It's just that way

This is a sad story called sometimes London is utterly sunny and warm and all I want to do is spend the rest of my time here in the park while my coat lies banished under the bed, but then the weather remembers where we are and turns back to cold and gray. No park for me today. It's a good thing I like the tea.

It's about looking at stuff.

       This is open ended. I haven’t come to any sort of conclusion yet, but I think sometimes we just need to mull over things for the sake of all good musings. This weekend I went on trips. I went on a far trip to Paris and a near trip to the London Zoo and both trips set me to pondering about the way we look at things. I don’t mean the metaphorical way that we view and interpret the world around us and all that jazz – no I’m talking about literally walking up to something and just staring at it.

         We just stare at things. I went to Paris and stared at the Eiffel Tower, at my pink macaron, at the Parisians, the sun-kissed buildings, the bridges we passed on our boat tour, the weathered spines of well-loved books, my onion soup and the flowering trees. I would have spent hours upon hours staring at paintings on a wall in the art galleries if we had time. Then on Saturday we went to the zoo and my staring habit took over again. This time I found myself staring at strange eyeballs and funny nostrils, at penguin wings, lily pads, snuggling otters, feisty zebras, and parrot feathers. The animals stay in their enclosures while I pay £20 to wander through a park and stare at them.

          I started to wonder how much money or time we spend to effectively stare at things regardless of whether or not we’ve seen them before. And why? I stinking love the zoo and I could sit and watch penguins play for the rest of my life and be content, but the more I think about it the stranger the whole convention seems. Do we stare at things to know more? To learn? We could just as easily buy a book and flip through pictures, but instead we traipse all over the world to be in the presence of fascinating sights. I don’t think it has anything to do with grandeur because the Eiffel Tower is huge and famous but I enjoy the butterfly paradise at the zoo just as much. So for now I’m just going to chock it up to good old fashioned wonder. We like to be startled; to see something brand new or perfectly familiar and have a different reaction every time. So we’ll keep buying tickets and planning road trips and drying out our contacts all in an effort to stare at more things and remember how fun it is to be surprised.



What do you think?

It's Been a While

      Yes let's get this over with right out of the gate: I haven't posted anything since January. That's a depressingly long time ago for someone who imagined herself to be furiously devoted to keeping this sucker updated, but I'm pretty resentful of the 'this is a post about how I don't post enough’ posts so let’s ignore that bit and have some real fun. Yeah!

      I live in London. I heard someone say once that unless you study abroad for at least a year, you aren’t allowed to claim living in that place. But I’ve decided to ignore that person’s opinion. I live in London and for the rest of my life I’ll tell stories about that one time I lived in London even if it was only for 4 months. Because here’s the thing about studying abroad -- you have to work to make it a home and that process creates this unique sense of protectiveness and belonging. Every single thing that was familiar and comfortable to me got left behind in the states in January and suddenly I had this overwhelming responsibility to make a home in London or else spend each day here lonely and homesick. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to spend as little time as possible being sad if I can do something about it, thus the adventures began. So what exactly do the seekers of familiarity in a foreign country do? We explore. We wander, get lost, find short cuts, stare at maps, collect more maps, ask directions, and decipher public transportation. We create routines.

      The best way to get to know London is to traipse around the city. Whether on foot or perched on the front seat of a double-decker bus, I spend hours figuring out how the different areas of London connect and just taking in the view. I’ve never been so fascinated with geography in my life, but London seems like one giant puzzle that I get to piece together (yes it’s that cliché). I feel like the nerdy teacher’s pet when I get stopped by someone who needs directions or clarification on a bus route and I can answer perfectly in my hillbilly accent. 5 gold stars to me for knowing that the number 9 bus does in fact go past Royal Albert Hall and yes ma’am the Whole Foods is about a 6 minute walk that way. I’m a total show off and see if I care. I shamelessly name drop station names and London colloquialisms when I’m on the tube so that people don’t mistake me for a (gasp) tourist. Because I live here!

      And here’s where the protectiveness comes into play. Other Londoners might not agree, but I’ve started to feel like a bonafide local. As far as I’m concerned, London is my city. All of it belongs to me because I discovered it for myself. I have my underground line and my favorite grocery store and my lunch spot and my church and my unreasonable resentment of loud passengers on the tube and just like that I became the proud owner of the ever glamorous I Heart London sticker. It’s going on my Nalgene and I plan to buy a matching t-shirt for when I get back to the states and it’s safe to wear.

It's a Poem

In lieu of a new post, I thought I would share one of my London poems with you. We have to turn in a new poem every other week for my Romantic Poets class which seemed slightly daunting at first, but it's been alright so far. Our second poem is supposed to reference the moon, but it turns out the moon is pretty difficult to see here, hence the poem that follows:

Moon

It must be there
It cannot go
Its nature is tethered
Constant

Trapped in a sparkling web
Stolen light
and borrowed journey

The oldest patterns we know

Lost?

Maybe it’s me
I’m gone
This town is bigger than the sky
and I’m swept away in faces

My patterns waver

Untraceable and unrecognizable
No safety in numbers
Just obscurity

If I can’t find you
Amidst your ancient, weathered course
and symphonic beckoning

Barricaded by the city walls

How will I ever find me?

