Homework

For my writing London class, we've had to observe one person on the tube, and determine four items that sum them up as a person. I did that, and then I basically did a character sketch of the people I was observing (I did two. I know; I'm an overachiever). Anyway, I figured I might as well post the sketches on here, just in case anybody finds them interesting, or entertaining. The first is an older (late 60's) woman, and the second is a young man (late teens, maybe early twenties, hard to estimate). Keep in mind these are based on a few minutes of observation and probably have not much basis in reality, if any. If you're interested in the exercise, it's something you can do on nearly any mode of public transportation, or really in any public space. It's good for helping you create characters. Here goes:

Old Lady

She hadn’t given up yet, at least not entirely. That much was obvious from the painfully overbright coral lipstick smeared across her thin toad-like mouth and the grey-blue eyeshadow smudged onto her eyelids.

She hadn’t given up entirely, but she was close, said the gym shoes on her feet. She used to wear heels, used to look smart, used to try. Now the sneakers, veined with blue-grey plastic, speak of comfort and sit mildly beneath the awkwardly fitting black pants. Once upon a time, they may even have been nice pants. Now they stretch and groan in an attempt to cover a bottom grown large and indulgent in its age, expanding to an impressive mass.

Above, a starkly beige jacket (nearly as beige as the rest of her) contrasts with the fuzzy black scarf. It’s not really the kind of scarf you buy for comfort, not with those silvery spangles in it.
‘They must itch something terrible,’ I think, watching her.

‘Look at ME!’ the scarf shouts at the top of its lungs. ‘I’m pretty!’

That scarf is a teenage girl at her first party, wearing far too much makeup, with her clothing way too tight, trying too hard to be pretty, without actually knowing she is.

It’s a scarf completely out of place on a woman of her advanced years (but I’m not going to tell her so), and it looks particularly odd against the jowls of her neck, which has long ceased to be a neck. It is now rather a resting place for the jowls she seems to have collected over the years, which droop like pale echoes beneath her overpainted lips.

Her hair shows a clear attempt at fashion, or perhaps simply the aftereffects of a long-ago attempt. Frizzing around her face in a sort of sad halo, it has been teased, dyed, blowdried and fluffed so many times that the colour is now nearly unrecognizable, and it resembles nothing more than an unusual variety of sponge, perhaps one yet to be discovered along the bottom of some foreign ocean.

Above a flattish nose, her eyes, set in a rotund face, begin to close, and her head, with its discoloured, overteased hair, begins to tilt towards the plastic partition, resting there, carelessly, while her small hands grip a diminutive black, metal-studded bag, protective of her possessions even in rest.

They say there’s no rest for the wicked. Perhaps she wishes she was more wicked in her youth, because there’s certainly no rest for the aged.

At home, her bed is soft, comfortable and happy, with its yellow sunflower pattern on cotton, with oversized pillows and a thick comforter. But she gets no sleep, old bones aching, weighed down by the mass of her limbs and that nice, warm comforter makes her sweat, waking her in the middle of the night, flooded with her own heat.

So once again, she finds herself drowsing on the train, clutching her little black bag against her knee.

Young man

Nearly everything in his appearance speaks of someone who doesn’t care. The first thing you will notice while looking at him are his hands, which seem to have gone unwashed for so long that they seem to have developed a grayish film, with inattention extended to the overlong fingernails, complete with dirt underneath.

I imagine that he works with cars, maybe that’s why his hands are so begrimed. Somehow the dirt is more acceptable if it comes attached to a profession, if there’s some reason for it. But I think that says more about me than about him.

I fancy that he plays guitar and that’s why his nails are so long, because I need a reason to excuse it with. I can’t respect people who don’t take care of themselves out of a simple lack of will.

His boots are well-worn and slightly caked with dirt. He’s not the sort of person who worries about appearance or seems concerned about anything other than comfort. They’re not fancy boots; more the kind you’d see on a construction site than in an office. His jacket speaks of utilitarianism, too. A dark and weathered navy blue, covered with zippered pockets (I don’t want to know what’s in there), puffy enough to be warm but not puffy enough to get in the way.

