My first friend!

On Friday, my first full day in London, I woke up with an odd feeling - I don't have anything to do. This is such a foreign sensation to me. Because of course I had pllllleenty of choices of things to do, but nothing that I had to do. Ah! How lovely!

So I took the tube to Westminster and wandered from Big Ben to Westminster Abbey and across the river to Jubilee Gardens and the crazy street performers. It felt so surreal to be back again. And I'm sure this seems weird to some but there is something I love about travelling alone. It's like this little speck of the world is my own and even though it's covered with thousands of other people, it's mine. So I pranced around central London gloating in the beauty of everything that is mine here.

This was all very wonderful, but mid afternoon I started to realize that I hadn't had a real conversation with another person in like 36 hours. I'd been narrating all of my experiences in a British accent to myself in my head and that was starting to get old... and weird. So when I got back to the hostel that afternoon I took my computer to the TV lounge and decided to do some email/facebooking and connect with you folks back home. I saw that my computer was still on US time so I turned to the guy next to me and asked about the time here. He answered and I detected an American accent. Then about five minutes later he looked up at me and said "I'm sorry but would you want to see a play with me tonight?"

Me: Um... me? Tonight??

Guy: Yeah, in like 20 minutes.

Me: Uh, yeah! Okay sure!

So that was pretty random but I was excited that I had plans to get me out of the hostel. It's getting dark here around 5pm and even though I feel generally safe in London I was glad that my first venture out at night would be with another person (and male, at that. Although he wasn't the most intimidating looking chap.)

The play was called Speaking in Tongues and at the Duke of York theatre. After we picked up our tickets we had time to grab dinner so we went to an Indian restaurant where I had my first experience with Indian food. This is where I learned a little about this fellow: he's from San Fransisco, went to Santa Barbara, geography major, here in London for 3 weeks just for fun, and his name is Graham. He probably tried to tell me more but I was so excited to have someone to listen to me that I'm sure I talked his head right off. At intermission we got a drink and drank it looking over the balcony - so neat! What a random night. All I could think about was the fact that a week ago from that point I would have never been able to guess what I'd be doing the following Friday.

Cheerio.