so it became "Pan of Fire" and whoever had to drink the middle thing had to drink from a pan. If that description means nothing to you you probably don't play Kings/aren't a stupid 20-something-year-old, so ignore).

Sunday I planned on relaxing, packing, finishing up plans for our trip and going to bed really early because we had to get up and meet at 4 a.m. to leave. Unfortunately, I got some terrible news from home about a friend who died in a car crash Saturday Night. Death is always terrible and shocking, but it hit me really hard being alone over here because I had no way to explain to anyone I was with just what I was feeling, no way to reminisce and remember, no way to break the dam of grief that was suddenly overwhelming me. Kevin was an amazing person who was best friends with some of the people I hold most dear in life, not to mention a lingering presence in my life for the past 9 years since I first decided that he would be my butterflies-in-the-stomach, giggle inducing, occasionally-cried-over crush for a year and a half. I've spent the last week thinking about a lot of difficult things: about those people who had made their way home to grieve together and share their pain; about someone I was amazingly close to once who I reached out to because I couldn't imagine his pain; about his younger sister who lost her older brother in the unimaginably tragic blink of an eye; about the importance of funerals and collective grief in the process of handling the impossible task of saying goodbye. Hearing that someone my age has died always has a tinge of the tragic and terrible; Kevin's situation feels too important to call merely tragic and terrible.

It was in this mindset of tears and sleeplessness that I set out for Prague at 4 a.m. on Monday, not sure how it would affect my trip. I'll write about my travels separately, trying not to focus solely on the sadness that hit me on waves as I was there. But when I returned Thursday night I returned knowing that the next day my parents would show up on the same day that everyone at home would be celebrating Kevin's life and mourning his death. I have heard now that the service was really nice and as his friends lit candles for him, I had my friends including my in their thoughts.

My thoughts and prayers remain with Kevin's family and with all those who were close to him. He was a flash of brilliance in all of our lives and was the sort of kind, warm and hilarious person who will leave a crater in the hearts of those who knew him. Rest in peace, KD, you will be sorely missed.

Soon to come, my recounting of a whirlwind trip through Prague, Vienna and, slightly by accident, Bratislava.

Belated Paris Pics

Oh hay there, Eiffel Tower

Jumping for joy outside the Louvre

 

 

With Madelaine outside the Moulin Rouge 

Please don't make me leave ever

It dawned on me today while I was shopping in Camden with Alex that in about 6 weeks I'm going to be heading home. I love home, I love Penn, I love my friends. But please, oh please, don't make me leave this city. I'm in love. Absolutely in love.

Paris and Halloween!!

After a rather taxing/unenjoyable mid-week last week involving broken phones, lost coats and not being able to get home from Central London at night, I took my weekend trip to Paris and it was absolutely amazing! I wasn't sure whether I should actually take one of my weekends to go to Paris since I've been before and have done a lot of the touristy things there, but I'm so glad I decided to go. Madelaine and I left on Thursday and took the Eurostar there. Such a good call because the train was so much easier and more relaxing than all of the hassle of planes. We got in with no hiccups Thursday night and made our way to our hotel which was right next to the Arc de Triomphe, definitely a great welcome to the fabulous city of Paris. We grabbed food, met up with Rachel Sax who is studying in Paris and had a relatively low-key, early night.

The next day we got a bbm from Amanda telling us to meet her at the Eiffel Tower. I think that's when it hit me that I was in Paris and could get texts saying 'Oh no big deal but let's meet at the Eiffel Tower in 30 minutes.' Around the Eiffel Tower there are all the men coming around trying to sell little piece of junk Eiffel Tower souvenirs and literally every single one of them comes up and goes "1 euro" and when you say no goes "5 for 1 euro, you want?" We were also repeatedly referred to as Gaga or sexy lady, or they'd follow up the rejection with "You're beautiful, 5 for 1 euro." Oh totally, I'm so sincerely flattered by your compliment that NOW I want not one but five small junk Eiffel Towers. It was an interesting first introduction to French men.

That day we tried to get our tourist on. We went up the Eiffel Tower, ate lunch in the area, went to the Louvre and then walked all the way up the Champs-Élysées, past the Obelisk and up to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a tiring day but it was so fun, and we had Amanda and Dara as company which was great. It worked out so perfectly that we all met up there. That night we met them by their hotel in Montmartre for an amazing French meal (real French onion soup and duck!). Then we got to go over to Sacre Couer and see the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. It was amazing and except for a few more encounters with wildly sketchy and creepy French men (boundaries apparently don't exist there?) we had such a great Parisian night. It was the kind of night we couldn't have had anywhere else, which is exactly the point of traveling here.

Saturday Madelaine and I hit up the Centre Pompidou which had amazing modern and contemporary art. I got way too excited about all the Kandinsky and my inner art nerd came out in a major way. I guess it was time, since the history nerd in me definitely came out in the Louvre, and it wouldn't be a trip without me turning into a nerd several times.

Then we met Rachel, Amanda and Dara and while Madelaine met her friend the four of us went to Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie and Notre Dame. The last time I did all of that was with Adrienne in 10th grade but I was so glad that I did it again. For one, Sainte-Chapelle is one of the most breathtaking places I've ever been and I had forgotten how ridiculous all the stained glass was. Also, the Conciergerie was definitely better having studied more of the French Revolution, although I definitely had to ask Amanda questions since I basically have forgotten everything I've ever learned since being here (I swear I do go to class...). And while we were at Notre Dame I had the same reaction I had to so many things in Paris-- "Guys, how the hell did they build this? Like, someone had to BUILD this!"

Saturday night was probably the funniest part of the trip because we met up with Amanda and Dara to go out and went over to Oberkampf to find random bars. The first plays we went was this random Tex-Mex place (in Paris?) that was serving mojitos and margaritas and was celebrating Dia de los Muertos. It was strange to say the least, but fun. It was so crowded that we left after only a little bit to find somewhere else. The next place we wound up at was the random bar, not super full but definitely had people who seemed to be enjoying themselves. When we went in we realized they were playing random American music (Elvis, Hendrix, that song 'Baby Love') and everyone was rockin out, swing dancing, grooving, etc to the music. It was hilarious and you would never have found somewhere quite like it. So we joined in, danced for a while and had an all around hilarious night. The only setback was having to wait for about an hour to find a cab, which was miserable. That and the fact that on the whole trip we didn't ever manage to succeed in stealing a Parisian child as a souvenir, which was the initial goal.

We finished up the trip meeting up with Alaina for lunch and came back in time to go out to Halloween. Apparently all the big student events are innapropriately named club parties, so we went to F*ck Me, It's Halloween at this club Debut and it was so fun. All the Penn kids from UCL were there so I ran into them which was really fun, and we were also with a big group of Goldsmith's kids. By the end I was covered in soap bubbles (they need to rethink their foam device-- I was soaped in the mouth so many times) and dancing to everything from Pon de Floor and Barbara Striesand by Duck Sauce (going out staples) to random 90's music. It was the kind of Halloween I doubt I could've had at home and I had an amazing time, so in the end I'll call it a success. Although I wont lie, seeing all my friends from Penn dressed up as those little troll dolls in nude leotards with crazy hair made me miss Penn just a little more.

So with all of that having happened, I'm going to call the last week a great week despite the broken phone, lost coat, etc. And that's saying something.