Rain Drops Are Falling On My Head

Well, this week can be summed up in one word. Rain. It has rained basically all day, almost every day for the past week, which has really put a cramp in my style. In addition to making me habitually cold and basically ruining my favorite pair of shoes, the rain forced us to cancel our weekend trip to Bath, because the rain had flooded everything. Hopefully we can reschedule it for next weekend. Despite the rain, this week has been full of action.

I started off the week pretty typically, with a long day at work. Monday was the first time that I actually felt busy the entire day, researching statistics and creating profiles on the constituency that my boss is running for, Ealing Central and Acton (yawn, I know). After work though, I did something that may shock those who know me well. I skipped class. I know, I am such a bad person for it, but I had my reasoning. Instead of going to my Perspectives on Experiential Learning Abroad class (which I am not receiving a grade at Michigan for), I went out to a pub in Ealing with a few of Brett's friends from Australia, Gaby and Sam (female). I learned the nitty gritty of their adventures down under (perhaps sometimes a bit too much information, but hey, that happens) and learned that Brett pretty much talked about me non-stop with everyone there. It was actually a little bit scary. I would start to tell a story, and these girls would just say, "Oh, this is the one where..." I kinda killed my conversation skills. 2 Strongbow and a pitcher of Pimms and Lemonade (which is Sprite here) and I headed back to my humble abode all the way in Islington. I returned to a bit of conversation with my roommates before our midnight 21st birthday celebration for Tomás. We bought him a cake in the shape of a bustier and put relighting candles on each of her boobs. After storming into his room and singing things got crazy. As we made our way to the kitchen (aka the Social Club) to cut the cake, Ray attacked from behind opening up a thoroughly shaken can of beer and pouring it all over Tomás. This was when Raquel decided it would be more memorable to smash the cake on Tomás' face rather than eat it. Meanwhile I am capturing these precious moments on video tape. Needless to say a food fight ensues and with beer covering the floor things get a little slippery. One wipeout and ungodly amounts of cake in hair later, the boys cleaned up and the girls retreated home, sides hurting from laughter.

Tuesday had an early start as I left for the airport to pick up Reggie at 6am. I was working from home for the day, so I spent the hour and a half ride to Heathrow airport doing more profiling, this time for the neighboring constituency of Ealing Southall (the Member of Parliament for this constituency had died the week before and it was unclear if it would be an open election or a woman only election, so Onkar wanted to be prepared to run there too, just in case). After waiting at Heathrow for almost 3 hours Reggie finally came through customs. Apparently he had been hassled at customs because he didn't have an address for where he would be staying, and also didn't have my phone number to prove that he wasn't going to come into the country and disappear. Needless to say, they finally let him through. We headed back to the flat and I finished up my work for the day. When we finally were ready to head out, we headed to Piccadilly Circus, bought tickets to see Mama Mia, and then went to the Natural History Museum. This museum was pretty cool, because there were a lot of things that would never be in a museum these days. It was a little sad but they had tons and tons of stuffed birds (mostly acquired during the colonial days) from all over the world. Another big attraction in this museum was a dinosaur exhibit with tons and tons of complete skeletons and a section just about how scientists figure out how the various dinosaurs acted, what they ate, etc. One thing that I have noticed about British museums is that they are very reading intensive (similar to this blog). Cases are all crammed with stuff on display, and each piece has a three paragraph explanation of what it is. Not very conducive to those with a short attention span. We stayed at the museum until closing, then headed down the street for some yummy pizza and pasta. After dinner we went to Piccadilly again, met up with Raquel and headed to the Prince of Wales Theater for Mama Mia. We were in the second row (holler student day of discounts, tickets were only £25) and it was amazing. The music was great (who doesn't love a little ABBA?) and the acting was great (not to mention there was a high proportion of young eye candy in the cast, some of which appeared shirtless... yum). We were singing along and dancing in our seats (and towards the end out of our seats). Raquel and I were in heaven, and even Reggie gave it a thumbs up. Great night.

