Chills.

My fans (A.K.A. my parents) have been demanding another blog post about my weekend, and I am here to deliver.

On Saturday, we had a tour of Parliament. It was the coolest place ever. It was so beautiful inside, and it's so crazy to think that it's a place of work. Like, "Welcome to my office, please have a seat. Yes, my office is lined in rich murals and carved with gold. Oh no, don't have a seat there, that's where the Queen sits." We learned all about the traditions of government, as well as the history of the British kings and government. It was fascinating. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside, and while I was brave enough to break that rule at St. Paul's, I was NOT about to get tackled and wrestled for my camera by one of the numerous police officers all throughout the building.

Then, at night, I had a lovely dinner date with Steve. We were dressed nicely, made ourselves dinner, and met on Skype around 9:00 my time, 4:00 his time. We talked for five hours. It was amazing. I really miss just being able to talk to him all throughout the day as things happen. It's so much different to talk for an hour or two at a time and just catch up on everything, rather than just texting him as things happen. I miss him so much.

Today, we had our tour of the Tower of London and then did a Jack the Ripper walk. The Tower of London was morbidly interesting. That disturbed part in us all just loves learning about where the traitors were held, where people like Ann Boleyn were beheaded, and the various methods of torture they implemented. My favorite one was called "Scavenger's Daughter," where they fold you in thirds (shins against thighs, thighs against stomach) and put you in a box, and press the box in more and more until you just die. Lovely, right? We saw all the royal jewels, like the various crowns, the jewel encrusted swords, and what I call "The royal cheese and cracker plates" because of all the gold dishware. They had a gold punch bowl and ladle about the size of a bathtub... THAT'S what I need at my next party.

Then we had the Jack the Ripper walk, which would have been a tremendous amount more enjoyable if I wasn't so sure I was going to die from the cold. It was FREEZING. We were warm when we originally left this morning because we were in the sunlight, but all of the activities today were in the shade and we were not prepared. I was so chilled to the bone that it took me a few hours after coming back that I finally regained feeling. The tour was still really neat though. We learned all about the history of Jack the Ripper and the women that were killed (a lot of which I knew already from the fabulous Johnny Depp movie, "From Hell"), and saw different sites where they were last seen or found dead. Again, that morbid curiosity in me went wild.

We closed out the night with a very American trip to Chipotle. I don't care though. Say what you want as about 12 of us Americans come into Chipotle and monopolize the tables in the back, make fun of our country all you want in this moment, because once I dove face first and sunk my teeth into a burrito the size of my head, nothing else mattered.

(Pictured: 1- Me outside of Parliament; 2- Traitor's Gate at the Tower of London; 3- "The Ten Bells" Pub where the women killed in the Jack the Ripper murders would hang out at night)

Classy.

Besides being 10 minutes late, my fashion class yesterday was significantly better. This is solely because my friend Jordan switched into the class, so he and I just sat next to each other and took our "tea break" together (professors here are wonderful and give you at least a half hour break during long classes for tea). I know I'm there to learn, that class isn't about socializing, but it really does make a class a lot more enjoyable to have someone there that doesn't make you want to ram your head against a pointy object.

We had our ISA excursion to Hyde Park and Harrods yesterday too! Now, when I say Hyde Park, I mean we walked through there for about 5 minutes on our way to Harrods... so I still don't count it. But my goodness, it is BEAUTIFUL. I knew that would be my favorite place in London, and just seeing it quickly for a few minutes reaffirms that.

Harrods is a whole new world. It's unreal. We had afternoon tea at a restaurant in there, and it was such a gorgeous place. It looked like a fancy wedding reception, like one I will never be able to afford (since my budget for my wedding reception will only allow it to be in my backyard with pool volleyball and hot wings). We had tea, five different little sandwich choices, scones with different marmalades, and different desserts... and it was all endless. You better believe I ate my £30 worth. Oh, and one of the desserts was topped with gold flakes. GOLD. We definitely felt like we didn't belong there... and I'm pretty sure everyone else there felt we didn't belong there.

To make us feel more out of place, we walked around afterward looking at the stores. There was a £94,000 cellphone, which was encrusted with diamonds (that's about $136,000). I found a Marc Jacobs bag I wanted, and it only cost £1,600. Even the puppies in the Pet Kingdom cost about £3,000. The only thing I could afford at Harrods was the rose I stole off our table at tea.

