Flowers or shoes?

Caitlin, Kevin and I went to the National Gallery today. We had fun wandering around Trafalgar Square, taking pictures of pigeons on top of statues heads, rasta children playing instruments, and people doing sidewalk chalk. We then met up with Paul and went into the Gallery. I got a little sick of the section we started in, since three quarters of the paintings were the Virgin and Child, but I got a good laugh when we went into another room and there was one where she was launching milk into his mouth. I don't think that's quite how it works, but whatever makes the painter happy, I suppose.

I found a "fish of the painting" in one of the really big ones by someone representing the four elements, and my favorite painting was in a sort've little room- it was a French family having hot chocolate in a really pretty garden. I also liked Casanova's lover that decided to marry a really rich, much older guy instead.

I was sort've done looking at paintings after an hour and a half, and the other three hit a wall about a half hour later, so we literally walked into the last five rooms we wanted to do, glanced at the walls, and left again.

When we left, we noticed tons of police around Trafalgar Square, and some barricades and whatnot, so we went up to one of the armored trucks blocking traffic and asked the head of a riot squad what was happening. There was going to be a march and a protest about Gaza in a little bit. We ducked into an "American style diner" and got some pizza and milkshakes, finished pretty quickly and sort've wanted to get going, since our abroad advisors all warn us not to get caught up in protests. I finally had to go ask for the bill so we could pay and get moving, but we still had to walk through the edge of the crowd that was starting to gather.

Best sentence I heard on our way by?? "Now look at what happened to Bush; President Obama has to ask himself, 'Do I want flowers thrown at me for bringing justice to the Palestinians, or shoes?'"

Now I'm about to go make some cheese puffs I got at Budgens and just watch a movie on my own and go to bed early, since I am very overtired.

Haggling on Brick Lane

I eat way, way too much. I got out of my adventure stories class (some girls stopped me and were asking where in America was from, and said that my saying "Maine, the top-rightest one" was much more helpful than people using their hand as a map and pointing out their states), went to the gym, came home, and ate a huge serving of mashed potatoes and some fishsticks. I sustained another burn on my hand while flipping said fishsticks. (I also have one on a knuckle from flipping cheese puffs that Shidvash and I made the other day, and another one from oil spitting at me while Vanessa and I were making quesidillas Monday night. It's the week of the burns for me...). I then ate ice cream until it was time for class again. After my last class, I made a pizza and Vanessa came over so we could figure out what we wanted to do that evening, and when I was halfway through my pizza I heard her saying on the phone, "Oh, I don't know if we can go out to eat, my friend is having dinner right now."

Of course I said I still wanted to.

Luckily we decided to get a late dinner, and a few of us and Haider (Vanessa's friend) met up and hung out at Haider's flat for a bit, and talked with him, a flatmate and her boyfriend. James, the boyfriend, actually worked at a summer camp in Massachusetts over the summer, so he really enjoyed talking about Boston, and Rii kept trying to get us to talk about stereotypes of British people, which I couldn't really come up with since I was pressed. After hanging out a bit longer we caught a bus and went to Brick Lane.

Brick Lane is FANTASTIC. It's a bunch of curry places, which all have exactly the same menus, and workers have to stand in the doorway and make you deals to come inside, and what you're supposed to do is ask them for their absolute best offer, and say that so-and-so down the road was offering more percent off and free drinks, etc etc. It was so much fun! Haider was trying to get us to haggle in a British accent, but I opted out of that... I still got us a deal for ten pounds a head- two free rounds of drink, a starter, a main course, and then rice or nan- but we decided to go to the place that had won an award for best curry the last three years (recommended and haggled for by a Perfect Fried Chicken worker on that road, actually- so I guess I indirectly got us that deal as well, since I made us stop so I could go to the bathroom). We only had one free round of drinks at Papadoms, but that was plenty, and I left and was finally legitimately full! It was delicious. I'm totally just going to go haggling on Brick Lane when I get bored.

Whale of a Tale

I actually had fun in Actuarial Maths tutorial today, I'm back into the swing of algebraic manipulations to solve problems, and I did really well on my last homework sheet. Plus I had the first tutor thus far who actually over-explains, which is awesome. Usually they half-answer a question and rush off.

We watched Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for my adventure stories class today, and boy do I have a whale of a tale to tell ya. The room we were in was innocuously named Arts G19, but it's actually "The Alfred Hitchcock Studio." It looks like a mini old-fashioned movie theater- carpeted, a couple rows of stadium seating with large, red plush movie theater-style seats (but way more comfortable and with padded arms), and a red curtain that pulls back from in front of the projector screen. I personally enjoyed the classy love seats set up in front of the chairs, and enjoyed my movie viewing curled up on one of those. I'm seriously taking pictures sometime, it was really really nice.

