I haven't written since Christmas because I had a very very lovely guest for a couple of weeks and we were a little preoccupied. Larnie came on the 29th and the long and short of it is that we had a blast together. Here are some of the delightful tastes of England we shared together:
Buckingham Palace& the changing of the guards
The National Gallery
St. Martins in the Fields taize service
OXFORD in the snow!
Evening prayer at Christ church
Dinos and trees at the Natural History Museum
Covent Garden& Picadilly Circus
Sherlock Holmes& Nowhere Boy (we like going to the movies)
Southwark Cathedral Epiphany Eucharist
The Tate Modern
Fish& Chips
Jacket potatoes
Tea, tea, and more tea (and Digestive biscuits)
Tower Bridge, Tower of London
Kew Gardens... greenhouse mainly, it was chilly.
WICKED!
Regents Park
Camden Market - Larn found a vintage Razorbacks shirt!
Portobello Market
We had a pretty amazing time. Having someone from home here with me really made it sink in that I'm living here, I'm actually doing this. I thought about it so much for a year and then moved over in such a whirlwind that I guess I hadn't grasped the reality of it all yet. On Larnie's first full day here I was scheduled to work and couldn't get out of it. I didn't want her to be bored so I suggested she get on the tube and go to Westminster where there's plenty of site-seeing to do... as I was explaining it to her I realized what foreign directions I was giving. Oyster cards and tube stops and District Lines and bus numbers weren't going to mean anything to her. Little things like that made me think about how much of London life I have gradually adapted to without realizing it.
It also made me see the city as a tourist again. Part of my New Years resolution is to make sure I see something new at least every couple of weeks. I would hate to come to the end of my time here and be in a panic for all the sights I didn't see! Yesterday I went to two short-term exhibits with a friend I met on New Year's Eve. We went to the Beatles to Bowie exhibit - photographs of musicians throughout the 1960s - at the National Portrait Gallery and the Pop Life exhibit at the Tate Modern - both were stellar.
Today I woke up and wanted to run for the first time in months. That was nice... I've been wanting to run, but not really had the gusto to actually put on my Nikes and do it. I didn't stay out there very long today but I explored my area a little more... I realized how much smaller of an area it is over here, I've been taking the tube and bus to some places that I really could just walk! It's not far at all.
I finished Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis and I want to give him a little more credit. It ended up being a pretty good read and I'm kind of sad now that I'm done. I feel broken up with... like I want to know what Anthony's up to but it's over now and I'll just seem desperate if I call.
We cleaned out the flat and rearranged a little the other day and went through the books we had under the TV. We are giving about half of them away, but keeping some. We have quite the little library going! Kudos to the girls who used to live here. I think my next read will be some book that we had here called The Bride Stripped Bare - Jen Neale absolutely freaked when we ran across it and said we all haaaaad to read it.
Speaking of Jen Neale. This has been kind of a strange week... Larnie left, for one. My flatmate and pal Loly got back from travelling with her sister and on Wednesday night we had a little going away get together since she had to leave on Thursday. Loly's so fun and joyful and almost kind of motherly to me... I'm really going to miss her! And Jen Neale has been having a hard time ever since she moved back here in November. None of her rooming or working situations seem to want to work out for her, and to make matters worse, she's just found out her dad is sick again. So she's counted her losses and bought a plane ticket home for Sunday. She was planning on being here for about a year and doing all of this travelling around Europe and Africa, but now she has to put all of that on hold for now. We have 2 new girls - friends of Loly's - moving in soon I think, but it's going to change the dynamic of the house entirely! It's odd how easily my friends will come and go while I'm here. We're all in the same boat, we're here semi-permanently but temporarily in the long run. At some point we'll all move on but at different times. We've talked about visiting Chile to go see Loly and Valentina and Benjamin... but what about after that? Even if I visit once, will I ever see them again after that? I'll probably consider them friends forever, but just the same... it's been a little bit of a sad realization.
Sorry to end on a wah wah note, but I think I'll end there for now. My run (no matter how puny it was today) has me a little "knackered" if you will. We're going to dinner as a group with Jen tonight for a little going-away celebration and I want to be a little rested beforehand.
I'll update you soon on my classes this term - they started this week!
xx
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