So for today, I had intentions of running in Hyde Park this morning, and I woke up to do so and everything. Then I looked outside and saw how dreary it is, and climbed back in bed. I should probably let go of this "I'm not going running if it's not nice out" attitude, otherwise I will never go running here. It's always going to be gray out.

However, in about an hour we have a tour of Parliament, which is going to rule.

Housewife.

In Art and Society today, we visited St. Paul's Cathedral and climbed the 528 stairs to the top (good thing I didn't buy a gym membership here!). You weren't allowed to take pictures inside, because it's disrespectful to worshipers, but you know what I say? I'm going to hell anyway. Might as well take pictures. I only got yelled at for it once!

It was absolutely beautiful inside, though. We learned in class beforehand all about its history and the architect, and the past behind this cathedral is incredible. Old St. Paul's, the first cathedral, burned down in the Great London Fire in 1666 (like the rhyme, "In 1666, London burned like sticks"). When rebuilding this one, the architect had studied a lot of Italian style buildings and wanted to create something in that style. There was a concern, however, about the building looking too Catholic, since it's a protestant church and not a Roman Catholic church. The architect presented a very boring idea first, probably to throw them off, and they said it was too modest because it looked too much like the first one and they wanted to use this opportunity as a clean slate (they were also going to create central London into an easier grid pattern, but people wanted their EXACT properties back after the fire... selfish people. Didn't you realize hundreds of years later I would be here and be completely confused by your complicated city layout?!). This gave him creative grounds, however, to present a much more radical idea: the dome shape. They thought this was much too Italian, so he drafted a new one which had the traditional narrow steeple at top and just a small dome underneath... but being the sassy architect he was, he went ahead and built what he wanted to anyway. I like him.

Other than that, today is Housewife Day. I am doing all the things today that you prefer not to think about when you think about how cool it would be to live in a flat on your own: cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping. Cleaning is no problem, my room is only a little cluttered from my care package materials (yes, my family and boyfriend sent me the raddest care package, equipped with candy, peanut butter, and cough medicine). Grocery shopping is incredibly annoying because I feel like I live there part time, but I do need to eat so I'll suffer.

Laundry, however, is a whole new animal. First of all, let's talk about the outrageous price. One washing machine costs 4 pounds to use. 4 POUNDS. That's about $6.36! That doesn't include the dryer either. The dryer is 20p (p = pence, which is like .20... if you have five 20p coins, you have 1 pound) for 3.5 minutes. Um, 3.5 minutes? So, I have to spend another whole pound to dry my clothes for less than 20 minutes?!

And if you're like me, your clothes are important to you, and you don't want to shove them all into one wash and have colors bleed all over the place and garments get destroyed. So, I have to separate my laundry into lights, darks, and towels/sheets. Well, the machines only take 20p or 1 pound coins. I was short on these, and the lady didn't have enough change to break my 10 pound bill. So, I only had enough money to do two loads (towels/sheets, and darks), and could only dry them for 17.5 minutes. That did absolutely nothing. Plus, I washed darks because most of my clothes are dark and my light load is very small, so I'm hoping to combine it with a friends light color load. However, majority of my underwear is light in color, so I still have only a few pairs of underwear now.

Even better? I have all my towels and clothes hanging up all around my room. Literally not a single space that can occupy an item isn't covered. I have underwear strung on my door handle. There are towels on my shelf. Sorry Mom, but the Dr. Seuss book you gave me for graduation is holding up underwear right now. I can't even sit on my chair because it's occupied by socks. My sheets are draped throughout the kitchen because I ran out of space in here.

I have reached a new level of ghetto.

Busy.

I didn't post yesterday about my day. Sorry, mom.

Wednesdays are London Adventure Days. A good amount of us don't have classes on Wednesdays, or get out of class early, so every Wednesday we are going to do fun London activities from now on. Yesterday, Izabela, Rosie, Ellen and I had a nerd day and went to Harry Potter's platform 9 3/4 (which would have been much more exciting if I was able to at least finish the second book), and then to the Sherlock Holmes Museum on 221b Baker Street (duh). It was so cool! The man there pretending to be Sherlock Holmes was absolutely darling, and took a picture with us. They had figures of people from all different Sherlock Holmes stories, displaying murder scenes or the way people died in the different stories. They also had a binder filled with letters people send to Sherlock Holmes, which was adorable.