I doubt he’s put as much thought into his jacket as I have looking at it, and maybe he’s put no thought at all into it, as he looks young enough for someone else to have purchased it for him.

Slightly greasy hair falling in front of his eyes, and an acne-riddled face once again tell the tale of owner’s neglect.

I wonder if he has anyone who cares about him, and he probably does, but it doesn’t matter. He’s sucked into the game he’s playing; utterly absorbed by the itty-bitty box between his grimy hands, and I can see that he lives the rest of his life the same way. His dark, untrimmed hair hangs in a curtain, separating him from the rest of his life.

He spends all his life sucked unto little boxes. While I’m sure he has someone who cares about him, I’m also pretty sure there isn’t anyone he cares about. I don’t think he cares about himself, and that makes it damn near impossible to care about anyone else.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that he’s breaking someone’s heart, but he doesn’t know it. Maybe he’ll learn someday, and maybe by then, it’ll be too late.

Ode to the Internship Toolkit

The internship toolkit is an innovative new class (that only started this year) which we are forced to do in addition to our internships, where we sit in a classroom for two hours (in addition to three hours of independent study) and listen to an instructor babble about completely obvious and useless things. Today for example, she talked at us about Personal Development Plans (which are exactly what they sound like, and yet required half-an-hour of lecture), how to look up the documents (time sheets, etcetera) on the school website (that took another twenty minutes or so) and how to fill out answers on a worksheet (one which won't be due for another five weeks) among other such delightful, and equally complicated subjects. This is my little ode to the toolkit module (which I actually wrote during the internship module, so mentally occupied was I with the classwork). I know I'm a horrible poet, but I still hope you enjoy my little ode to the suffering that is the toolkit module.


I'm sorry but
Do I look stupid to you?
While you've been yammering
My arse has turned to glue
My poor bleeding brain
You've turned into mush
With your bleatin' and hammerin'
I can't feel my tush

I feel like an idiot
Thanks to your stupid speech
I wish you'd shut up
But you just preach and preach
You say things so useless
I just want to scream
But you just keep going
Your words they just stream
An endless, unneeded procession of words
My strenuous protests remaining unheard

You treat me like my head's full of rocks
Like we're blithering idiots
No more brains than a sock
I wish you'd shut up
But you never do
And like a schmuck
I just wait till you're through
I hope that you've finally
Achieved what you saught
Because the class is over
And my brain's turned to rot.

Sunday Tea

Yesterday I went to Sunday Tea, and by 'went to Sunday Tea,' I mean, attempted to go to Sunday Tea, resulting in arriving just in time to snatch some sandwiches from the tray before everyone left.

I attempted to catch central line train only to find that central line wasn't running properly, and then attempted to catch circle line train only get on the wrong train and then discover that the circle was not running because of some sort of technical failure. This was followed by a search for an appropriate bus, getting on the wrong, and then getting on the right bus, which took us to King's Cross, where we hopped a train to Charing Cross, where I got more lost and arrived at the restaurant an hour late. There were some cucumber sandwiches and some salmon sandwiches left (both of which were quite good) but no sweets. Bottom line here: plan your trip ahead of time, and make sure the lines you need are running, or you won't get any dessert. Other than that, I quite recommend Sunday tea, you know, as long as you're on time for it.

Short Story

Hey guys,

This is one I've only started tonight, and as a result, I'm not very far into it, only about two pages. I do have plans for where it's going to go from here, so I'm not looking for suggestions. Actually, I might even add more tonight, but I have come to a point where I think it's reasonable to pause. It was inspired partially by a bus ride today, and a tree that I saw through the window. It was also partially inspired by Neverwhere (the book, not the graphic novel. I don't do graphic novels). Anyway, let me know what you think, and if you guys feel it's an enterprise worth continuing with. Also, keep in mind that this is simply a very unedited beginning and that there will be more later.

- Lena

The seats on the bus were more comfortable than the ones in Chicago, if only marginally so, but she didn’t feel comfortable in them. As she made her way up the narrow winding stairs of the double-decker bus they glared at her with their garish purple brightness. Probably some designer had wanted to make the seats look happier, more welcoming, she thought, but on this dingy January night, they only looked sad and forlorn, the way a Santa suit would look when it’s been worn too many times, or maybe the way your favorite childhood teddy bear looks when you’re thirty.

