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.