brighton
super big update of life since four days ago.
i had wednesday off and so i slept in and as people were trickling back from their theatre class i left to wander around. i went to oxford circus. many super-expensive boutique-style clothing stores, which i wandered in and out of, finding very little. i found an h&m and did some unexcusable shopping. wednesday night liz, anna, katie, and i had a great pasta dinner with wine from the corner store. liz said she loves doing hair so later that night after we'd showered, she did fancy blow-drying/ straightening for both anna and i. my hair does not look that good unless i've just been to have it done. i was awed.
yesterday was a long day. i got up for class, which was at 10:30. because i had super-fab hair courtesy of miss ervey, i got a little dressy and wore a black twirly skirt and slouchy green blouse-shirt thing with the necklace jenn brought back for me from the beach. most of us had our first political science class. the professor is so very attractive. he reminds me of jude law, only with very dark hair and a slightly broader face. his accent is almost exactly like jude law's. he is such a sharp dresser- beautiful greyish suit with a brown alligator belt and matching shoes, steel blue tie. heads turned as he moved around the room and every girl sat up straighter. he's so excited about british politics. he'd talk and get distracted and stare at the carpet and talk animatedly on and on. it was really cute. after class katie and i had lunch at a small café and met everyone back at f.s.u. to go to the museum of london. we had a worksheet to do but some exhibitions were closed off and eventually we just gave up. around four, the six of us going to dinner at jim's gathered and decided to aim for his neighborhood early because the directions were confusing and we wound up on the tube with jim and his family by accident. once there, we found a cute terrace café and had a glass of wine and a snack to keep us until dinner. we bought jim and tiff a bottle of chardonnay and headed over around six. their neighborhood is ridiculously nice. apparently jim got to pick a place to live and drew arranged to pay for it. it's a gated community where the kids, emily and olivia, can play in the street with other kids and no one has to watch them. lovely flat as well, with french doors that open onto a small balcony that overlooks the street. so we had a few glasses of wine, and tiffany made crepes that we heaped with spinach chicken herby tasty goodness. every few minutes emily, who is five, in every good and bad sense of the word, wandered into the room, picked a girl from our group and said "excuse me, i need to show you something" and we had to follow her into her parent's room, where each of us were weirded out in turn by our proximity to baz and tiff's bed, and she made us play on barbie.com with her. this went on all night. two glasses of wine, fifteen minutes on barbie.com, two glasses, barbie.com... for desert we had crepes with ice cream, nutella, strawberries, lemon curd, and whipped cream. so very good and tasty. i am in love with their other daughter, olivia. she's two and the most precious little girl i have ever seen. i actually want to call her princess. she has the softest voice and i can't help but watch her when she's around. she preceeds nearly every noun with "teeny tiny." emily got bored with barbie fashion and wanted to brush my hair and when she demanded a brush from her mom, tiff decided it would be safer? better? to play with makeup. i don't see her reasoning. thankfully, emily and olivia only wanted to paint themselves, not anyone else. olivia just kept asking for "sparkles on my lips." it was adorable. emily wound up with eyeliner above her eyebrows and across her nose and lipstick smeared down her chin. tiff asked if any of us would be interested in babysitting and every girl in the room raised her hand. we all got home late and crashed. we all got up ass early this morning to take the train from king's cross to brighton. brighton: relatively large and well-known seaside resort on the southern coast of sussex county; about an hour and twenty minutes from london. until today the only thing i knew was that in jane austen's pride & prejudice, a regiment of british soliders was reassigned to brighton and sixteen-year-old kitty went with them as a guest of a colonel's wife and she ran off with mr. wickham and her virtue was compromised. i <3 jane austen. on the train across from where liz and i were sitting was a husband and wife with a tiny toddler. the father looked like ewan mcgregor, circa trainspotting, sans the heroin. cropped hair, casually tight jeans, baby blue polo shirt. i realized then i will have to find a husband in europe because men in the states just don't look like that, dress like that, or carry themselves that way. also, his wife looked like ass, and i'm not just saying that, she really was hideous, but this says wonderful things about him, because he obviously loves her for more than her looks. other people seconded my theory later in the day, because we discussed this.
