Madeline's Visit and how it resulted in awkward hover hands, Shakespeare, and running through London at 5am

So last weekend, Madeline flew from Lyon to London to visit!! Thanks to the GLORIOUS weather we got to spend a ton of time just enjoying the nature hidden in the city.

On Friday, we did some shopping around Oxford Circus where we both discovered the glories of Primark (think Forever 21 but cheaper and crazier - yes it’s possible). I found this awesome invention where tights have fleece inside to keep you warm - what a brilliant idea!

After, we went on a really long walk all around the city and hit up Hyde Park! Half of the park was still in summer mode with green leaves and sunbathers everywhere, while the other half was full of orange and red. I always find parks in cities amazing. It’s strange feeling the complete tranquility of a park and hearing the sound of nature only to remind yourself that you are actually in one of the largest cities in the world. Considering I love cities so much though, it’s almost a perfect balance of both! I get my hustle & bustle, but have a place to calm down when I want.

Notice: Evidence of Madeline’s awkward hover hand. This happened in EVERY picture hahah

In Hyde park, there is the Princess Diana Memorial which is one of the best designed memorials I’ve seen. You can’t see the full memorial just in one snap shot, but it’s a fountain where two streams at the highest point flow down in different directions only to meet at a calm pool in the bottom. Since it was a hot day, there were little kids playing in it and adults cooling their feet - I thought it created a really tangible connection between how much the people loved her when she was alive, and how much she is still alive in their memories today.

Saturday night, we got an extra ticket for Madeline to come see Much Ado about Nothing with us at the Globe theatre! We were the Underlings so we had to watch the entire 3 hour play while standing right in front of the stage just like “back in the day”! We were pretty tired by the end of it, but it was worth it.

Do you recognize the character on the right?

What about now?

Hahah ohh yeah, Leonidas was played by none other than Geoffrey the Butler by Fresh Prince! Does that make the play more or less legit?

Finally, come Sunday, it was time to bid Madeline adieu in the wee hours of the morning. She had a 6 oclock flight meaning we had to leave my apartment by 4:15. With full intentions of going to bed around 1 and getting at least a little bit of sleep, we ended up talking…until 4:15am. In our panic, we realized that the tube didn’t open until 6 which was fine for us getting there, but that I’d have to walk back alone at 5 in the morning. Thanks to Beccy’s many British Bits, I had already heard way too many horror stories of taxi drivers killing you when you go in a cab alone, so we called Matt about 800 times and begged him to go to the station with us. Thankfully and luckily, he was a great chum and we all ran as far as we could before we taxi’d the rest of the way to Victoria station. We finally got back to our dorm at 6am and I fell asleep until the afternoon.

Adventures with Madeline will soon be continued next month when we go to Paris together!!!

Also, shout out to Janet who is probably the only person in the world reading this right now.

Beccy's British Bit

I haven’t had much time to type up another blog post or upload any photos of what I’ve been up to, so I thought I’d post up Beccy’s British Bit! I’m hoping that this will be a regular occurrence while I’m here, but I’m essentially going to write down all the small things I’ve learned from Beccy, my wonderful British flatmate, over the weeks.

So here’s Beccy:

And here’s the British Bit:

• Do NOT do the backwards peace sign (two fingers sticking up with the back of your hand facing a person). This is essentially the F*** You sign over here. Our other flatmate Francesca found out the reason: apparently the French would cut off the two fingers of Brits during wars so that they couldn’t do archery anymore - thus it developed into a way of I guess either pointing out “we’ve still got our fingers and we can kill you!” or “we’ve got YOUR fingers haha!” We haven’t exactly researched this so don’t take my word for it. But DO take Beccy’s word that you shouldn’t use this sign.
• “Wanker” is actually a pretty bad insult. From my perspective, I find it absolutely hilarious along with “Oh bollocks!” but both are actually curse words and you’ll probably get punched in the face if you call a guy a “wank-uh”.
• “Pants” does not mean pants like it does in America! It actually means underwear. What we call pants they call trousers. Also, suspenders here is what garters mean to us. So if you’re a guy and ask where you can find pants and suspenders, you’ll actually be asking for underwear and garter belts. awkward..
• BISCUITS ARE AMAZING. I think I mentioned this before, but the word biscuit is   essentially an all encompassing category of cookies and “savory biscuits” (like Rits crackers). Beccy and I often go on our trips to Iceland (a grocery store, not the country) and they sell almost all their biscuits there for 1£. This of course kills me because I want every biscuit possible. So far I’ve tried…

  Party Rings. Really thin sugar cookies covered in loads of frosting.
  

  Jaffa Cakes. Cakes with orange jelly covered in chocolate:
  
  andddd my all time favorite, JAMMIE DODGERS. Shortbread cookies with delicious jelly filling inside.
  

• When someone asks you “Are you alright?” it really is just them asking “How are you doing?” or “What’s up?” The first few times I heard it I replied, “Uh..yeah..I’m fine..why?”
  