Wednesday was slightly less glamorous. I went to work, as usual, and sat in the attic completely alone all day. Unfortunately I had missed an email from Onkar by about 10 minutes when I was leaving in the morning saying, "I might not need you today, give me a call and maybe you can spend the day with your friend". But since I was already in Ealing, Onkar and Mark (the person who I technically work for, but I have never met) found me a task since Onkar was in Oxford for the day. I finally finished up around 3 and headed to Kensington Gardens to meet up with Reggie. As soon as I got there it started raining and continued raining all night. After walking through the gardens and seeing Hyde Park we got on the Tube and grabbed some dinner. We ate at Pret A Manger (French for Ready to Eat or something), a slightly pretentious sandwich shop, sporting only all natural foods. I was actually a bit surprised, because the prices weren't ridiculous and the food was excellent. I had a duck wrap and a caramel cheesecake. Both were delicious. After dinner we headed down to Tower Hill and took a Jack the Ripper tour. While the tour was very interesting, it was pouring the entire time. I guess it added to the mood. Unfortunately it soaked us to the bone (even though we had an umbrella) and sent us home freezing cold. Day one of hating all the rain, no longer accepting "That's London for you" as an excuse.

Thursday was frustrating and pretty boring. Once again I could have been done with my work by about 2:30, but Onkar held me back once more. Instead of just getting things done, he was always off doing something random and unnecessary, especially making phone calls to friends. Thursday was slightly intense because this was the day that we officially found out that Southall would be an open election and Onkar was planning on running for both constituencies. Basically that meant that I had to do everything that I had done in the past two weeks in one day for Southall. I was very organized and got everything done, but Onkar, on the otherhand, was not as on top of things. When I finally just told him that I was leaving for the day, I was free from UK politics for a few days. I headed back to my flat, where Reggie was waiting for me after an equally unproductive/ frustrating day. After gathering our strength once more, we headed to the White Swan for our weekly ritual of Curry Night. While the food was delicious, I have a feeling that this was our last united Curry Night. Like every other Curry Night, Ellen and I ended up getting excluded (this time accompanied by Reggie) as everyone else moved outside to smoke, then decided to stay there. Frustrated from a long day at work and frustrated from the lack of manners of the rest of the group, Ellen, Reggie and I headed back to Charles Morton Court (the name of our building) and killed a bottle of wine before bed.

Friday was another touristy day. After my Friday morning class about London and the England 1885-Present (which I attended without Ellen or Raquel, and obviously without Reggie), I met up with Ellen and Reggie and we headed to the Science Museum. However, on the way we were met by Anna, a fellow Washington Center student who has more or less moved to the fringes of the program because of her clingy, princess, compulsive liar ways. I felt bad that she doesn't really have many friends in the program, so I invited her to come along with us. Before reaching the museum, we decided that we would eat our packed lunches in the garden area of the Natural History Museum. Anna refused to sit and eat outside (and didn't have a lunch packed) so she went into the Natural History Museum to find food. While we were eating the rain basically stopped, but everything was still wet. Being adventurous, we pressed on. After finishing lunch, we finally made it to the Science Museum. This too was very reading intensive, and my attention span was basically nil. Raquel finally met up with us at the museum, and it basically turned into Ellen, Raquel, Anna and I sitting while Reggie looked around (my feet hurt!). After the Science Museum we headed to Tower Hill once more (minus Anna, who went to the Victoria and Albert Museum) to try to see the Tower of London. Unfortunately it was already 5:00pm, and the Tower closed at 6pm. While this might not have normally deterred us, the £15 ticket price did. We did, however, take a look around the perimeter of the Tower and crossed over the Tower Bridge (NOT the London Bridge as many believe) and headed to the other side of the Thames. Here we went to the London Dungeon, a very touristy attraction that is supposed to scare you, complete with wax figures of Jack the Ripper's victims, piles of dead bodies from the Plague, Sweeny Todd's barbers chairs, etc. Think Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyworld, but not as advanced. There was even a river boat ride. While it was ridiculously cheesy, we had a good time. After our narrowly missed impending deaths, we headed back to Islington for some dinner and to recharge (aka change and sit down for about 30 minutes) before heading back downtown to Oxford Circus to some pubs there. They were pretty typical pubs, O'Neill's and Shakespeare's Head, complete with good conversation and beer (or Strongbow, in my case). The Shakespeare's Head even had a guy playing the guitar and singing. It was great. The rest of the group headed out for more adventures, but Reggie and I opted to head back, seeing as he had to leave my flat by 6:00am. Little did we know that we were also headed for an adventure. Slightly drunk, I got us on the bus going in the wrong direction, but I didn't notice for about 10 minutes. When we got off the bus, we were on a one way street, making finding the corresponding bus in the other direction more challenging to find. We finally found a bus that would work, but Reggie's travel card had expired, since it was after midnight. So we got kicked off the bus. We decided to try to find a different bus, and about 30 minutes later we were finally safe and sound on the N73 (after buying a bus pass, because I was not about to risk getting kicked off another bus and having to wait another 30 minutes for the next one). To congratulate ourselves on safely getting home, we picked up a doner kebab (yum), and finally made it to bed around 3am.

