Midnight Rambler

Sergei Glebov, my Russian history professor at Smith who is himself Russian, scoffed when I told him I would be in London for a semester abroad. London, he claimed, was not abroad. Not for an American such as myself, with an interest in world history and culture that had pushed me to take two of his classes (one on the Empire, one on the USSR). How could England, parent of the US, be foreign to me?

And maybe he had a point. The US, or at least the part I grew up in, was directly influenced by the British and Anglo-Saxon evidence is present in many aspects. We share a language, a body of literature, a history and special relationship like with no other country. And yet.

Perhaps it’s because of the similarities, but in the UK I am very aware of a dissonance. Yes, I speak the language and understand many cultural references; however there is a different air in London than in New York. ’Well, obviously,’ you say. ‘Of course they’re wildly different.’ Except that it’s not wild. There are skyscrapers and old quarters, suburbs and parks, public transport and coffee shops just as in every city. But here and now in London I feel uncomfortable in my own skin in a way I never did the other times I was here.

The last two times I was in London, it was for only a month each, and maybe that wasn’t long enough. I find myself more and more feeling a strong urge to go somewhere more familiar. As the weeks go by this stops being a fun little vacation and becomes more a reality: I live here, for the time being, and adjusting to that is scary.

It’s the tiniest things. It’s in the more subdued air of the passerby on the street. The absence of sales tax. The differences in the cars, the vernacular, the coinage, the food brands—all of it adds up in little ways to remind me I’m somewhere different. And maybe it’s because the culture is otherwise so similar that the smaller differences stand out more. A kind of cultural Uncanny Valley, if you will.

I sit in my room and berate myself, ‘what would you be doing if you were in the US? the exact same thing you’re doing now, so there’s no point feeling homesick.’ But it’s not the actions, it’s the atmosphere, the very air of this city that impresses upon me that I am an outsider.

And it’s when I’m walking back from the library in the small hours of the morning that I feel it most, because this is a situation I so often found myself in at Smith—breathing the cold night air after a night of schoolwork en route to my room. And at Smith I had friends and a phone to call home with, a constant link to familiar things that would ground me. Here I have nothing except my own thoughts and the ambience of a land so similar and yet so, so different.

Please Hello, America Back

I did not plan on having an adventure today, but sometimes these things happen, you know?

I got off the tube at Oxford Circus, took a stroll down Regent Street and then I found a tourist map which kindly informed me the Mexican Embassy was in the vicinity. That's when the adventure started. It's the little indent up near Hanover Square.

No, Father, I did not go in to sign the guestbook.

Most of my adventures continue in the same fashion: I look down a street, see something interesting, and pursue. And I swear I did not mean to find the New Bond Street Victoria's Secret store, which is their UK flagship location, but I found it, because wherever I am a Victoria's Secret will appear.

After that it was just a slew of embassies left and right, because I kept seeing flags and thinking 'I wonder what that is!' I went down Brook Street in pursuit of what turned out to be Claridge's--

--and then not even two buildings down the block there was the Argentinian Embassy, and then Italy, and Monaco, and the British Virgin Islands, and Indonesia, and then--completely by accident!-- I found the United States of America.

It's a bad picture because it was very dramatically backlit by the setting sun.

Far be it from me to tell the State Department what to do with their property but this does seem a tad overkill. There was a statue of FDR, and one of Reagan, and one of Eisenhower! His had multiple flowers laid at the base. I guess the British like Ike.

Interestingly there are a number of buildings that fly foreign flags that don't actually seem to be embassies. Two buildings were flying very large Greek and Bahraini flags, respectively, but Google tells me the embassies of Greece and Bahrain are located elsewhere. Actually Google also tells me I narrowly missed the Serbian Embassy. Ah well. I suppose embassies just tend to clump near each other, maybe it's easier for the British government to keep track of?

In other news, I've spent no inconsiderable amount of time shopping recently. I had to return a super cute pair of heels because they were too big, but they were £24 and in their place I scored a £10 pair of jeans and a £14 pair of slightly-less-cute-but-properly-sized heels, so who's the real winner here? (It's me.) Lord, I thought jeans shopping was complicated in America.

I'll tell you about my adventure in Birmingham...eventually. I'll get to it, I promise.

