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.