I'm BACK!

Hello! You found the compass!

      The days are still blending together as if they’ve been one long, strange, continuous chunk of time. I’m still trying to eat and sleep normally, with little success or improvement. (I don’t eat much and tend to fall asleep late and wake up even later.) Last night and into this morning I was coughing, had a sore throat, felt congested, and all that fun sick stuff. Luckily my Indian flatmate, Niharica, came to my rescue with herbal tea and a spoonful of some sort of yummy, pasty medicine made from mint, honey, and ginger. I have never felt better so quickly! I slept for another four hours and woke up (at 3:30 in the afternoon, mind) feeling 100% better than before. Now, if only the internet in my dorm would actually work regularly instead of sporadically (it's a small miracle that I'm able to publish this now).

      Interesting aside: I really like how multicultural the flats here are. The people I’m with now are great flatmates and we all have different things to, literally, bring to the table. We have the girl from India, a girl from somewhere in China, a guy from Hong Kong, me, and a Hispanic girl from Southern California. I’ve also met people from Russia, Norway, Nigeria, Barbados, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, and that’s just in Seething Wells. (I’m sure there are many more countries represented here as well.) We love to talk about cooking, and we think it would be fun to have a cooking night where we all cook traditional foods from our respective countries. The Hispanic girl would make some awesome Mexican food (she already has, actually) which would leave me with American food. That begs the question: what IS traditional American food? Every region, and even every state or every family, has its own cuisine. So what’s traditional American food for the entire country? The only thing I can think of (besides hamburgers, which are too typical) is barbeque. Any other ideas for our cooking-fest? Leave a comment!

Chinese food, my boring pasta, and okra for Indian food.

      So what have I been doing since whenever I last published? I took a walk with some friends down the Thames one night and we ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking the river. Service was slow, but the view and the food was worth it.

Home, sweet home.

      Two of the nights, as I mentioned in the previous post, were dedicated to clubbing: I went to the Icebreaker and the American House Party, both at Pryzm (formerly Oceana). Pryzm itself isn’t a good club, and I have heard that pretty much everyone prefers Hippodrome (the other local club). Both the music and the reputation of Pryzm are poor at best. I was intrigued by the events and hoped that the themes would make up for the general dislike I have for the place. Overall, both were decent nights out. Dressing up in my Harley Quinn costume for Icebreaker and some plaid for the American House Party was a good time. (The American House Party was a letdown in that there was literally nothing American about it. It was exactly like any other night at Pryzm. They didn’t even have the red solo cups they advertised! Poor performance, Pryzm.) However, the types of people that I generally ran into in Pryzm tended to make the environment worse rather than better. I did meet up with some friends and I saw people I recognized from Seething Wells, but unfortunately the club’s audience is dominated by the “I just turned 18 and I’m drinking and clubbing legally; let me touch women!” types of boys. Based on my experiences being around the aforementioned boys, here are a few basic bullet points of what not to do when trying to flirt with/dance with/interact with women:

• The Problem: I know clubs are loud, but pressing your entire body against her and grabbing her waist just to ask her name is a little much. The Solution: Just lean towards her.

• The Problem: Dancing is fun. Dancing with someone is more fun. I can expressly guarantee, however, that grabbing your female dance partner’s hand and trying to place it between your legs is not fun for her. That’s not a thing you do to someone you just started dancing with less than one minute ago. The likelihood of her coming to dance is much higher than the likelihood of her coming to give a stranger a feel. There’s a reason you suddenly lost your dance partner. The Solution: Don’t grope. Just dance. It’ll be okay. (Da-da, doo-doo, just dance.)

• The Problem: You randomly walk up to a woman and introduce yourself, and she happens to have an American accent. You really like American accents, so you apologize for what you’re about to do to her and start making out with her before bothering to see if she’s remotely okay with that. She shoves you away. You somehow take this to mean that she enjoyed the interaction rather than felt disgusted by it, so you decide the best course of action is to say “See you later!” and slap her on the butt as you walk away. The Solution: This shouldn’t even be a problem. Please don’t go out in public if you honestly believe that was a good idea.

       And that’s why I’m never setting foot in Pryzm again.

 

Farewell, you terrible beast.

      Moving along: I took a quick trip into London! It was my first time being in Central since arriving here. (The pictures aren't my best since they were all taken on my phone, but here you are.) I took the train to Waterloo with some friends, and we were treated to the wondrous views of the London Eye and Parliament shortly thereafter. We headed past the aquarium and London Dungeon and walked over Westminster Bridge, getting great pictures of all of the iconic landmarks. The city was absolutely packed with people (even more so than any other time I’d visited). Once we snaked our way through the thick crowds, we made our way to Buckingham Palace to meet up with others before grabbing lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. (This pub, which I visited with my parents last time, is the one that was rebuilt in the 1600's and was frequented by Dickens.)

Allegedly, the inside of this building is where they filmed the scenes for Gringott's.

The Royal Courts of Justice

      On the way to the pub, we passed a protest happening outside of Trafalgar Square. It was run by the English Defense League. They were chanting and waving flags that said "No more mosques!" on them. A brief look at their Wikipedia page shows that they started as an organization that was against Islamic extremism, but quickly became completely anti-Islam. As I crossed the street in front of them, I saw two young Muslim women watching and rolling their eyes with smiles on their faces. I'm glad to see they took it in stride and seemed to know that not everyone feels the way this group does.

      After lunch, I got to walk by Saint Paul’s Cathedral for the first time. I didn’t realize just how huge that place was until I stood beside it. The structure is so big that I could only see the cross of the iconic dome from the front. We didn’t go inside this time, but I’ll get around to that soon! At this point we were all still tired from getting adjusted to London time, so I headed across the wobbly bridge and went back to Seething Wells. 

The Shard pierces the London fog. Tower Bridge is in the background.

Along the South Bank, near the OXO building. Sherlock found a body near here in the BBC Sherlock series.

      One small event on Monday was the first International Café of the year (they occur monthly). I met a girl from Japan and one from Alaska, and we teamed up for the group activity that the coordinators had in store for us. This time, we randomly picked a theme from a bag, got costumes and props for that theme, and had to pose in a way which best represented the theme. I didn’t stay to find out who won, but our theme was the AristoCats and I ended up looking like this:

Welcome to grad school, kids!

      The event with the greatest impact on me to date was, by far, my course induction. The head of the M.A. program talked to us about our classes, our courses, and all of the opportunities we will have at Kingston. My courses sound absolutely amazing, and there are more opportunities here than I would have guessed. There are visiting writers every week, there are optional intensive master classes throughout the semester, agents come to the school to talk to us and see our work, and there are awards to be won and workshops a-plenty! We get personal tutors, the reading lists are organic (personalized to fit the skills and areas of development each student needs based on his or her writing), and we can audit undergraduate writing classes or master’s level publishing classes. We have excellent networks of support that we never have to leave, even after graduating. Hearing all of that, I wanted to cry from happiness. All of the stress and work of applying to schools, getting rejected by many, accepting an offer from Kingston, obtaining loans, requesting a visa, arranging accommodation, and all the other work that went into the last year and a half finally added up to this. It was emotional. I felt so grateful to be here, and I will challenge myself to make the absolute most of my time at Kingston (despite the fact that the women's full-contact American Football Team that I wanted to join isn't forming again this year, harrumph). Cheers, guys.  :)