It's Disco Baby

      This is a story about how London won major cool points tonight. The National Science Museum (which just so happens to be pretty close to my school) stays open late every last Wednesday of the month. They creatively refer to this as Late Night at the Museum. It’s basically the museum’s way of hosting a unique event to raise its popularity and money. The entry is free, but there are lots of table scattered throughout the levels where people can buy drinks, from a can of soda to a bottle of wine, and the Londoners certainly love to look at nerdy science things with a glass of wine. From 6:30 till around 10:00 the museum has different shows and interactive exhibit type things going on. We got there at an awkward time when a lot of the options were already over or half-way through, so the situation was looking rather dire. Until we realized that the Silent Disco was open all night.

       What is a silent disco? I was hoping you’d ask, because the same thought ran through my mind as we made our way to the second floor. There was a short description in the Museum brochure, but I still wasn’t sure what to expect. We walked into the room with the disco and I burst out laughing. It was just perfect. What I saw before me was essentially a room full of people dancing with no music, but the vast majority of them were all singing in unison. It was so weird to watch, but I just couldn’t look away. Finally we made it to the front of the line and some workers handed me a huge pair of 80’s style, Bose-no-sound-gets-in head phones. They pointed out the on/off button and the button to change stations.

      Basically, you had a choice between three DJs and a red, blue, or green light would glow on your headphones depending on which channel you were listening to. My two friends and I decided to start out with the green light, and we found a spot in the crowd to dance to The Twist. The whole experience was just so fun. It was strange to sort of be in your own little world, but still surrounded by a ton of people who may or may not be dancing to the same music. I think people felt more free to dance in goofy ways because we were all safe in our personal little music bubble and half the time, the people around us were dancing to a completely different song. It was great to try and figure out what people were listening to by their dance moves. At one point, little clusters of people started jumping up and down and I was thinking “what is going on” until I realized they were listening to Jump Around and I promptly joined in. It was funny to see people walk into the room without headphones and laugh the same way I did. We must have looked crazy, but it was just so much fun.

      The moral of the story is: If you’re lookin’ for a good time, look no further than the National Science Museum. It’s the perfect combination of nerdy and brilliant.


And on a side note: I bought myself some man cologne. It was sort of on accident, but it was only £2 and I smell like a delicious pine tree.

London: The Daze

   Upon hearing that I’m studying abroad, people love to give me advice on the various ins and outs of the experience. Jet lag in particular is a popular topic of discussion. Seeing as I’ve never spent more than a few hours tops on a plane, most of what I knew about jet lag was gained from movies and the stories I heard from other people. Suffice to say, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from my 9 hour flight, but I was interested to find out about this jet lag business for myself.

   As far as I can tell, jet lag is the wrong word. I don’t think that “lag” effectively describes the sensation of finding yourself 5 hours ahead of where your brain expects to be. A 10:30 PM flight which didn’t actually leave till about 3 hours later already had me staring bleary-eyed into the seat in front of me and I hadn’t even left the States yet. All I can say is thank heavens for the on-flight movies otherwise I might have gone legitimately crazy. Armed with a baby sized pillow and square red blanket, it’s no surprise that I got more frustration than sleep. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t find sleeping in the upright position remotely comfortable; not to mention the bumps and jostles from the flight attendant cart as it strolled right into my knee a few times. So sleeping aside, I took to the movies to help pass the time. I watched One Day (meh), Monte Carlo (yes always), The Big Bang Theory (Sheldon), and a few others that I abandoned before completion. With an egg filled English muffin, granola bar, orange juice, and some tea I greeted the morning and stumbled my way off the plane shortly after.

   What came next was a fuzzy journey through customs and baggage claim trying to hang on to all of my carry-on and temperamental scarf. As soon as I lugged my suitcase off the turnabout, I re-stuffed it with the seven pounds (or more) I had to take out to check it. With a lighter backpack and my fancy British pounds at the ready, I set off to track down a cab. I wandered around towards the exit and tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about when the taxi guy asked me where I needed to go. Luckily, I got the friendliest cab driver in all of England and he was super helpful when I clearly didn’t know exactly where my flat was. Needless to say, he gave me his card when he dropped me off because we’re best friends and stuff like that. I spilled into my room, and the rest is history.

   All this to say that “jet-lag” is just not the right word for how I felt during all of this and the rest of the night. I’ve decided to call it “The Daze.” I didn’t really feel lagged or behind. I just felt dazed and hazy. I knew the things that I needed to do to get from one place to another. I knew that I was in London. I knew that I was unpacking and walking around my flat. But apart from the things that I knew, I didn’t think about much else. I didn’t think beyond the things that were right in front of me, and jet-lag doesn’t begin to describe that sensation. After having a few days to let it all sink in, I’m surprised that I made it here in one piece, but happy that I had a safe journey. Although, I’m still never really sure what time it is.

Study Abroad

London.
As of today, the plane ticket is purchased and I’m officially preparing to be in London for my entire spring semester. That’s a lot of months to be gone on my own. I’m scared and nervous and worried, but I’m unbelievably thrilled and ready to go. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been in so much anticipation in my entire life. It’s this feeling of antsy nervousness and hopeful expectation that confirms what a worthwhile experience it will be. I’ve found that more often than not, it’s the decisions that scare me a little it that end up being the most rewarding.


Helen Keller, in a moment of pure genius I’m sure, said “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Well OK Helen. Adventure it is.