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.

The Arrival (part 1)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a college student in possession of good opportunity must be in want of a semester abroad.

I'm sorry, I was trying to be clever. That isn't the case at all. And yet there I was on January 1 at JFK International Airport, sitting on a plane to London via Iceland.

Sitting, yes, because we had not left the gate over an hour after the scheduled departure time. An alleged problem with the baggage loading equipment. What a promising start to the already terrifying prospect of five months abroad.

Originally I had been assigned a window seat; upon boarding, however, the flight attendant asked me if I wouldn't mind moving one row up and to the aisle seat. I don't know why, and nobody ever came to take my abandoned seat. Instead I was placed next to an Icelandic woman and her young daughter. Everyone on the plane was Icelandic; I would guess about two-thirds Icelanders and one-third other travelers using Reykjavik as a connection, like me.

Icelandair is awesome. When we boarded they were playing Christmas carols in Icelandic, all the signage was bilingual and one of the inflight movie options was a documentary about how unique and interesting the country is. We were told the plane was named after a volcano.

Luckily I was scheduled for a 2.5-hour layover, so the delay didn't affect me much. On the flight I watched The Departed (2006), which I had wanted to see for a while. Great movie. Mostly everyone slept around me; I didn't sleep in any significant amount, if at all. Nor did I eat or drink, because I didn't know what was free and I was too scared to ask.

Transferring in Reykjavik was as simple as it could have been; a nice small airport, easy to navigate. I arrived at my gate with time to spare. While boarding, I was once again presented with a plane named for a volcano, this one somewhat more famous.

Again, there was a problem with my seating assignment--this time, the seat was apparently broken and unable to be sat in. So I stood off to the side as everyone else boarded, and was placed in an empty seat, which happened to be in first class. Or, as it's known on Icelandair, "Saga" class.

It even came with breakfast!

What a country.

Leaving Iceland, it was 9AM and the sky was just barely beginning to lighten. The flight to Heathrow was uneventful; once again I got no sleep. We landed on schedule at noon, local time; it was now 7AM in my head. Seated as I was, I got off the plane very quickly and made my way to Immigration.