I met up with Vanessa after that, and we went to a Chinese food buffet with a friend (Hassan, I think) who's been helping her with her computer. While we were there, four of his friends came in and sat down with us, and we ended up staying and talking for three hours. It was really fun; a lot of the guys were slightly disgusted by my idea of microwaving a bit of Nutella to function as hot fudge to put on ice cream, but Damien thought it sounded like a good idea. Granted, this is the kid who established a four-plate minimum for the buffet. I also really enjoyed how they were planning to put a whoopie cushion on a professor's chair, thinking it seemed like the greated prank of all time. Maybe it's only overdone in the US?

I'm finally almost done with my reading for tomorrow- just one more chapter!- and have actually finished all of my maths homework that's due Monday. Vanessa and Caitlin came over and we all talked for a while, and I helped Vanessa with her probability homework a bit; I also finished making my mint brownies, so those are in the fridge ready to go for tomorrow!

You've done too much math iff...

I felt really, really stupid in Diff Eq this morning. I don’t really remember trig tricks- so substituting in the derivative of theta for 1/q^2 + 1 dq just doesn’t occur to me any more, and I feel like the tutors are getting sick of talking me through it. Though my crowning glory was “wait, how do I integrate z(x)dz?” “The same way you integrate xdx… (*funny look*)”
It’s sort’ve depressing that I’ve transcended normal math so far as to fail that epically at regular calculus things. At least Alycia was having the same problem. Give us a proof involving rings and groups and we’re golden, but semi-tricky integration and substitution? Not so much.
Napping ensued, of course.
After that we had Magic Me, which is the volunteer thing I’m doing. We talked a bit on campus before we left, and then went to the nursing home. I got paired with a lovely woman named Elsie, who pretended she was more deaf than she was and teased me (I loved when she called me a show off for sitting with my legs tucked underneath me), but legitimately had a poor memory. I wished that Catherine, the coordinator, had mentioned how she jokes BEFORE we went, since I didn’t quite know how to react when she said, “I’m not important,” on numerous occasions. Apparently that is also a joke, and I should have laughed. Which I did a bit, since that’s who I am, but if I’d known better I would’ve been able to laugh more. But she seemed a bit sad to see me go, which was very nice.
I talked to some of the other girls a bit on the way back to campus, and then I went over to Shidvash’s flat; she made us pizza and these yummy cheese balls from Budgens (I am SO buying some) and then we watched Bride Wars on a website… said site is going to be the cause of my failing out of school, incidentally. Being able to watch any movie I want for free? Okay.
I went back to my room and Caitlin came over; we almost did a photo-scavenger hunt through ISH, but when we were trying to solve the last four clues we were having no luck at all, so we decided to quit, and went to Drapers with UF Kevin instead. Vanessa and Hilary met up with us there, and we ran into Phil and Adib and their friend Greg. We talked for a while (including sharing jokes about physics vs. math people, and a rather deep discussion about the concept of "zero"), and then danced around a bit (they started playing eighties music, how could I resist?) and one of my friends’ friends was teaching me how to salsa, which was a lot of fun.

Americans Go Free!

So today started out spectacularly well; I dragged myself out of bed early and met up with Vanessa at nine. Today at Madame Tussaud's, in honor of Obama's inauguration, Americans got in free (with passport proof). On the register, it said "DISCOUNT: AMERICANS GO FREE," which made us laugh.

I'm so glad we went early, it was really fun to be able to take our time to go through and do the place right. We took a bunch of pictures of us chumming with celebrities on the red carpet (both of us felt very underdressed for the occasion, however) and then proceeded to... the High School Musical room!! Okay, you're judging me. But I don't care, we got a fun picture of us with Zac Efron, and encountered a guy dressed in a male cheerleader outfit who was almost too enthusiastic about getting people to "shake a pom-pom with Zac!" He made us jump for a professional photo and shout "WILDCATS!" and told me that he really liked my shirt ("Make cupcakes, not war"). When we were leaving, he was explaining to the next group of people that "you all get to jump, the next group in has to do the splits." (Note: when Velossa and I were waiting in line to take our Obama picture, we looked at the screen that showed the professional ones... said cheerleading guy was doing a full front split in one of them. He was crazy! I want to be his friend.)

After that we got to movie characters and directors, and we again had a fun time posing with those. I was disappointed we could get closer to the Indiana Jones one, but I was very happy with the picture I did get. We proceeded from there to the sports hall- again, some very fun pictures- and then to the royal family. I thought the picture frames around Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth were a bit awkward, but we dealt with those, and the line for the pictures with the Queen made it really awkward to get Princess Diana pictures, but we dealt with that as well. The famous painters, writers, and thinkers of the past were entertaining to tool around with as well (you really should just check out the photo albums on facebook at this point in time if you haven't yet). The musicians were also cool- though we almost missed Justin Timberlake (I have no idea how). Also, I wish that there was space to sit on the couch with the Beatles, that setup was a bit awkward.

Waiting in line to get Obama pictures was totally worth it, and I had fun with the other important leaders of the past and present (Napoleon, Tony Blair, making fun of Hitler...). The Chamber of Horrors was sort've weird, and we went through this "ride" called "SCREAM!" It was neither scary nor a ride nor very interesting to look at... though it might've been scarier if the actors didn't jump out at the people in front of us, which sort've softened the jumpiness factor.