The toenail hasn't fallen off yet, which is annoying because I would rather it just get the whole proccess moving and also I'm beginning to doubt it ever will, which will be doubly aggravating when it inevitably does. I also went out again with my flatmates and friends and managed to skin my knee something fierce, which is a step up on the Grace's-Drunken-Injury scale. A sad, pathetic step. Although I'm finally being a real person with a real social life and not sitting in my room all the time, just 80% of the time, so I think I still win. I had fun, anyway, and isn't that what really matters? (Yes.)

The social life, yes, that. Becky says I'm her favorite flatmate, except she was inebriated at the time and I assume this excludes Raj with whom she is practically conjoined at the hip, but it counts. Chris bugs me incessantly to come out with all them and sometimes it even works. I get along well with Myfi and Michael (who reminds me eerily of James Cranston from high school). We all sat in Becky's room and watched bad movies on Tuesday night. The weather is improving rapidly, it's mild and sunny more often than not and I've been in high spirits lately.

This may be soon to change, however, as the semester is wrapping up and coursework is beginning to pile up. Lots of essays that make up ridiculous portions of my grade. I think the British have bizarre standards because I've had at least two of my professors halt the lecture in order to go over essay structure, referencing, and just really basic writing mechanic stuff I learned in high school. They don't get much practice, I suppose, seeing as how we're only writing like two papers for each class. Over the entire semester. Bizarre.

What I'm saying is that I got a 69 on that architecture paper. That's a very good grade in this country. It's barely-passing in the US but it's really high here. Anything above like a 70 basically means the professor thinks you should be publishing.

This is a very strong and well-structured essay. The relationship you raise between the use of brick and ‘constructional polychromy’ as a characteristic of the Victorian Style is interesting, and your reading of it is very thorough. Your vivid account of the building contributes to the construction of your argument. One of the points in which it would have been nice to have a more in depth development, is in the comparison of the interior with the exterior, the plain brick against the painted tiles. It is very nicely written and rigorously referenced. Good use of sources. Well done!

BOOM. Grace takes London by storm. This is extra good because this class is counting towards my major at Smith.

I have exactly one final exam and it's on May 12. So I basically have from March 31 to early May to do whatever I want. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll conquer Latvia.

Mother demanded a picture of my toe.

This is from about a week ago.

And this is today.

Despite the lovely development in color it doesn't hurt at all anymore, basically, but it's gonna fall off pretty soon.

Hello. It's been a while.

I had the previous week off from classes, as it was "Reading Week"--allegedly a time to catch up on coursework and such. Of course I completely failed to take advantage of the opportunity to travel or anything and instead stayed on campus the whole time and wrote two papers that were due last night. As you do.

One paper did involve me visiting a structure in London to write about its building materials; I chose All Saints, Margaret Street, which is a church on Margaret Street, built in the 1850s by William Butterfield and famous for its decoration scheme.

 

These are bad pictures. It's much prettier than this.

Look at that. They just don't make 'em like that anymore. Of course they didn't make 'em like that back then, either. It was very controversial and critics called it the "Streaky Bacon Style." I know this because I had to do some research on it for the paper. I spent a lot of time in the library. It was a fun week.

I also got to write about Elizabethan Catholic martyrs for another class, which meant that I got to go to the big university library in Central London to get my books.

Senate House Library. Apparently the closest thing to fascist architecture in Britain.

The thing about Senate House Library is that it's right next to the British Museum. I did not go inside the museum, because I had something else on my mind.

So, okay. The first time I went to London in 2010, on that internship program, we stayed in the University of London dorms. I never made the connection between University of London and Queen Mary University of London until about last week.

Apparently I was within walking distance of the British Museum the entire time and had no idea. So that's exciting.

After visiting the library I did take the opportunity to wander back to my old haunts. I found the smoothie guy outside Russell Square tube station, just like he always was--but when I asked what kind of smoothies there were, he said he doesn't do those anymore. Just fruits and juices and whatever. I had a strange sense that the world had moved on without me.

pictured: the world moving on without me.

This was all right around Valentine's Day. Now, on Valentine's Day, I decided to leave my cocoon and go clubbing with my flatmates. That was all very fun and I don't regret it but the important bit is that at some point during the night I slammed my foot against the curb. When I woke up my toenail was purple and apparently I can expect the nail to fall off sometime in the coming weeks.

In Chinatown, which is near Leicester Square, you can buy socks with Korean pop stars on them.

SHINee is a very popular K-pop group. And now you can have them on your feet.

We Need To Talk About Fire Alarms.

I asked several people, online and off, what I should expect from living in Pooley. Not one of them mentioned the fire alarm.