But she sat anyway, because, while the idea of riding on a London double-decker bus seems wildly appealing at first, no one tells you what a pain-in-the-ass it is to get up those stairs while the thing is moving. Sitting down, she felt her body relax into the seat, let the tiredness melt through her bones, and tried not to think of the hundreds of other people who’d sat in that very same seat before her, or of their germs.

Listening to the words flowing around her, she caught a few snippets of conversation, some in English, commuters heading home for the day, others in languages she couldn’t begin to comprehend. She caught bits of laughter, and thought to herself, ‘Why does laughter in a language you don’t understand always feel so much more derisive?’

Lyssa closed her eyes for a moment, trying to still the voices, and soon they faded to a jumbled roar inside her head, a roar so much easier to ignore than the laughter. Feeling tears build behind her eyes, she opened them, blinking surreptitiously to avoid any excessive displays of emotion. And the first thing she saw when she finally opened them was a skeleton.

The bare tree stood just outside the window, naked limbs and bony fingers reaching for the sky.
Lit by the yellow light of the lamp post, it looked eerily like the massive skeleton of some creature whose spirit had departed long ago, or perhaps like an abandoned spiderweb. A rustle of paper brought her back to reality as she looked sullenly downward, at the bags sitting heavily by her feet, jammed to overflowing with cotton and polyester, creaking leather boots waiting to be broken in, and ballet flats of dubious quality. She anticipated dragging them home from the bus with some dread, knowing that the four-flight trip up the stairs to her room would be less than pleasurable. But looking down just then, the bags felt empty. There wasn’t anything in them that truly mattered; just material, cloth that would be in a dumpster or decorating a consignment shop hanger a year from now.

She’d been up and down Oxford Street all day, meandering into stores hung with banners that declared “SALE 70% OFF!!!!,” and trying not to get crushed in the crowd. Now she was finally on her way home, and the darkness that fell early during the winter seemed haunted somehow.

This was not the London she’d come to see. She remembered staying up late, reading guidebooks until the sun rose. She remembered dreaming of the Tower. She’d marveled at its history, the millennia-old complex that had stood guard over London since the time when it was only a Roman trading outpost, since 64 a.d. She’d wanted to see the place that had so much of London wrapped up in it, that held the ghosts of history, that had housed royals and been the home of hope and tragedy. And instead she’d only encountered a centuries-old tourist trap, where silly Americans bought over-priced souvenirs and went to look at the collection of shiny rocks that was the crown jewels. Anger coloured her cheeks as she thought about it. Didn’t they know that there was so much more? She’d come for the history, to see the bones of a city that had existed for thousands of years, to feel small in the presence of something great. And she’d come to find …. something, although she didn’t quite know what it was yet.

So far, the London she’d seen had been one hopelessly shrouded in tourism, one that held only shiny baubles for the easily distracted, but she couldn’t help hoping that all the glitter hid a soul.

Looking up, she saw that she was still quite a few blocks away from her destination, and feeling the tiredness of her day wash over her again, she leaned back, placing her head against the hard plastic of the headrest and closed her eyes for a moment.

And upon opening them, realized she was in darkness. Sitting up, dread filled her as she sensed the kinks in her neck and back. She’d only closed her eyes for a moment, but the pains told her she’d been asleep for hours. Panic trickled down her spine like cold water, and her breathing came fast and shallow as she realized that she’d not only overslept her stop, but that she was entirely alone on the bus. The comforting breathing of the slightly portly man beside her was gone, as was the derisive laughter and the conversation. The air was still and dark, and the only sound she could hear was that of her own breathing, loud and ragged in the silence. Briefly, she noticed that she no longer had her shopping bags with her, but this worried her much less than the fact that she didn’t have the slightest clue where she was. Rising from the seat, with the accompanying pains of her legs having fallen asleep and the kinks in back, she grabbed her purse and stumbled down the bus’s staircase, falling outward onto the street. The streetlights were, oddly, unlit, but the moon presented a buttery glow, so she had enough light to see the abandoned street.