We hit one more room of celebs and then, tucked away in corners of the gift shop, were Charlie Chapman and Mr. T. Why were they hiding? The world may never know.

Diff Eq is such a random class... the examples are so easy, I do them in like two seconds in class and then space out while he does them out, but then the homework problems are a lot harder.

After Diff Eq Caitlin, Vanessa, UF Kevin and I met up and went to Drapers, where we watched the inauguration. I enjoyed the typos on the BBC's close captioning (some examples, though there were many that were much better in Obama's speech: "could survive" became "could-sur-viv" and "true to God" became "true to the O'God." Apparently God became Irish??) Also, I was sort've annoyed with the BBC newscasters, since they were talking over the instrumental to tell us that President Obama wouldn't die of pneumonia in a month (coughHarrisoncough). I felt that that was a bit unnecessary. Also, when Biden was getting sworn in, they were talking about something along the lines of how they hoped that he wouldn't need to take another set of oaths any time soon. Jeez, trying to jinx us much?

Major props to Aretha for calling out Georgia during My Country Tis. I sort've wish she'd gone on to name the rest of the states, too.

After that, the four of us went to The Half Moon for dinner. Yummy food, and pretty cheap, too- they have some good deals there and a nice, varied menu. And awesome desserts!

After attempting chunks of my maths homeworks (Why maths? Because it's mathematics, which is plural, so maths has to be plural, too. At least that's what I've been told...) it is time to go to bed, though.

Let me leave lecture, please.

Rolled out of bed fifteen minutes before Diff Eq started, yawned my way through class, fixed a homework problem and turned in my assignments (the layout of the maths building makes NO SENSE), decided to just do weights at the gym and not cardio so I could go back to bed.

My day, take two: Architecture was really interesting. My professor was making fun of Ruskin (a critic) who "never used one sentence when he could use twelve." When I got back to my room after, my books for my Adventure Stories class had arrived, so I read two pages of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and read some funny lists on cracked.com.

In Actuarial, everyone talked incessantly (as per usual). Now one would think, since they get to class a bit late and talk the whole time, that they don't really WANT to be in class. So how come it takes ten minutes to get out of the room at the end? And being stuck in the middle of the row, I have to wait for everyone to clear out so I can get out of the lecture hall. I sat quietly, so I want to get the heck out, thankyouverymuch. It might be in my best interests to start showing up a bit early so I can get a seat near the exit in the future, which I guess will require me to leave my room more than three minutes before class starts.

Vanessa came over to Skype her mom, and then we ended up watching "Can I have yo numbah?" and other online video classics; we made dinner together (Mander would be so proud! I recreated a mini-Mexican Fiesta Feast). I am proud to say that I can now make very delicious cheese and chicken quesidillas from scratch (well, I mean, I bought the tortillas and the chicken and the cheese, it's not like I grew the wheat and plucked the chickens and what have you). Also, I only sustained one small burn on my arm! There might be another on my collarbone actually, come to think of it... at any rate, the oil did not spit at me tootoo much. We talked for a while more after cleaning up (with our very satisfied tummies from the quesidillas and refried beans) and made some tentative plans for later in the week. I was also trying to remember how to find the probability of a monkey randomly typing the word "hamlet" on a typewriter to help her with her homework, hopefully I did it right.

Perfecting Grocery Shopping

I set my alarm to go to the gym today. True to form, I turned it off and went back to sleep.

Next time it went off, I got up to meet with Vanessa and Caitlin to go to Sainsburys for groceries. We smartened up this time and took the bus from campus to the store. While in the store, rather than writing off everything I couldn't find as a lost cause, I asked where it was, meaning I finally found q-tips (ie, cotton buds- I had to ask for and describe them to three people before we figured out where they were) and all of the stuff to make my chocolate mint brownies (very excited about that!). We took the bus back- the right one this time- and there was much happiness. Huzzah! There were a couple British men who seemed quite happy to be on the bus, too, considering they burst out into some very British song (I can't remember what it was, but I'm pretty sure it's from a musical). Their friend shooed them off the bus pretty quickly, though.

I video-Skyped home today, it was really entertaining. Mum picked up Lilo and had me say her name, and unsurprisingly all she did was move to a different couch and go back to sleep. When she picked up Nemo, though, he cocked his head towards the computer screen, so I said his name again; he set about trying to free me from the computer, so then Er had to come free the computer from him.

After having a quick snack, I finally went to the gym (go me!) and then went over USC Kevin's flat to work on Diff Eq homework, which was very productive. Dinner and finishing both my problem sets later, we walked down Mile End and then into this sort've sketchy neighborhood to Adib and Phil's apartment (the British people I met Wednesday) and played Supersmash for a while.

I was going to go to bed early, but I got caught up in IMing and Skyping various friends, which was really nice; Keens and I have a very vague "Italian travel" plan now, so we'll probably call again soon and figure out exactly where we want to go. I'm so pumped for that!