It's an infernal device which activates with an loud, continuous whine that burrows into your eardrums and sends shivers up your spine. It's gone off several times since I've been here; on each occasion, the entire building has to evacuate (they send someone around with a clipboard taking down names--I don't see the point of this, as someone could just be out at that particular moment). When that happens, we stand outside until a fire truck arrives, a troop of firefighters inspects the flat which instigated the alarm, the all-clear is given, the alarm is deactivated, and we file back inside. A thoroughly annoying but ultimately harmless process. Never more than 20 minutes.

This was not the case at 3:58 on Monday morning.

I was watching the Super Bowl, you see, which was a painful experience in itself, but it resulted in my only just having laid down in my bed and turned off the lights when a loud beeping filled my room and every other room.

Dear God, no, thought I.

I stayed still for a moment, staring at the ceiling and contemplating my life, before laboriously putting on pants, slippers and my coat, and trooping outside with the rest of the building.

The only saving grace was the weather, which thankfully was mild if somewhat chilly. It became soon clear that this was no normal alarm--no misguided stoner, no incompetent chef. Because the whine which signaled a normal alarm was instead that constant beeping, and also the firefighters had left the scene shortly after arriving and we were not permitted back indoors, and there was nobody taking names.

Rumors spread that the mechanism by which to disable the alarm was malfunctioning, rumors which were soon proven accurate.

"You can go inside," they said, "and we'll try to get it off as soon as we can, but no promises."

It was 4:56.

Armed with headphones and playing my music at a volume entirely unconducive to sleep I did indeed crawl back into the bed I had never settled into, and it was at 5:02 that the hellish noise finally ceased and peace was restored.

Well. At least they were quick about it.

Culture!

So Gayle was like "I want to see a different museum every week" and invited me along, and that's why I was at the Tate Modern today.

No.

It was pretty fun, there was lots of snarky commentary and sheer disbelief, but also some nice things. Like Pollocks and Picassos.

She's really nice and I think I'll try to hang out with her a lot because she's interested in traveling and seeing stuff as well.

Everyone's pretty nice so far. I do get along with my flatmates but I don't see them very often because everyone sort of does their own thing. But twice now when they've been planning to go out, I've joined them in pregaming with card games and alcohol, which is lots of fun.

Also I got a phone. Nothing huge, just to text and in case something goes horribly wrong.

It's a little flip phone with no camera, no internet and a pink back. I feel so 2004.

I got it at the O2 store in the Westfield, which is a big mall one Tube stop down in Stratford, which is also right next to the Olympic Park (so I'll be checking that out eventually). I'd been to the mall once before, my second weekend, but I was still pretty timid so I didn't really explore very much, but when I went back on Tuesday it looked much more inviting and I'll probably go on a big shopping trip sometime this week.

The Starbucks has a wall of cups signed by Olympic athletes that got drinks there. It was cool. A lot of people from Canada and Australia and Japan, and of course dozens of British athletes.

It's so awful here. Like I know it's not snowing and I should be glad, but I'm not, because with snow at least there's something pretty to look at, whereas here I wake up and I see another grey sky, and most or the brick buildings I see from my window are brown or this absolutely gross yellow, and I believe the entirety of Britain is covered in a thin layer of moss.

Awful.

Tomorrow's the big Chinese New Year celebrations so I think I'll wander in the general vicinity of Chinatown (it's near Leicester Square) and see what's what. If the weather's not too awful, that is.

An Adventure

Occasionally I like to go on adventures, which involve going to a place and walking around and seeing what happens. That's my definition of an adventure.

On...sometime last weekend, I went on an adventure through Central London. The first job was getting there, because I got on the Tube and then the train I was on wouldn't move, because the Central Line was being held for some reason or other, so I hopped off and got on the District Line. When I got on the Central Line I had absolutely no idea where I was going, because that line honestly does not go to very many interesting places, but the District Line does.

So I got off the Tube at Westminster, which was packed, and decided that I wanted to wander up by Trafalgar Square.

Did you know that the Houses of Parliament has a gift store? I do now.

Getting there means walking up Whitehall, which is where Downing Street is and also various War Memorials, statues to various generals and earls and also Monty, and the Horseguards Parade.

The sign says "Beware: Horses may kick or bite."

So I made it to Trafalgar Square but then I was like "nah" so I veered off down the Mall and headed in that direction. 

You can't swing a cat in Central London without finding a statue.

That's George VI and Queen Elizabeth, by the way.

