#1

Things I'll miss about London:

My little community in West Kensington! Just came to my coffee shop down the street for some Americano and Wi-Fi and one of my favorite little guys is working right now. He always asks how I am, am I studying hard, where I've been lately, sorry my usual seat isn't available, no the pesto baguette is not included in the 3.50 "toastie and a hot drink deal" but *wink* sure, for you.  We're friends!

It's not just him. It's the Turkish guy at the convenient store who knows me by face as the girl who came in drunk one night and cleaned him out of chocolate. That was nearly a year ago and he still doesn't let me check out with a pack of gum without asking "Are you sure? The Ben& Jerry's is on sale. We have this new box of chocolate-covered marshmallows you could have. You don't want?" I think he knows he's being a jackass but I can't help but laugh because who knows what kind of havoc I wreaked on his chocolate supply that night.

The people at Best Mangal are always pretty happy to see us walk in for a kebab and chips. Lately we've been scoring free sodas with them.

I recognized the guy who works at the Continente cafe on the corner in the station last week and gave him a HUGE smile and waved. I think it took a moment for him to place me but then he had a look of recognition and waved back. Jess was like, Do you know him? A good friend of yours?

Yeah, maybe he is! I'll miss my little friends here. I don't know any of their names but they make me feel like I really live here, this hasn't all been just a dream.  This tiny corner of London has been mine! I'll be sad to leave them.

My boyfriend.

I haven't talked about him much on here so it might come as a surprise to hear about my boyfriend.  He's every girl's dream: affectionate, warm, and caring, with olive skin, dark hair, and beautiful big brown eyes.  He holds my hand, calls me pet names, and wants to spend all of his time with me. He has this way of making everything seem okay, even when I’m at my worst. He's also three feet tall and has at least three speech impediments. His name is Humza and I pick him up from school twice a week.

Some days I think I'm not cut out for nannying anymore. I'm nowhere near as energetic as I used to be. Come on kids, don't you want to just sit here and quietly watch Planet Earth?  Then I remember I'm getting paid to be lively and entertaining so I try to give it my best. 

But then other days they make my job so easy on me.  One afternoon a couple of days ago I was feeling particularly dumpy, and then I  and picked up Humza from school and his big, silly grin on seeing me walk into the courtyard made it all just disappear.  We held hands on the way to the bus stop and he yelped "Muffles! Muffles! Muffles! What are we going to do today!?!!?"  It's the kind of excitement I've only previously experienced with my Jack Russell Terrier.

And it's not just that he's so flipping cute and loves me so much, he truly is such a sweetheart.  His first question when I walk into school is always "Do you have a snack for me?"  I never do. I don’t know why he keeps asking. Then we check his book bag and there is the one that Mummy has packed that he just hasn’t found yet. Today, snack consisted of grapes and blueberries.  Naturally I was hungry, so I'm like Humza, can I have one?  He's like "No!! Okay, you know what, Muffles, yes you may have as many as you want."  Ha!  So sweet.  Whenever he has a friend over to play he tries to give away all of his toys. I wish you could see the tiny bear hugs he gives his friends before they go.  Yesterday he wrote me a "secret message" using one of Aliya's toys.  It was a little scroll of paper that said "I love you Stephanie BFF BFF BFF BFF BFF." Not only touching, but also formal (he usually calls me “Muffles”).  

So this is it: Men peak at age 5. This is as good as it's going to get.  I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Get me outta here.

That last post felt like cheating since I wrote about the South and this is a blog about London.  I'll make up for it here.

Our flat is LIT-erally (Larnie) falling apart.  It's absurd how much is broken.  At first it was one of those things that gives the place character - just like the throne toilet and the tiny kitchen, the first things to break gave the flat some of it's endearing charm.  Alright, maybe the television requires a cryptic combination of buttons and keystrokes to turn it on, and perhaps Jessica's shelf in the refrigerator has been so overtaken by a glacier of ice that it has absorbed a jar of green pesto.  Maybe have to leave a note on the front door for the parcel-delivery men to call me to let them in because our doorbell has never ever worked.  So what if the oven has stopped working and the washing machine sounds like a rocket ship preparing for blast off during its final spin cycle?  These things are luxuries.

But I'd have to say the final straw was yesterday when I got out of the bath and the shower head broke clear off of the hose.  I had the damn thing stuck precariously on the shower-holder - which is the only way to rig it up there ever since Benjamin effed it all up from being so tall - and when I was getting out I heard a crash-BANG and turned around to see the head, decapitated, lying in the bath, and the hose, naked, spitting out the remains of my shower on the bathroom floor.  AGHHHH!!!!  I heard Jessica make a noise of concern out in  the common room and then was launched into an uncontrollable gigglefit (Larnie).  You get to a point where so much is going wrong that it's just hilarious.

I'm aware we can't really get upset about half of the stuff that has broken because technically it's not even ours, we were just lucky enough to move into a flat that already had many of the amenities.  Like the TV and dvd player - but don't even ask about the weird magic tricks that are required to simply play a dvd.  Or like the vacuum - it, too, has been decapitated, poor thing.  We haven't had a kettle for months because Jess and I invited over some idiot who tried to make soup in it (???).  These are all things that we would normally just replace, but we're all moving out in a month - why bother?

Unfortunately I think our landlord is feeling the same way. We're all moving out in a month, how much effort is he really going to put into a flat which has already paid its last month's rent?  I haven't attempted a shower yet but I'm about to have to in a few hours time.  Jessica has pointed out that I'll be hosing myself down like an animal. Thank you, Jessica.

Southern Pride.

I have a Floridian friend here whose ideas about the South (and those silly southerners) are always cracking me up. The following conversation took place with this friend while discussing how deceivingly small London is:  

 
So what's Little Rock's like? Is it all, like, suburbs?

I don’t know how to describe it. It's a city, and it's the capital, but it's not huge... it has a small town feel. But I mean, it's not tiny either, there’s always a lot going on there. It's like, a small city, I guess.

 (Very nice, Stephanie. Riveting description of the nature of Little Rock. Why can't I ever think of anything better than this when I try to describe my hometown?)     

Like Tallahassee?

Uh, maybe, I'm not sure, it's been awhile since I've been there. 

(As if I remember from when I was 8 passing through on the way to Disney World.) 

How about this: it's not as big as Nashville but parts of it have the same feel, does that help? 

No, it doesn't, I've never been to Nashville.

Memphis? Jackson, Mississippi? Baton Rouge, or anywhere at all in Louisiana?

No, I’ve been all over the country but I’ve never made it to the South. No offense but we kind of try to avoid that area, LOL!

Don’t worry, none taken. We feel the same way about most of Florida.

*ZING!*

She admits that she has been to Atlanta and was baffled because it's a big city, and yet people still had southern accents and drank sweet tea.  That's what made me realize where her odd notions about the south come from: she hears "southern," she thinks "country”.  She associates the entirety of the south with a backwards, small town, Bible-beater, sittin’ on the front porch, Huckleberry Finn kind of existence.  I'm aware that Little Rock is far from cosmopolitan, and while her notions of the south are in some cases terribly inaccurate, in others they are dead-on.  But it's an incomplete picture if we're talking about where I come from.

I’m very proud of my hometown. I’m proud to be an Arkansan. I’m proud to be a southerner. This is why I plan on moving back. My Southern Literature professor said that to really understand the south, you have to leave The South.  I took this suggestion a bit further and figured that if I wanted to understand the United States, maybe I should leave the United States. I'm not sure if I've come any closer to understanding either, but if nothing else, it’s been entertaining to learn about the misconceptions of both from the eyes of the rest of the world.