Since I'm wayyyy behind...

Apr. 27th, 2009 at 01:57 pm

Friday, 17 April
After getting off the airplane from Italy, I caught a train and then a couple trams to my friend Paul's home in East Croydon. We were supposed to have a pool party but it was drizzly and dreary, so instead the group of us went to a pub; it was very nice and in good condition, so it felt weird, since I'm so used to Hayfields. I didn't really do much there, just talked a bit with a girl named Matilda who was visiting from Sweden, with her stepsister Matilda, who is friends with Damien and Paul. Otherwise I just stole sips from people's drinks and revelled in the burger that was in my tummy, since I was very very hungry (seriously, I inhaled it in under a minute, go me!). I fell asleep watching TV with them after the pub closed.
Saturday, 18 April
I was supposed to go shopping in Camden with everyone, but since I needed to go back to my room to drop my stuff off, I ended up not going... I was so tired, so I just sort of collapsed instead and used it as a rest day.

Sunday, 19 April
I met up with Carly and her family near Hyde Park, and we went and got a nice big lunch at a pub and talked a bit. Nachos here are very interesting- the chips are actually more like Doritos than tortilla chips. But sooo delicious. It was really nice to hang out with them, little bits of home are always good.

After lunch, I went to read in Hyde Park for a bit and enjoy the lovely sunny day while I waited for Caitlin and Hilary to make it in to meet up with me. I was excited to see them, since I hadn't for quite a while by that point in time- I think it'd been three weeks since I'd seen Hilary, and I'd only seen Caitlin once in that span of time. We wandered around Hyde Park, and then I think we ended up in Kensington Gardens a bit. We passed a giant group of rollerbladers (I mean giant, there were over a hundred people) on our way to check out the Peter Pan statue, the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, and the Italian Fountains. It was lovely and hot out, so there were lots of people rowing and doing paddling boats on the ponds, and even a couple people swimming, and lots of people playing in the Princess Di fountain. As we wandered around we talked about the trips we'd taken and shared some funny stories, generally catching up, then eventually made our way over to Speaker's Corner. There were loads of people up on soapboxes, talking about different things- some wearing very interesting outfits, as my facebook photos will soon show. There was also a group of people doing free hugs, and Hilary took two.

On our way to the tube, we passed the "Animals in War" memorial, which was a bit dramatic and cheesey, but still a cool thought.

Monday, 20 April
I have no idea what I did earlier in the day, I think just some work, but in the evening we went to go see Les Mis, which was most excellent. The whole cast was very talented, but Epamine had a killer voice, and Javert was also very impressive. I wanted to take Gavroche and little Cosette home with me, they were so adorable! We all put in 50p to these little contraptions and got opera glasses from them, since we were pretty far up back; they came in handy for solo numbers or if we were curious about someone's face, so it made our cheap seats very legitimate.

I didn't find this out until the next day, but apparently they were filming the cafe scene from Harry Potter 7 just a bit further down the street from us. How we missed this, I will never know, but I am so sad that I came so close to seeing Dan, Rupert and Emma, and we missed them.

Tuesday, 21 April
FREE ICE CREAM! Ben and Jerry's free cone day. Glorious. Vanessa, Damien, Caitlin and I went to Tower Hill and got in line; Damien took a cup off a tray they were carrying up the line to try to disperse it some, and then all four of us got cones (I love their chocolate fudge brownie). Then we went 'round and got back in line, and I got another cone.

Since it was another gloriously hot day out, we decided to hang out in the area a little bit longer, and wandered over to the Tower of London. They were just setting up for a demonstration of medieval warfare on the lawn, so we took a spot by the fence to watch the show for free (mwahahaha). At one point in time, when some of the paying customers were launching the trebuchet, one of the men asked if we wanted a go (since we were cheering loudly and participating as much as possible from our vantage point). When we said yes, he told us we should go buy tickets then, cheapskates! This prompted an adorable little boy on the field to pass by us a few minutes later and say, "Hey! You're cheap! Go buy tickets, cheaps!" There was also a kid who was hysterical to watch- when they were charging the Tower with a ladder, he tripped and fell, so a cast member said he stepped on a giant piece of metal; when they took up the charge again, the kid limped and hopped on one foot with the rest of the audience. Fantastic.

After our free show, we went through the line one more time- this time I took a freebie off a tray whilst waiting, but it was brownie in cheesecake and tasted a little funk, so I got a caramel chewchew at the desk. Don't worry, I did donate some money too! But it was a delicious, fun, free day, and I got a bit of a tan, so that was cool.

Wednesday, 22 April
I had a phone interview earlier in the day with a publishing company, Pearson. The internship sounded pretty cool- I'd be helping edit and publish a college level stats textbook.

That evening, we went to see Oliver! The show was fantastic- hoards of singing and dancing children. I want to take the Artful Dodger home with me, he was SUCH a ham. Also, Nancy had some serious lungpower. The stage was wicked deep, though it didn't seem it until Oliver started running upstage through the set and he got very, very tiny. I did the opera glasses thing again, which was a good choice. Also, I had to sit on my own for the first act, since they didn't have five tickets together- 4 and 1 was the best they could do. I switched off for the second act though. We were all a bit disappointed- I think Kevin and Hilary more so- that Rowan Atkinson wasn't playing that evening as Fagan, because he had had surgery recently. Twas a bummer, but alas.
It was boiling in the theater, so it was so nice when we got outside after and it was just slightly cool; we took a bit of a walk to Holborn rather than the Covent Garden station to get back to campus.