There were tourists, because of course there were (strangely, I do not consider myself a tourist in London), and what is at the end of the Mall but the Palace!

I saw no royals.

Forming a vague plan in my head, I cut through Green Park and made my way up Picadilly. It's the area I worked in back in 2010, so it was a lovely walk of 'oh that store's still there!'

There's a little church on the street which has a courtyard of sorts and there was something of a fair happening.

And I was like 'okay.' So I browsed. And there was a Russian woman operating one stall, selling hats and matryoshka dolls and various Soviet coinage, and also a selection of pins from the 1980 Olympics.

I bought the gymnastics one, obviously.

And then I hit Picadilly Circus, and I was thinking it might be time to head back, because Picadilly Circus is nice and all but it was getting dark, so I looped back around towards Trafalgar Square.

On my way, and quite by accident, I ran into the embassies of Kazakhstan and Brazil, which are right next to each other. Earlier I had passed by that of Malta. Now I happen to know something about Trafalgar Square, which is that the embassies of Canada and South Africa are located there.

So one might say I now have a goal of sorts: find as many London embassies as I can. It's a strange ambition, but I never claimed to be traditional.

Classes are going fine. There's a teachers' strike going on, which is exciting because we keep getting emails about it. It's scheduled at very strange times, only for a few hours each day for only three specific days, apparently to disrupt the campus as much as possible. It only affects one of my class times, however, and the teacher of that class is not a member of the union, so she said she will be teaching but we are not obligated to come to that particular lecture. Unfortunately I'm part of a presenting group that day so I do have to go.

Everyone smokes in London, I'm going to come home with secondhand lung disease. They make up for it with their excellent sandwiches. I love sandwiches.

"bits" is British for "pulp." Why?

I MADE DINNER

Dinner that required more active participation than pasta, that is.

See, I was out shopping for edibles and I was like, "I'm gonna make something good, that actually counts as cooking, and has something besides carbs in it." So I sashayed down the World Foods aisle, and stumbled across this gem.

"Aha," thought I, "that seems like a good idea. Now I need meat." And so I found meat--diced beef, to be precise, and I also picked up some rice to go with my beef curry concoction.

Fast forward to Tuesday night and it is time to eat. I was in a good mood; my classes had gone well and I had the next day off. A cooking adventure seemed appropriate.

I timed everything out! Boil the rice as I brown the beef, then add the sauce and cover the rice and let them simmer for--conveniently--15 minutes.

It was terrifying.

I probably put in too much oil and I wasn't sure if the rice was doing okay, but I kept going, and lo! Food.

The beef was a little tough, but overall quite satisfactory. And I suppose the three jalapenos on the bottle should have warned me, but it was spicy. Very much so.

Probably made too much rice. But! There are leftovers! I have secured at least one more semi-nutritious meal for my near future.

I feel very accomplished.

I've had at least two more adventures that I'll eventually write up, I promise, and also a new goal. Stay tuned.

It rains a lot, here.

When I was in middle school, I think, I read a short story. It was about a colony on Venus, where it rained constantly in seven-year cycles. Every seven years the rain would stop and the sun would come out for about an hour, after which it would begin raining again.

(a quick foray into Google tells me the story was "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury.)

The focus of the story is a class of young schoolchildren; Margot and her family moved to Venus from Earth and she remembers sunshine. She gets bullied by the class a lot, and on the day when everyone is waiting in the classroom for the rain to finally stop, the class is messing with Margot and she gets locked in the closet. The teacher comes to lead the class outside, and the sun comes out, and they spend the hour running around and playing and generally loving life and having a great time. Then the clouds come back, and the first raindrops fall, and they all get shepherded back inside--where someone finally remembers Margot, and they quickly and ashamedly free her from the closet, where she spent the entire hour and never got to see the sun.

Anyway, sometimes I'm reminded of that story.

Lectures, Pasta and How Technology is Ruining the World

Well, I'm bad at this blogging thing.

So this was my first week of classes! Classes here are typically split up into halves as "lectures" and "seminars," lectures being exactly what they sound like and seminars being when the class splits into groups to discuss the lecture material.

• Mondays at 1pm: Architecture of London 1838-Present

This should be a pretty cool one. Every other week will be a site visit rather than a classroom meeting, so we had our first meeting on Monday and then this coming week we'll be meeting at the Royal Courts of Justice to discuss that building. Should be fun.

