The Life

On Saturday our group's Blue Badge tour of London ended at Trafalgar Square, conveniently next door to the Texas Embassy, a cantina with surprisingly good Tex-Mex considering our latitude. It was good to play tourist for awhile and see the sights; our guide Liz had lots of interesting information to offer, especially about several pieces of architecture which were particularly interesting: even the "normal-looking" tall brick buildings (I call them rowhouses, its the easiest thing to compare them to) are sometimes hundreds of years old with much of their original parts still intact. The famous buildings--like Westminster Abbey--are reeeeally old and took so long to build you can see the changes in architectural era from one piece of the building to the next. Personal revelation No. 4: I love exploring old things, especially when they have a great story to tell. History buff. :)


I went back to Westminster Abbey on Sunday morning for church, where the archbishop of Cape Town served me communion. I felt a bit special, not going to lie...the atmosphere was amazing and ethereal and romantic and huge all at the same time. I was surprised that the service wasn't very crowded at all, but they say we're not into the peak tourist season yet.

The oldest part of the church is from the 12th century: the middle part of the cross-shaped cathedral, where the two arms come together. This is where the altar and choir were situated, with the congregation out on the two short side parts and waaay down the long part. There were lots of separate sections, strange to me who's used to sitting in a smallish church with one aisle down the middle and no other way to get anywhere. The choir was basically in a box in the upper part of the long aisle (toward the middle but not as central as the altar), so when they sang we couldn't see them, only hear this music floating up over stone walls and around the stained glass, like seriously from heaven or something. To top that off, the organ is in the ceiling between some columns and behind stone decoration stuff so it just plays....neither choir nor organ are huge, just the right size and so beautiful in that setting. It was really an experience, I definitely recommend it.


Later in the afternoon a group visited a Cuban Festival in south London, mostly because it was free and sounded interesting. It reminded me a lot of the Folklife Festival or even the County Fair, with lots of food and knick-knack booths plus several stages with music. The dancers were AMAZING--they made me really jealous. :) The reggaeton and some other Latin music reminded me even more of home, and some friends and I might hit up a Latin club for free lessons while we're here.


Classes started today...I have to admit I was almost too tired to make it through the four-hour block of international business. I definitely need to start getting more sleep, but it seems like there's always something fun to do somewhere and I don't want to miss out. Our professor seems interesting enough, he's funny and only kept us three hours today....plus one him. :) Should be a great class.


Just FYI, one of the best ideas ever is buying & sharing food among roommates/floormates, etc. Everything is sooo expensive here (mostly the dollar's fault), but several of us can eat rather well spending about 10-12 quid a week at a grocery store and cooking our own food. Facilities limit what we can actually prepare, but we're still doing rather well for ourselves. Food hints:

• Tuna is one of the most amazing/easy to prepare foods ever
• Bread goes bad faster than you think
• Eggs are cheap
• Cheese is not
• When you have no idea what any of the brands are--or what quality they stand for--it doesn't matter which one you buy. i.e., store brand rocks here. And everywhere.

I think the rest of the week involves a cheap student ticket to a theater show in the West End, some museums, and Tony Blair's last PMQ (public questioning as prime minister....should be veeery interesting) at Parliament. I don't start work until next Thursday (we're supposed to start on Monday), so that means I'll have some awesome free time to spend in the park, etc. on my own....haven't had that much alone time recently so it should be great. The office may send me a couple stories to work on by email in the meantime, which is OK too.