suzie, our english professor, met us at the brighton station and took us on a quick little tour which paused at the royal pavillion, built by some king to house his secret wife while the real one stayed in london. silly bigamists. the palace looks relatively like the taj mahal outside and on the inside has a lot of dragons and bamboo-esque decorations. lots of fancy shit; i wasn't too impressed. the tour continued through small back streets and concluded just short of the brighton pier, which stretches out into the english channel. we split up and the boys had lunch at a fancy outdoor place and the rest of us went to a chinese lunch buffet. the thing i miss most about america is that waiters automatically bring water and it's full of sweet sweet ice, and when the glass nears empty, someone leans over your shoulder with a pitcher and refills it. i doesn't even occur to waiters here to bring water, and you have to specify that you want it with ice or it'll be room temperature, and what good does that really do anyone? after lunch we met the boys again and katie, lauren, and erin, our program assistant, went off to see the pier. we thought we were going shopping, but then we wound up on the beach, which is covered in large pebbles rather than sand. at first this is very uncomfortable, especially when the stones try to eat your flip flops. we rolled up our pants and stood at the water's edge, where the beach drops away sharply. the boys skipped stones. the water in the channel is cold but not as cold as i expected for a country at roughly the same latitude as ontario. while harder to walk on, the pebbles are ridiculously comfortable to sit and lay on. i loved it. after a bit, oliver decided to go swimming and was followed by first kevin, sarah, victoria, zach, aubrey, and when we convinced her that she wouldn't drown, anna, who spent most of the time clinging to kevin. sam, liz, and i stayed on the beach and took pictures and made fun of them when they got out and complained about wet pants. after everyone cleaned up a bit, we ventured onto the pier and through the hideous and awful arcade. we finally reached the amusement park and were instantly ten years old. five pounds for ten tokens. victoria and i rode a roller coaster slash tilt-a-whirl that is most upsetting because it looks like you'll go right off the edge and into the water. then a couple people rode the bumper cars, and then we rode one of those crazy rides where you sit in a car thing and it just swings you upside-down and around. halfway through, we heard a huge cracking sound and anna freaked out, and the laughing stopped. everything was fine and we obviously weren't plummeting toward the ground, so i was fine, but she wasn't really okay until we were well clear of it. at this point liz realized she didn't have her wallet and fell apart and we went back to the bumper cars and she walked onto the floor not realizing that people were zooming around. the attendant yelled at her with some sort of scandinavian accent. he'd found her wallet and all was well, but she was still upset and nearly hugged him. he was hot. he said he knew how she felt because he'd lost his documents. she only realized that he was super scandinavian hot in retrospect. he also drives those bumper cars like a madman. strangely thrilling. a few people went to the haunted house, and then most of us had two tokens left, so we climbed the weird fat lighthouse, grass mats in hand and rode the shute that spiraled down to the ground. the view over the edge of the rail into the water is unnerving but fabulous and we all scraped and scratched ourselves sliding and coming to a stop at the bottom. silly europeans and their lack of safety codes. we left the pier and people slowly broke off, heading back to the station and home. finally it was sarah, victoria, liz, and i. we browsed through little shops along cobblestone streets. i bought a lime-green bracelet for two pounds. we ran into erin at the train station and rode back with her. at (edit) king's cross, at her suggestion, we found platform 9 3/4, and there's an official (edit) king's cross station sign marking it and a baggage cart sticking halfway out of the wall as if passing through the barrier. obviously, there is now a photo of me holding the handle of said cart. i'll post it when erin sends it to me. there are also many other photos which will be up soon.
back in kilburn liz and i got dinner makings at sainsbury's and ate here at home. the plan had been to go out but everyone is tired and trying to conserve some money. half the group stayed in tonight and the other half is next door at the queen's arm getting drunk with the old people who frequent that pub. tomorrow i believe we're all going out to get smashed after we go to visit the el cheap weekend market whose name escapes me at the moment.
i'm going to go try to finish alas, babylon now. what a good book.