The professor seems like she means business and the lectures should be informative. The first seminar meeting was really dumb, only two people had done the assigned reading (one of those people was me) and I'm one of the only people in the group with a background in art, everyone else seems to have it as an elective. They've also put all the Americans in one seminar group, I don't know why they've done that, as the entire group is Americans and one Dominican girl. I hope it gets better with time but the seminar did not look promising.

• Tuesdays at 10:30: Catholics and English Politics 1558-1603

This class is going to be fun, or at least very interesting. I came out of it feeling pretty good about everything. I established myself in the seminar as one of the primary talkers, it was me and this British guy Luke having most of the discussion with the professor. Unlike the other class this one is primarily British students with a historical focus; in the British university system, you declare your major before entering and then spend three years studying that topic exclusively. The foreign students are likely to be the only ones in any given class who aren't majoring in that department.

Anyway the discussion was interesting and I really expect to like this one.

• Tuesdays at 2:00: The Spanish Inquisition

This is going to be difficult because the professor speaks in a heavy Spanish accent. Interesting material, yes, but difficult lectures. This class also does not have a seminar section.

My Tuesdays will be filled with Catholics...

• No class on Wednesdays! What am I to do with all this free time?

• Thursdays at 9:00: Art in France- Manet to Early Picasso

It feels good to be taking a specialized art course. The professor for this one is young and cool and it looks like it'll be a really good class, all about modernism (which is not the same thing as modern art!) in late 19th- and early 20th-century French painting. Manet and Matisse and all that.

• And no class on Friday.

On Monday night, to celebrate classes starting, I made food! My first food. It was very exciting.

They've got this store called Asda, which is apparently owned by Wal-Mart. The one nearest to me--which is where I acquired my pasta and cooking implements and such--is more of a gigantic grocery store than a full-blown Wal-Mart. I've figured out a pretty solid way of feeding myself, which is basically pasta and sandwiches and soup and occasionally something else. Eventually I do plan to foray into meat so that I can make a chicken Caesar salad.

I have now met the entire flat; Ollie is a very nice British guy, Gale is a very nice American student, and Chris apparently doesn't actually live here, he just hangs out a lot because he's Becky's boyfriend.

Last night we all went out!! How exciting. There is a nice pub a few minutes down the road that me and Ali and Zamon and Gale and Becky and Raj went to.

pictured: a literal bottle of hooch.

I have tickets to go to a Maroon 5 concert tomorrow night, so during the day I plan to go shopping. I was going to do that today, but I've developed this problem of sleeping until 3pm on days I don't have class. I don't know why, and I haven't been staying up very late, and it shouldn't be jet lag at this point, but it's happening. Never noon or 2:30, always after 3. Very strange.

Now let me tell you a story about how I lost my damn mind in the grocery store.

what the hell?

So one of the big supermarket chains is Sainsbury's. They, like many big supermarkets in American, have the self checkout option. Let me tell you, there is nothing self about Sainsbury's self checkout. You have to get store approval for just about everything (ibuprofen, kitchen knives, etc), and when the machine wants store approval it halts the process until you flag down an attendant to okay your purchase. And then, once you get store approval, sometimes it freaks out when you try to bag an item, all "unapproved item in the bagging area" and you have to remove the offending item (a kitchen knife) so that it will let you finish your scanning, and you're basically not allowed to bag it. Even though you got approval.

And then it doesn't like my card, because in the UK my card always needs to be scanned by the cashier instead of swiped because it's different. The machine is incapable of scanning the card and requesting a signature, even though there's a scan-thing and an electronic signature pad right there, so I was swiping and swiping and it wasn't reading. "You are taking too long, do you still want to continue with this purchase?" yes you dumb robot, I am not the one making mistakes here. All the problems are on your end. Eventually I decided that the best thing to do was to cancel the transaction and go to a manned checkout line. But hey--you need store approval to cancel the transaction. 

Of course.

The Room, Orientation and The Flatmates

The room is nice enough. It has space, it's clean, the bed is comfortable. There's no dresser, just a standing wardrobe, so I have to figure out how to organize my clothes in there. The view's not so great--I'm facing another residence hall and I can see their windows and they can see mine, but that's what curtains are for.

The bathroom...it's ensuite, which is nice, so I don't have to worry about people judging my bathroom habits. There's no garbage can, only the one by my desk, and I kind of need one of those for the bathroom. There's a little ledge behind the toilet to put things on, but no outlet, which means my toothbrush is plugged in at my desk. Lame.