Her lungs filled with panic once more as she realized that the street, like the bus, was completely empty, with not a soul in sight. Leaning against the cold stone of a nearby building, she allowed it to support her as her knees collapsed and the tears began to flow down her face.

After a few minutes of crying, sense returned to her, and, of course, sensation finally returned to her legs, allowing her to stand and move on. She had, by this point, realized that she needed to find a way home, or find someone who could help her get home, and that leaning against a cold building in the dark wasn’t a particularly practical way to do this. Taking one last deep breath, straightening her clothes, which had been somewhat disarrayed in the stumble, and settling her purse across her shoulders, she set off down the street, and tried to look confident, for all she hoped that there wasn’t anyone watching.

New love

I have recently discoverd Primark. I love Primark, and it loves me. My new love and I will soon elope to Jamaica, and live in bliss forever.

But seriously, it is a great store. They've got everything you could possibly need, and it's cheaper than you could possibly imagine. If you need any staples of clothing or housewares over here, then Primark is the place to go. That being said, be prepared for the crowds. It is always pretty crowded, no matter when you go, and, of course, packed with tourists, because schmucks like me recommended it to their friends.

The bottom line is, if you do want that adorable little t-shirt with the ruffles, or are just dying to buy a sweater and don't feel like spending 20 pounds, Primark is the place to go (although you might have to kick that old lady standing in front of you to get it).

The Rain: the good, the bad and the shivering wet

I bought an umbrella today. It's a pretty one, star-spangled (and no, that's not an American flag reference, it just happens to have multi-coloured stars), but it is a day too late.

Just yesterday, sloshing my way through the rain, bitterly contemplating my wet socks and my drowned-rat hair, I knew that this downpour was my punishment for not bringing an umbrella in this, the rainiest of countries. And now I know better.

Arriving at the tube station, I purchased a pasty (that's pass-tee, by the way) and the trials and tribulations of the weather were duly forgotten.

So here's the truth: yeah, it rains a lot, but not in the way that you would expect. It never rains all day (at least not in my experience). And when the sun comes out after a rain shower, it makes the puddles sparkle, and you appreciate the sun as you never would on a truly sunny day.

But bring an umbrella anyway. I've heard people that God is in the rain, but I think that it's only if He's peeing. Just joking.

Americana

Today I saw a little boy on the underground wearing Spiderman sneakers. Little things like that remind me that no matter where I am, some things always remain the same. Like little boys in Spiderman sneakers, the smell inside of a toilet, couples holding hands on the subway (underground) or the way you feel tired at the end of the day.

That being said, I have been unusually American for the past couple of days. I must say, I was never so American while in America, but I guess I carry it around, like an kleenex in my pocket, or maybe a movie ticket stub for a movie you've seen months ago. Yesterday on the underground, I gave a little girl a biscuit (cookie, for those who don't speak British), which is something discinctly non-British, and something I probably wouldn't have done at home. Today at the bookstore (Borders, by the way), I was waiting to ask an employee a question (yes, me), when I heard that the man in line in front of me was having trouble choosing a gift. As I cut into the conversation to see if I could help, the man turned to me and said, "You must be American."

My eyes widened as I innocently asked why, and he explained that a British person would never have done that. As I was discreetly (yeah, right) making my purchase, I had to ask the check-out whether or not the DVD I was considering would play on an American DVD player. As she finished ringing me out, I joked, "It must be painfully obvious that I'm an American, right?"

And then I quickly hightailed it out of the store as she looked at me like a deer in headlights.

The bottom line here is, that no matter how cultured, or individual, or un-(insert rude stereotype here)-American you believe you are, you will inevitably have moments when you feel (and look) like a stupid American tourist, like when you're snapping pictures in front of the Tower of London (on Sunday), or when you have to ask for directions four separate times just to find the tube stop (this morning), and you, like me, are going to have to deal with it.

Weekend Update

Ok, so I haven't been updating quite as regularly as some people think I should, so I thought I'd just post a little something.