have i mentioned that i love it here?
i had wednesday off and so i slept in and as people were trickling back from their theatre class i left to wander around. i went to oxford circus. many super-expensive boutique-style clothing stores, which i wandered in and out of, finding very little. i found an h&m and did some unexcusable shopping. wednesday night liz, anna, katie, and i had a great pasta dinner with wine from the corner store. liz said she loves doing hair so later that night after we'd showered, she did fancy blow-drying/ straightening for both anna and i. my hair does not look that good unless i've just been to have it done. i was awed.
yesterday was a long day. i got up for class, which was at 10:30. because i had super-fab hair courtesy of miss ervey, i got a little dressy and wore a black twirly skirt and slouchy green blouse-shirt thing with the necklace jenn brought back for me from the beach. most of us had our first political science class. the professor is so very attractive. he reminds me of jude law, only with very dark hair and a slightly broader face. his accent is almost exactly like jude law's. he is such a sharp dresser- beautiful greyish suit with a brown alligator belt and matching shoes, steel blue tie. heads turned as he moved around the room and every girl sat up straighter. he's so excited about british politics. he'd talk and get distracted and stare at the carpet and talk animatedly on and on. it was really cute. after class katie and i had lunch at a small café and met everyone back at f.s.u. to go to the museum of london. we had a worksheet to do but some exhibitions were closed off and eventually we just gave up. around four, the six of us going to dinner at jim's gathered and decided to aim for his neighborhood early because the directions were confusing and we wound up on the tube with jim and his family by accident. once there, we found a cute terrace café and had a glass of wine and a snack to keep us until dinner. we bought jim and tiff a bottle of chardonnay and headed over around six. their neighborhood is ridiculously nice. apparently jim got to pick a place to live and drew arranged to pay for it. it's a gated community where the kids, emily and olivia, can play in the street with other kids and no one has to watch them. lovely flat as well, with french doors that open onto a small balcony that overlooks the street. so we had a few glasses of wine, and tiffany made crepes that we heaped with spinach chicken herby tasty goodness. every few minutes emily, who is five, in every good and bad sense of the word, wandered into the room, picked a girl from our group and said "excuse me, i need to show you something" and we had to follow her into her parent's room, where each of us were weirded out in turn by our proximity to baz and tiff's bed, and she made us play on barbie.com with her. this went on all night. two glasses of wine, fifteen minutes on barbie.com, two glasses, barbie.com... for desert we had crepes with ice cream, nutella, strawberries, lemon curd, and whipped cream. so very good and tasty. i am in love with their other daughter, olivia. she's two and the most precious little girl i have ever seen. i actually want to call her princess. she has the softest voice and i can't help but watch her when she's around. she preceeds nearly every noun with "teeny tiny." emily got bored with barbie fashion and wanted to brush my hair and when she demanded a brush from her mom, tiff decided it would be safer? better? to play with makeup. i don't see her reasoning. thankfully, emily and olivia only wanted to paint themselves, not anyone else. olivia just kept asking for "sparkles on my lips." it was adorable. emily wound up with eyeliner above her eyebrows and across her nose and lipstick smeared down her chin. tiff asked if any of us would be interested in babysitting and every girl in the room raised her hand. we all got home late and crashed. we all got up ass early this morning to take the train from king's cross to brighton. brighton: relatively large and well-known seaside resort on the southern coast of sussex county; about an hour and twenty minutes from london. until today the only thing i knew was that in jane austen's pride & prejudice, a regiment of british soliders was reassigned to brighton and sixteen-year-old kitty went with them as a guest of a colonel's wife and she ran off with mr. wickham and her virtue was compromised. i <3 jane austen. on the train across from where liz and i were sitting was a husband and wife with a tiny toddler. the father looked like ewan mcgregor, circa trainspotting, sans the heroin. cropped hair, casually tight jeans, baby blue polo shirt. i realized then i will have to find a husband in europe because men in the states just don't look like that, dress like that, or carry themselves that way. also, his wife looked like ass, and i'm not just saying that, she really was hideous, but this says wonderful things about him, because he obviously loves her for more than her looks. other people seconded my theory later in the day, because we discussed this.