The shower is that corner, which is blocked off by a curtain, and the little drain in the floor. I'll need some sort of caddy to stick on the wall because there's nothing that can hold my stuff. I've taken a shower in it and it's got one of those really annoying showerheads that shoots out water in a circle that spreads out so you can stand in the middle and not get watered on. You know those things? I hate them. Also no water pressure to speak of, but whatever.

Orientation was on Friday morning, bright and early at 11AM. That was in a big lecture hall that was absolutely packed. Lots of sitting and listening to people talk at us about things. The most interesting presentation by far was from the chaplaincy, which is one woman who is very funny and has an inflatable remote-control Dalek.

When we broke for lunch, the sun was gone and it was pouring and horribly windy. I bought a sandwich from the campus shop and picked up some soap, a mug, a few essentials for my room. The second half of orientation involved talking about our classes, for which we officially enroll on Monday.

The rest of the day, and most of Saturday, was just going around...shopping for things I need in my room and stuff to eat...I still haven't yet figured out a long-term plan for feeding myself that doesn't rely on microwaved stuff.

Speaking of food, the kitchen. I ventured forth today to make dinner--I'd had plans for today, but accidentally slept way late, so didn't leave my room until dinnertime--and encountered the people I live with. Most of them had only just arrived today, as classes start tomorrow; they brought us in early to get us used to London, but most of campus has been closed the whole time. The people are:

• Becky, blonde and British and very sweet
• Raj, Indian and British and also very sweet
• Chris, British and funny
• Ali, who is Iranian-American and I have a very hard time understanding a lot of what he says
• Zamon, who is from L.A. and very cool
• Ollie, who I have not met
• Gale, who I have not met

They're all very cool. Chris has stated his intentions to bring us all out drinking on January 31, which is apparently a day people go out drinking here. Eventually they will realize that I am not cool. Or maybe they've realized that already. We'll see how long the facade lasts.

They're all watching Sherlock right now, because the second episode of the third season is airing tonight. I was invited to join but I declined, because I haven't seen the first episode and also we talked for like 2 hours and I needed to retreat. Becky let me borrow her nail polish so I at least won't have bare nails on the first day of class. Which is tomorrow.

I need a topcoat...I'm currently in this dilemma of "I need thing." "But Grace try to be careful with your money do you really need thing." "I am going to be here for 5 months I am allowed to buy whatever will make this place feel comfortable." "But you will be leaving after that and you can't take everything with you." There are no easy answers.

This is a British squirrel I saw on the walking tour.

This was the tour guide. I've forgotten his name but he was cuter in person.

This is a British pigeon.

The Arrival (part 2)

Our intrepid heroine made it through Immigration without a hitch; I presented my papers, told them the details of my study program, and was stamped through. The luggage was among the first to come out; at this point I realized I had been deceived. We were told to meet the group in Terminal 3 and I was in Terminal 1, but we had been given the impression that it was a quick and easy walk. It wasn't, it was a long meandering walk through hallways and up ramps and I had my luggage. Ugh.

Anyway, the group was found, the bus was boarded, the drive was made. It was a scenic drive through Central London along the river. We are not in Central London, however, we are in the East End.

The East End is traditionally the arrival point for immigration in London. Also, one of the poorer parts of the city, although we're constantly told it's on the up and up.

Queen Mary is one of the very few campus-based universities of London. I live in Pooley House, the largest residence hall and I think one of the newer ones.

I'm at the far end of the building from that picture, though. They don't take pictures of that end because it doesn't look as cool.

There's a story behind the bedding. Okay, so when we were getting set up with registration, one of the girls working was like "oh, go to this store, it has good supplies for cheap" and I promptly forgot the name of the place, but figured it couldn't be that far and I knew what street it was on. Come nightfall and I go on my expedition, but I don't know the place, so I walked about twenty minutes in one direction and couldn't find it. Walked back, went the other way, still couldn't find it. By this point it's raining. And I couldn't look it up, because there was no wi-fi, because companies still want you to sign up with them if you want their wi-fi even though it's 2014 and why is that still a thing.

The only place I did have internet was on campus, so I looped back, looked up 'places to get bedding' on my phone, and recognized the name of the place the girl had mentioned--Argos. It was twice as far as I'd gone originally. So I went off once more, found the damn place, bought the bedding, caught a bus back to campus and finally, 30 hours after waking up in NY on Wednesday morning, I went to bed at 9PM Thursday night.