If you've never been to Stonehenge, I'd recommend going before they put up the observatory that they're planning. As it stands, you can't actually touch Stonehenge (well, maybe you can, depending on how fast you can run and touch the stones before the guards get to you and drag you away, but I certainly wouldn't suggest it). Stonehenge, in itself, is quite lovely. The enormous blue stones (which actually look a bit smaller in person), are surrounded by miles and miles of countryside. Aside from the small path (and various other bits and pieces that accompany a tourist attraction, like a food shop and a gift shop), there's a highway that runs past it, but beyond that, it's just green, a sprawling sea of green. There were sheep grazing about twenty feet from the tiny humanity-ridden path, and a significant number of tourists seemed to find the sheep equally interesting, although the tourists didn't seem to hold much interest for the sheep.

I don't know how advanced ovine intelligence is, but I'm guessing the sheep were just wondering why the freaks on two legs were taking pictures of giant rocks ("Hey, Bob, why's that weirdo taking pictures of me? I haven't even done my hair today!). Anyway, it is quite worth seeing and I got a lot of lovely photos. It really does have an aura of mystery around it, altough I think that's primarily because we ascribe so much to it. There are also burial mounds around it, one within easy view of the path. It is quite beautiful, and far more worthwhile than many other things, if it holds any interest for you, and it does spark the imagination like few other things do, but don't buy that bollocks about aliens.

That same day, we went further out to Bath, which really is a beautiful little city. It's basically in a basin, and much of the architecture is original 18th century, although it was bombed significantly during WWII. There are baths (because of natural hot springs deep underground, thanks to some prehistoric rainfall) dating back to Roman times, when London was the tepid backwater of a larger empire. These are on the bottom, about twenty feet belowground, as mud has built up over the years, there are several levels of bathhouses built on top of each other. It is an interesting tour, but gets dull quite quickly (particularly if you're hungry after a two-and-a-half hour bus ride), and when you get right down to it, it is really just a lot of hot water. And while the town is quite picturesque, and the abbey is quite lovely, taking pictures of steam rising off of hot water is only interesting for so long. There is quite a lot of good shopping in the village, and a wonderful spa (a relatively inexpensive one, I've been told).

Oh, and if you're thinking of partaking of the amazingly 'curative' waters of Bath during lunch (which you can, if you wish), don't. At least not unless you're going to have plentiful access to a toilet for the next several hours.

Today

Today was wonderful, well, sort of, anyway.

And I've found my new favorite place.

It started out with me being late to my counselor's appointment to finalize my classes (although that wasn't the wonderful part. P.S. if you're taking the tube, plan for extra time, and don't oversleep). After my visit to my counselor, I wandered a bit, in search of headphones (which I still can't find, and I've left my pair at home).

And then I went to Tate Britain. We had a guided tour, which, while interesting wasn't really worth the time (the guide wasn't very knowledgeable, and didn't tell us anything we couldn't have learned from reading the placards).

The museum is free to enter (they request a donation, but they'll let you in), and it's well worth your time. It's actually one of my favorite art museums (although as far as art museums go, I haven't actually been to that many).

I'm not sure why I love art museums so much, but I guess it's just that I love story-telling, and I think that a painting is yet another way of telling a story. There aren't particularly very many famous masterpieces there, but the paintings are beautiful, many of them with a mythological focus (those are my favorites), and many interesting portraits, beginning with the Elizabethan and ending with the modern day. I stayed there until they kicked me out (they close at around 5:30), wandering the galleries on my own, furtively hiding my cup of coffee under my jacket (they don't let you bring food or drink into galleries), and letting the paintings absorb me. I will be back again, I know. That sort of calm isn't the sort of thing you allow to escape you easily.

By the time I left it was quite dark outside. The Thames rushed on its way in front of the Tate, and I decided to walk along it for a while (especially seeing as I had no idea where the nearest tube stop was). I had no idea where I was going, and I really didn't care. Strolling casually along the path (which probably identified me as a tourist, seeing as everyone else was rushing by on their way home), I watched the vulgar, glaring flourescent lights of buildings that must be quite ugly during the day reflected and softened, turned into a soft glow, like moonlight, on the darkened water.

With the buzz of cars, bicycles and buses crowding my ears on one side, the soft hush of the Thames on the other, I continued walking, past weathered buildings and highrises, around traffic circles, across London bridges (there are several of them, you know), thinking that this was really the London I wanted to see; the old with the new, the millenia-old Thames by my side, along with the motorcycle that almost ran me over (yeah, that happens to me A LOT).