suzie, our english professor, met us at the brighton station and took us on a quick little tour which paused at the royal pavillion, built by some king to house his secret wife while the real one stayed in london. silly bigamists. the palace looks relatively like the taj mahal outside and on the inside has a lot of dragons and bamboo-esque decorations. lots of fancy shit; i wasn't too impressed. the tour continued through small back streets and concluded just short of the brighton pier, which stretches out into the english channel. we split up and the boys had lunch at a fancy outdoor place and the rest of us went to a chinese lunch buffet. the thing i miss most about america is that waiters automatically bring water and it's full of sweet sweet ice, and when the glass nears empty, someone leans over your shoulder with a pitcher and refills it. i doesn't even occur to waiters here to bring water, and you have to specify that you want it with ice or it'll be room temperature, and what good does that really do anyone? after lunch we met the boys again and katie, lauren, and erin, our program assistant, went off to see the pier. we thought we were going shopping, but then we wound up on the beach, which is covered in large pebbles rather than sand. at first this is very uncomfortable, especially when the stones try to eat your flip flops. we rolled up our pants and stood at the water's edge, where the beach drops away sharply. the boys skipped stones. the water in the channel is cold but not as cold as i expected for a country at roughly the same latitude as ontario. while harder to walk on, the pebbles are ridiculously comfortable to sit and lay on. i loved it. after a bit, oliver decided to go swimming and was followed by first kevin, sarah, victoria, zach, aubrey, and when we convinced her that she wouldn't drown, anna, who spent most of the time clinging to kevin. sam, liz, and i stayed on the beach and took pictures and made fun of them when they got out and complained about wet pants. after everyone cleaned up a bit, we ventured onto the pier and through the hideous and awful arcade. we finally reached the amusement park and were instantly ten years old. five pounds for ten tokens. victoria and i rode a roller coaster slash tilt-a-whirl that is most upsetting because it looks like you'll go right off the edge and into the water. then a couple people rode the bumper cars, and then we rode one of those crazy rides where you sit in a car thing and it just swings you upside-down and around. halfway through, we heard a huge cracking sound and anna freaked out, and the laughing stopped. everything was fine and we obviously weren't plummeting toward the ground, so i was fine, but she wasn't really okay until we were well clear of it. at this point liz realized she didn't have her wallet and fell apart and we went back to the bumper cars and she walked onto the floor not realizing that people were zooming around. the attendant yelled at her with some sort of scandinavian accent. he'd found her wallet and all was well, but she was still upset and nearly hugged him. he was hot. he said he knew how she felt because he'd lost his documents. she only realized that he was super scandinavian hot in retrospect. he also drives those bumper cars like a madman. strangely thrilling. a few people went to the haunted house, and then most of us had two tokens left, so we climbed the weird fat lighthouse, grass mats in hand and rode the shute that spiraled down to the ground. the view over the edge of the rail into the water is unnerving but fabulous and we all scraped and scratched ourselves sliding and coming to a stop at the bottom. silly europeans and their lack of safety codes. we left the pier and people slowly broke off, heading back to the station and home. finally it was sarah, victoria, liz, and i. we browsed through little shops along cobblestone streets. i bought a lime-green bracelet for two pounds. we ran into erin at the train station and rode back with her. at (edit) king's cross, at her suggestion, we found platform 9 3/4, and there's an official (edit) king's cross station sign marking it and a baggage cart sticking halfway out of the wall as if passing through the barrier. obviously, there is now a photo of me holding the handle of said cart. i'll post it when erin sends it to me. there are also many other photos which will be up soon.
back in kilburn liz and i got dinner makings at sainsbury's and ate here at home. the plan had been to go out but everyone is tired and trying to conserve some money. half the group stayed in tonight and the other half is next door at the queen's arm getting drunk with the old people who frequent that pub. tomorrow i believe we're all going out to get smashed after we go to visit the el cheap weekend market whose name escapes me at the moment.
i'm going to go try to finish alas, babylon now. what a good book.
have i mentioned that i love it here?