• This one is debatable: Beccy claims that British people generally don’t buy cake mixes where you just add water and egg. They usually make their puddings (cake) from scratch! But then Madeline and I (I’ll blog about that later!) found this entire section of cake mixes at Sainsbury’s. I will admit though, they tend to cook things “for real” here a lot more. I’m so used to microwaving everything! Maybe we’re just really lazy in America hahah

Well, I think that’s about it for Beccy’s British Bit for now! More Beccyisms/Britisms later!

Today, Max forked my Rainbow Cake.

Somehow I decided a while back that I was going to cram my entire life’s travels into the span of  a few months. After traveling back and forth between Philly, NYC, Martha’s Vineyard, and San Diego, I’ve finally ended up in LONDON. So here’s my life in London! I hope you enjoy!

One of the first things I noticed when I moved in to my apartments (aside from how horrible the traffic was from Heathrow to..anywhere) was how absolutely amazing my accommodation was. This is the view that I pass every day when crossing the Waterloo Bridge to go to our Strand campus!

  

Things at Stamford Street are pretty similar to my housing in Hill. We have a “flat” with about 8 other people and share a kitchen/common room, BUT we get our own tiny bathrooms. It’s actually kind of weird because it’s more like a shower with a toilet and sink in it (there’s no separate section for the shower!), but it’s still really nice not having to awkwardly meet your flatmates for the first time in a towel.

There’s been so much exploring this past week and just walking around London is beyond fantastic. The Thames runs through London so we’re constantly crossing bridges (and of course, taking touristy bridge photos), but it really makes for a beautiful scenery. A few of us went shopping along Oxford Street where there are about 5 H&Ms, a Muji (pen obsession), and every other expensive shop possible. One thing about London (and kind of Europe in general) is that all of the architecture here adds so much. It’s really cool wandering down a random street and knowing there’s so much history behind each building.

KCL’s version of NSO is this thing called “Freshers Week” and let me tell you, their student union ROCKS. KCLSU as they call it, actually has their own building on campus with a student run pub called “The Waterfront” AND a club called “Tutu’s.” Penn could definitely take a page from this playbook. KCLSU has been having events nearly every night and of course my flatmates and I had to go as the Spice Girls for 90’s Night…stereotypical? nahh. I found a random fanny pack that I was going to add to my outfit, and Beccy quickly corrected me (with a LOT of laughter), that I shouldn’t be saying “Fanny Pack” over here, because Fanny is slang for a girl’s privates. They call it a Bum Bag over here! I just about died laughing, and decided to not wear it in case I slipped the word again other people. Just kidding, I didn’t wear it because it looked hideous.

Beccy (Sporty Spice), Me (Baby Spice - I got forced into this one!), Anna (Posh Spice), and Francesca (Scary Spice).

Something that is really interesting is the drinking culture here. As everybody knows, the legal drinking age is 18 over here, so I’ve been able to go out to pubs and bars and what not. I’ve found that I much prefer the way things are over here - I can sit at a pub with everyone and nurse my Kopparberg (AMAZING Swedish fruit cider!) for over 4 hours and still enjoy the atmosphere with everybody else. It’s definitely more social which I find more fun.

Some of us here at the Waterfront. Notice the unfinished bottle in front of me that I started at 8. This picture was taken around midnight hahah

WEEKEND UPDATE

On Friday, I dragged Matt to the Malaysian Food Festival to “embrace my heritage” a little (in other words, eat loads of Malaysian food), and before we even got there, we stumbled upon ANOTHER food festival!! Oh the joy!! There were over 100 tents full of food food food food and in typical Madeline fashion, I took artsy pictures of random slabs of cheese and salami. We got a spinach and mushroom pie and tried samples galore.

We did, eventually make it to the Malaysian food festival haha. This is my joy at finding Roti Canai. We also had some Hokkein Mee yumm

On Saturday we joined a bunch of the American University students to go do all the touristy things all within walking distance of us! We went to Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Victoria & Albert Museum!           

And what do you know? I stumbled upon a Dale Chihuly piece!! That’s the second time I’ve done that! Or maybe he’s just got installations everywhere.

Later that night I dragged pretty much everyone possible back to the food festival for dinner and finally got the deliciousss churros I had been “sampling for the first time” about 30 times.

Today, Max, Beccy, and I (Fun fact, they are actually British. For some weird reason I’ve met more Internationals and American students than British students!) went back to the food market and found a stand closing up selling everything for 1 pound. How could we resist?

This is the cake that inspired the title of this post. How many innuendos can you make about a rainbow cake?

Another thing I’ve learned since coming here, is that “pudding” just means “dessert!” I tried to explain what “pudding” meant in America and called it “custard” (is that even right?) to which one of them said “We put custard on our pudding” haha.

Beccy and I got these amazing fried risotto balls. Seriously need to learn how to make these…

So yes, this here concludes my first post! Tomorrow classes begin, and I’m hoping I can keep up - wish me luck!

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