I know I'm being cheesy here, and that this sounds cliche, but I really enjoyed walking tonight, at least until I got cold (about 40 minutes later) and discovered an urgent need to use the loo. While my walk-straight-till-you-find-a-tube-stop strategy didn't quite work, I wandered away past Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, including Big Ben (which is the bell, for those of you who don't know, not the tower or the clock), and found my way to the Westminster Underground.

For my part, I've discovered here that getting lost isn't such a bad thing, but that perhaps you should use the toilet before doing so.

Forgot to mention in my last post, but I went to IKEA yesterday. Same here as it is at home, cheap stuff, decent quality, decent food, always spinning harmless American pop over the intercom.

If you're ever living in central London, and you feel the urge to visit IKEA, just go eat a cookie or something and let the urge pass. Whatever you find there will not be worth the pain-in-the-ass haul you have to make out there. The Neasden tube stop is supposed to be closest, but from there, it's a slog to the bus, which will then take you with a block or two of IKEA. And then you get to have all of the fun carrying all of your cheap towels home, and while this means you have something you can hit attackers with, the fight is not so convenient when your arms are loaded down, because they won't give you a bag unless you pay for it (although if you ask me, a pack of coat hangers can make quite an effective weapon).

In any case, IKEA here (much like at home) is way out in the suburbs, which should be warning enough.

Good night all,

Lena

The Great Bookstore Quest

Today I decided to explore my new home ... but mostly I just wanted to find a good bookstore.

I decided to start from my (apparently not-so-trusty) guidebook. It told me that Unsworth's, primarily a used bookstore, is "one of London's most respected booksellers and specializes in the best remaindered and secondhand titles in classics, history, and humanities."

Seeing as it was quite close by way of the tube, and having recently acquired a list of books required for my classes (primarily classics), I thought I'd make this little gem my first stop. Getting off at King's Cross, I recieved my first pleasant surprise of the day. Directly in view of the station was, indeed, a Barclay's Bank, for which I had been surreptitiously searching since my arrival. Gladly, I stopped by there, and, then, foolishly, thought, "Well, the bookstore's supposed to be somewhere around here, I'll just look around till I find it."

Having noticed a marquee denoting "Private Bookstore" a few blocks away, I optimistically set off, thinking of course, that 'Private' meant privately owned, as opposed to corporate.

And now I know where to find porn, should I have an urgent desire to purchase some. Something anyone smarter than myself would have known is that "Private" is British Code for "WE SELL PORN!"

Well, having gotten a brief glance at various harnesses and dvd's (I walked through the door and turned around as soon as I saw where I was), I decided to set off in the opposite direction.

Having finally asked a couple of nice-seeming young men, who didn't know what Unsworth's was, but kindly let me know that I had been on Euston Street all along (Hey, street signs are harder to find here). And so, I set off, continuing on my quest.

Counting the address numbers, I finally made my way to Unsworth's, which was sorely disappointing. Compared to much of American bookstore offerings, it was quite dinky, with very little of what I wanted. I would compare it to a rather small bargain bookstore (as though they'd taken the bargain portion from a Borders or a Barnes and Noble and made an entire store of it, but smaller). There was a reason for this, I later discovered, but for the moment, I was quite angry with my insufficient guidebook.

Before heading back to the tube (I love saying that), I stopped off at the British Library, which seems fairly happy to sell you books, even if they won't let you borrow any. It's a beautiful building, and particularly lovely on the inside. Luminous, with all-white walls and greenery. But they won't let you take out any books, at least as far as I can tell. It seems a particularly scholarly domain, but only for scholars with permission. To enter any of the reading rooms, you must show an identifying pass and clean hands (presumably for handling esoterica). But there is a bookstore with a decent selection (if a bit more expensive than most other bookstores), and it does provide a lovely atmosphere to eat lunch in, or rest, or perhaps read (as long as you supply your own reading material). They've also got exhibitions and discussions going on, usually for free, and you can pick up schedules at the library or online.

