Life After Hot Route

"I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments."

- Colin Firth



March 15 - March 31

Looking back now I have no idea what happened the week after Spring Break. I guess going back to class after the best week and a half ever was just so traumatizing that I blocked the whole thing from my memory.

Of course, St. Patrick's Day stands out. The Tuesday after Spring Break, St. Patrick's Day Eve, if you will, I went and bought a green dress to wear because the only green I had was a sweater and the weather forecast was calling for warmth and sunshine. Normally I don't trust the weather forecast, especially ones that call for warmth and sunshine in LONDON, but we all know Jesus loves both ND kids and St. Patty's. So when I woke up at 6:45 am on Wednesday to the sun streaming in my window, I was ready.

I went over to the flat of some friends at 7:30 with my roommate, Sara. We started the day off right with some Irish hot chocolate and coffee cake. It was delicious.

From there on the day is a blur because I spent so much time praying. We all really wanted to thank God that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. I prayed all morning until I went to class at 10:45. All this praying made me tired, of course, so I took a nap between classes so I could be recovered enough to keep praying after class. And I looked like JV next to some of my friends. One girl, who shall remain nameless, prayed so much that she apparently stood up in the middle of class, wove her way to the door and staggered out into the hall. I guess she didn't come back for about 30 minutes.

But don't worry, this was St. Patty's day and we're ND students, so we kept going through the exhaustion and went out drinking after class. Uh, I mean praying. Right, praying.

Hey, don't worry Mom and Dad

a) I'm Irish (kinda); I know what I'm doing
b) I'm legal here
c) Most of the other kids really did make me look JV, not to mention the British people staggering around the streets.

So St. Patty's was a success, but no where near as crazy as it gets on campus, of course.

A lot of people traveled that weekend, but I was happy to stay in London. It took me a solid week to do laundry and unpack from Spring Break! We did make it to Portobello Road Market though. I say we - Charlie, Coleen, Lizzie and I.

Oh wait, before that...

On Friday Coleen and I made it over to Borough Market too, which was incredibly awesome. SO MUCH FOOD! You know what a food nerd/snob I am, so I was walking around with Coleen saying things like "Those fish aren't fresh, you can tell because..." and "Oh, I've totally had Ostrich before..." We wanted to make eggplant parm for the gang, but everyone was busy. So we settled for devouring free samples of EVERYTHING and buying some pecorino cheese (like we had in Italy), some strawberries to snack on while we walked (SO FRESH) and a couple of potted flowers to brighten up the flat.

After we wandered around the area for a bit and walked along the river and just happened to pass by a whiskey shop. So we went in, of course. The guy looked pretty surprised to see two young, American girls walk in (Uh, can I help you girls?) but when I asked about a specific distillery he brightened right up and let me taste before I bought. He poured a sip, started to give it to me, and then said, "Uh, do you want some water with this or something?" He looked pretty relieved when I laughed and said, "No. I don't need water."

Life goal #58: Become a whiskey connoisseur.

Back to Sunday...

Portobello Road was what I imagined a market would be like. I kept my wallet in my front pocket and lost Coleen or Charlie in the crowds 80% of the time. There was cheap junk as far as the eye could see. Favorite experience of the day? I'm split. We have two options:

a) Insert hilarious name of incident A here

Naive and wide-eyed children that we were at first, we wandered up to a stall with an eccentric looking old lady dressed up like what British people must imagine gypsies look like. She was fat. Anyways. Her stall was full of junky costume jewelry just strewn about tables and heaped into piles. I guess the strain of sitting in the shade hawking cheap crap for five quid all morning had put in her a bit of a bad mood. Us girls were quietly looking, not making a scene (for reals this time) and Charlie walked up. So I held and earring up to his ear and said, "These would look lovely on you." Really, I didn't yell, we weren't making a scene. But apparently those words are some kind of taboo around Portobello Road because she scowled in our general direction and said "Find a new playground." So we went with the always socially acceptable nervous-laugh-and-look-away maneuver. Don't like fun? That's fine; we can not have fun in front of you if it offends.

jk

She looked back up at us and said "Did you not hear me? Go away." Well then. We are perfectly capable of taking our business elsewhere. So we did. I guess if she doesn't want to make money, that's cool with me.

b)

Does this place look familiar? It should. Too bad Hugh Grant doesn't actually own this bookstore.

Have I told you about how Charles is an intern at parliament yet? Well, he is. As far as I can tell it's super awesome AND he looks quite dashing in his suit. Coleen is a lucky woman.

Anyways, after work on that next Tuesday, he met us (Lizzie, Peter, Me) at the tube station and gave us a tour of Parliament. I guess he'd been there long enough to know all the cool stories because he gave a really good tour. Or I guess he could have just been completely making it up as he went. A sample:

"And uh, this statue is cracked because someone chained themselves to it... They were... oh right! The feminists."

Fun fact: That actually happened.

Anyways, he actually gave a MUCH better tour than that; I was pretty impressed by how much he knew.

That weekend, on Saturday, there was the big Head of the River Race, so Peter, Colin, Coleen and I went down to the Hammersmith Bridge to watch all the boats go by. There was kind of a college football pregame meets little league baseball atmosphere. Everyone was climbing all over the bridge with backpacks full of beer and waiting to yell at their one boat. We spent some time watching them take the boats out of the river too, which was pretty cool to watch. They had to carry the boats up a ramp to get from the shore to the boathouses and when they went up the ramp the short guys couldn't reach the boat anymore to help carry. Pretty funny.

After we went over to the Churchill War Rooms after, which was pretty freaking awesome. During WWII, they ran the entire war basically was underground in a bunker. After the war, they just kinda shut it up and it's preserved almost exactly. Attached to it is a museum all about Churchill, which was also very interesting.

Saturday night was pretty solid too. Remember those girls we found in MontP? Two of them went to Syracuse and came to London to visit all their Syracuse friends, so Lizzie, Peter and I went to a birthday party they were having in their flats. It was like I was back in America. You know the red Solo cups that are a universal symbol for underage drinking? Apparently they aren't so universal, because they aren't available in Europe. They somehow had them at this party though. I'm actually pretty sure that someone brought them from America just so they could play beerpong with them at this party. Either way it was a lot of fun and nice to meet Americans that weren't associated with ND.

After that, we were suddenly off to Rome... but that's a whole new blog entry.

Mom, I PROMISE I won't talk to strangers. Geez.