It was very rough having to wake back up at 5:30 to take Reggie to the Tube Station so that he could make it back to the airport in time for his flight. And of course, it was still raining. I came back home, took a nap for a few hours, then we were back on the game with breakfast, then out to see London's Gay Pride Parade. It was pretty great. There was such a mix of people and groups represented in the parade. There were the people dressed up crazy in dresses and feathers and the whole nine yards, then there were people dressed totally normally. One of our motivations to go see the parade was to see Tomás, who was representing the Respect Coalition (basically the British Communist party). The whole time it was pouring pretty hard. After the parade we went to lunch, then slowly attempted to make our way to Hyde Park, where there was a concert scheduled. Rumor has it Savage Garden was going to be playing at this concert. But after lunch we got held up, because the boys wanted to go into Hanley's toy store. An hour and a half later we were on the way again, only to make it about a block before stopping to get Cadbury McFlurries at McDonalds. After ice cream, the rest of the group decided that they didn't want to go to the concert anymore, mostly because of the rain, and wanted to go to the movies instead. Ellen, however, did not want to go to the movies, so her and I tried to find the concert at Hyde Park. We never found it, although I would assume that it was long over by that time, because we had taken almost 4 hours to get over there. After being totally soaked to the bone, Ellen met up with a friend and I returned home to Charles Morton for a bit of research and trip planning (booking hostels and such) before turning in for an early night in bed.

And finally, today, Sunday. Today was another whirlwind kind of day. I woke up early and was motivated to clean my room (gasp!) and even clean our kitchen. After that, I began updating our little virtual meeting grounds, but was then offered a day of fun London activities. I couldn't pass it up. We went to Camden Market where I spent lots of money and haggled for fun little gifts, including a lovely little top for myself. After Camden, Anna, Abby, and Christine and I (yes, a new group! I didn't know what time everyone else came back last night, and I didn't want to sit around all day waiting for them) went to Kensington Gardens and took a tour of the palace and saw the Princess Diana exhibit. It was really interesting seeing all of the different rooms in the palace, a lot of which were still equipped with original furniture. There were also lots of ladies court gowns, gentlemen's court attire, paintings, and all kinds of little things that were very interesting to see and learn about. Each person on the tour was given a little tour headset sort of thing so that you could hear commentary about each room (there had better of been something fancy like that for £10!). All of it was very interesting, and even better, no reading! After fully exploring the palace, we headed to Trafalgar Square, where we rendezvoused with RJ, Raquel, and Sean to celebrate Canada Day. Unfortunately the Canada celebration had been Friday (even though today was the actual Canada Day). So we decided to look for a bar near there called the Maple Leaf. We ended up changing plans and went to another pub that was ungodly crowded, but fabulous. It was like a frat party. We all bought a round and headed outside to socialize. We met some really cool people, particularly an ex-professional skateboarder, and a Swiss bank employee, both of whom were madly in love with me. We bonded on our understanding of cold and snow (everyone else in the group near us was from Florida, California and El Salvador). My game was so on that I not only got myself a free drink, but got everyone else in my group a drink as well. Oh yes, I am that good. After that intense celebration, we headed to Abbey Road and did the typical tourist thing. We all took our pictures crossing the street, Beatles style. The funny thing is Abbey Road is in an essentially residential neighborhood. But I am sure by this time people around there are used to it. After we got our pictures, we headed back home, with a stop at a nearby McDonalds (hey, don't judge us. We were really hungry and on a budget!) for a bit of grub. Now I am about ready to turn in here seeing as I have to be awake in 6 hours for work. BUT, on the positive side, it only rained for about 30 minutes today, then was pretty sunny the rest of the day. Unfortunately, rain is forecasted every day at least until Wednesday. Crap.

Exciting things this week:

Tuesday: Start my new job at DODS
Crashing the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix premier

Wednesday: Attempting to celebrate the Fourth of July. We are planning on taking hot dogs and potato salad to work for lunch, then going to get some BBQ somewhere, hopefully

Friday: Ministry of Sound (a church that has been converted into a sweet dance club)

Saturday: Portabello Road Market

Sunday: FINALLY the trip to Bath, Salisbury and Stonehenge

Tune in again to find out if you favorite characters will survive the rain, car bombs and flaming vehicles. All on... TALES OF LONDON!