After falling over the library steps on my way out (because only I could take a spill down the shallowest steps in the world), and apparently doing so in such an alarming manner that the elderly lady behind me felt compelled to see if I was all right, I got back on the tube, and made my way to Leicester Square (pronounced Lester, I know, it sounds much less pretty this way), and after wandering a bit in Covent Garden (which looks to my inexperienced eye like one huge tourist trap), and making good use of my umbrella (which I proceeded to then lose somewhere)in a sudden downpour, I made my way to Charing Cross Road.

While it definitely took me a while to get to Foyle's, which was intended to be my second bookstore stop, I was happily dawdling. Charing Cross is lined in tiny bookshops, mostly used, just waiting to be explored, and while I couldn't do a very thorough lookover in the few hours I had today, I expect to spend many joyful hours digging through bins and looking over dusty shelves on a search for treasure.

Foyles is, as promised, a quite good-sized bookshop, about equivalent to a Borders or a Barnes and Noble. It's quite cheery and well-lit, teeming with staff and quite easy to navigate. By the time I'd gotten there, it was too late to explore it thoroughly, as I had to head back to the CEA welcome dinner.

But I did have time to stop at the shop across the street, which was, you guessed it, Borders. Which is nearly exactly like the ones at home. There was some pretty bad music playing, there's a coffee shop somewhere in the building (a starbucks, although I didn't see it, it was on a different level), and there were practically the same sales I'm used to seeing at home (significantly more sales than Foyle's, by the way. Borders was a bit cheaper, although I'm hoping that's not entirely owing to January post-Christmas sales).

Anyway, went to the CEA welcome dinner, where there was no shortage of appetizers (they didn't want to actually buy all 60-something of us dinner, so I'm not sure why they called it a welcome dinner, other than the fact that a 'welcome, eat something' sounds bad), seeing as half of the people didn't show up.

Then I wandered around with a bunch of girls, looking (somewhat against my will, I'd mostly gone with because it was dark and I hadn't felt like looking for the tube on my own) for Covent Garden, not finding it, and eventually settling on finding the nearest tube stop, in the face of an urgent desire to pee.

By the way, if you're in London, you learn to hold it, because much fewer places have public bathrooms (ok, loos or toilets. If you ask for the bathroom, they'll wonder why you want to take a bath).

Also, when they tell you it's cold, dress half as warm as you would in Chicago, and if you wear layers, prepare to remove them swiftly, because all of the walking you're doing will inevitably make you sweat bullets. And you will do a lot of walking, and stair-climbing. Even if you're taking the tube, there's a pretty enormous amount of stairs inside each station (especially the covent garden one, I've found). And you will inevitably show up sweaty and distinctly American wherever it is you're going. Besides, cold to them is not the same as it is in Chicago. Anywhere between 30-50 is considered cold here, at which I, as a Chicagoan, proudly scoff.

It turns out that my shower has the playful whimsy of a magic eightball.

"No hot water now. Try again later."

"Now I'm going to scald you. .... Why?

Because it's so much fun to hear you scream."

"Oops .... Back to cold again. Damn you mortals!!!"

Ok, so truthfully, it's not that bad. I just have to get used to the knobs, and how to adjust them, or something like that ... At least I'm clean. Have not yet resorted to shaving legs in sink, partially because I think I forgot my razors at home.

In any case, I'm most of the way unpacked, though still on a desperate search for clothes hangers and sheets (Ok, maybe not so desperate, I'd rather find a good bookstore first, but I should get around to it later today).

Day 1

I haven't been this tired at 10:30 at night in long time. Ok, so I'm lying, but I'm the kind of tired where your head is foggy and sounds coming through your window echo like marbles in a basin. That happens when you spend your day between airports and then someone makes you climb stairs. Lots of stairs. Turns out that my dorm room is on the fourth floor, with no elevator. I guess I am going to lose some weight this semester after all.

I have, however, made successful contact. Walked to a grocery store. I now have bread, cheese, salami, kleenex, laundry detergent and jam (but no knife to spread it with). I feel that this will be enough to keep me for the rest of my stay (or at least until tomorrow). The jam is good, even if I do have to stick my finger in the jar to get it out. Sorry if this makes no sense, but I promise I will be more coherent tomorrow.

Cheers,

Lena