Then we checked out a Beatles store, and went to this French pastry cafe which was delicious. It was Australia day yesterday, so Rosie (who is Australian) made sausage burgers for all of us and a few of them went out to different pubs that were celebrating Australia day. I had to be up early today for class, so I skipped out after dinner.

However, the ball has been rolling with planning different European trips and excursions.

Friday, January 28: ISA trip to Hyde Park and tea at Harrods.
Saturday, January 29: ISA trip to tour Houses of Parliament.
Sunday, January 30: ISA trip to Tower of London and doing a Jack the Ripper walk.
Tuesday, February 1: We're going to go see "Totem," a cirque du soleil show!
Saturday, February 5: ISA trip to Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick Castle.
Wednesday, February 9: ISA trip to BBC World Studios tour.
Thursday, February 10-13: MOROCCO with Rosie!
Saturday, February 19: ISA trip to Brighton.
Wednesday, February 23-28: TOULON, FRANCE with Ali, Jessica, and Adrienne!
Wednesday, March 2: ISA trip to Victoria and Albert Museum and Natural History Museum.
Friday, March 4-7: AMSTERDAM with Izabela, Ellen?, Amanda, Cori, Mike, and Sam!
Thursday, March 10: STEVE COMES TO VISIT! =)
Saturday, March 12: ISA trip to Stonehenge and Bath.
Sunday, March 13: ISA trip to Cambridge.
Wednesday, March 16: PARIS with Steve!!
Wednesday, March 23: London Symphony Orchestra to see Tchaikovsky #2.
Friday, April 1: MOM AND DAD COME TO VISIT! =)
Sometime between April 1-8: PARIS with Mom and Dad!
Sometime between April 8-22: IRELAND AND SCOTLAND FOR A WEEK with Izabela, Ellen, and possibly Rosie, Kristen, Amanda, etc.
~Thursday, April 22: JIM COMES TO VISIT! =)   (well, somewhere around there).
Monday, April 25: My 21st birthday!
Friday, April 29: The Royal Wedding!
Saturday, May 7: ISA trip to Windsor Castle.
Sometime in May: CROATIA and PRAGUE!! 
Thursday, May 19: ISA farewell party.
Saturday, May 28: MILAN for my summer internship!

Also, on two random weekends somewhere, I will be going to see Jessica in GRAZ, AUSTRIA and see Adrienne in SEVILLA, SPAIN!

So, as you can see, I have been very busy planning out the next few months. This is all very lovely to think about, but at the current moment I need to focus on the problem at hand: I HAVE to do laundry. Two days of wearing dirty underwear is two days too many.

Day Tripper.

What a beautifully productive day.

I rose bright and early this London morning to begin my day with seeing Ali Blumenfeld. We were meeting at the St. John's Wood tube station to eat a light breakfast at the Beatles Coffee Shop and then go to Abbey Road. I got there before Ali, so I walked around the surrounding area a bit and took some pictures. It's really a lovely neighborhood. The coffee shop was mildly disappointing, because I anticipated it being a large coffee bar with Beatles paraphernalia, merchandise, and mementos all over the place, like a Hard Rock Cafe tailored to the Beatles. It was a tiny space (and when I say tiny, I mean about half the size of my room here tiny) with a few different coffee drinks, a couple breakfast bars and sandwiches, and some Beatles souvenirs.  The Yellow Submarine coloring book was pretty cute though.

Then we walked to Abbey Road. We recognized it instantly not from the crossing itself, but because what other street crossing would be lined with people with cameras? We took pictures of it, but determined that since we have addresses here, we are not tourists, and would not take the stereotypical tourist crossing-of-Abbey-Road-like-the-Beatles picture (though, I am going back with some other friends and we WILL take this "look at me, I don't belong here" picture). We saw the Abbey Road Studio, and the ledge in front of the studio is covered in graffiti about the Beatles and people visiting. Of course, we signed it too. The earliest date we could find on there though is 2010, which means they paint over it fairly often. That's amazing to me, because it is literally COVERED in signatures. SO many people come out all the time and sign it! Just shows how much people love the Beatles, even in 2011.

Then I journeyed home, and then to my Marketing Communications class, which I walked in literally just on time for (because after Abbey Road, I was hungry and chose to eat something and leave myself minimum travel time rather than not eat). I stopped at the grocery store on my way back from class to mainly buy laundry detergent because I wanted to do my laundry tonight, since I am out of underwear, but apparently they close at 5:30.

Let's talk about the grocery store for a brief moment. I absolutely hate this about London. I feel like I'm ALWAYS in the grocery store! Normally I can just do one bulk buy, and not have to go back for a couple weeks. Not here. Since we have to walk everywhere, you can only buy as much as you can carry back walking. Since I'm a wimpy little girl, I can't buy more than two bags worth at a time. It's very telling that there isn't a grocery store with carts, only baskets... nobody can ever buy a carts worth of food at once! I'm going back there again tonight to finish my grocery shopping.

The past few days have been absolutely wonderful though, because I'm going out and doing things I want to do. I saw Jessica on Friday, saw Ali on Sunday, went to Portobello Road yesterday, and went to Abbey Road today. Tomorrow, Izabella, Kentucky (we have two Mikes in our group, so one is just called Kentucky), and maybe a couple other people are having a London day adventure. I am so excited. London is much more enjoyable when I'm doing things I want to do, rather than just going out because other people are.

Portobello.

I'm a daytime person. Some people are "morning people," others are "night people," but I'm just a daytime person. I made a list of everything I want to do in London, and they all happen during the day. I believe this is another reason I may not have been the happiest this trip: everyone seems to get their fun at night. We go out to pubs and clubs, and that's our time out in London. I don't like this, really. I don't care for the club life, and drinking is not necessary to have fun. We sit around all day until we go out at night, where I'm used to doing stuff during the day and then sitting around at night.

So, I'm making a conscious effort to do stuff during the day. Yesterday, Kim, Amanda, and I went to Portobello Road. It's this cute market area in Notting Hill, right outside the Notting Hill Gate station. It's not as expansive as the Camden markets, but it's still really cute. I love the houses, they're all pastel colors with different colored doors and remind me of Edward Scissorhands. We went to this burger place that was absolutely out of this world. I swear that burger was about the size of my head. Yeah, I champed it out. I showed that burger who was boss, and took a toll on the french fries (or chips here in England) and onion rings as well. They didn't know what hit them.

Ready to be proud of me? All I bought at the market was two posters. One is a psychadelic one of The Beatles, another is a black and white photo of Big Ben with the Underground sign in color. My room needed some artwork to make it look less like a closet-sized mental institution.

On the way back, we stopped in the Tottenham Court tube station, which is absolutely covered in the most gorgeous mosaic artwork. I want to just spend an hour there walking around and looking at it all.

To continue my Beatles kick, I'm off now to the Beatles Coffee Shop and Abbey Road with Ali before I go to my marketing class.

Smokin'.

Last night, we went to Cafe de Paris again, and it was a complete letdown. It wasn't nearly as cool as it was last week. The crowd was much different. Half the guys were gay and going at it on the dance floor, the other half were straight and going at it with girls on the dance floor, and everyone else was either creepy or just straight up rude. Bummer.

Today though, I went out to this adorable pub I went to last week called "The William Blake" with one of my best friends Ali! It's so weird that I've seen more friends from Montclair here in London than I did before I left. We had one of our usual heart-to-hearts, and we're definitely going to see each other often. I'm so excited!

Then, just now, the inevitable happened. Yes, while I have been cooking just fine for myself, I knew it couldn't be long until disaster would strike. I was making stovetop popcorn, and it all looked fine and seemed like it would be a successful late night snack. However, I was blissfully unaware that all the popcorn on the bottom of the pot had burned, so when I dumped it into the bowl, the smoke was uncontrollable. I opened all the windows, and put the pot by the window to let the smoke leave straight out the room. However, the pot was still hot underneath, and we just had our windowsills painted last week, so some paint came up on the bottom of the pot. I knocked on my flatmate Adams door, and said, "Hey, remember when I told you I couldn't cook but you didn't believe me? Yeah, well, how sensitive are our smoke detectors?"

Adam is a Slovakian knight in shining armor. He came into the smoke filled kitchen, helped me unlatch the windows to open them even more, and helped me get the smoke out of the room. Then, he proceeded to tell me a story of two guys who set off the smoke detector last semester because they were smoking in the room and they were fined 500 euro each. LOVELY. He offered me some microwavable popcorn of his, which I politely declined, and we went to our separate rooms. He then knocks on my door and hands me a bag of chips. My flatmates are darling.

My clothes reek of smoke, though.