So far I've been having a great time in "foggy London-town" as the great 18th century novelist Kim Kardashian calls it. (I don't think she calls it that.) (I don't think she was alive then.) (She's stupid.)

Anyways, yeah.. good times to be had. Right now there's a ladybug in our flat flying around. It's really wonderful, it's just like being home around the dinner table with Asian beetles attacking the 1980-make gold-rimmed chandelier.

It's weird because I'm starting to feel like I'm not in such a foreign place anymore, and sometimes feel like my surroundings are getting.. dare I say it.. mundane. Not completely, of course, just the walks that I do most frequently, like from the flat to the tube or from the tube to my internship. But I enjoy living in the city and can't really picture myself living not in a city.. What an eloquent statement. But it's true, I think I definitely need to relocate to a city after I graduate. It just feels more at home to me than say, a certain town in Minnesota... ;)

But alas, I'll be done gushing about city life. Here are just a few posts from me being a tourist the last few days, this weekend I'm off to Amsterdam so I'll probably do one more post (an Outdated VHS Movie of the Bi-week, perhaps?) before I leave. :)

xx

Oh, the "English" language. From talking to people more, I'm realizing that American English is so much more different from English English than I thought.. it's weird. (I don't even know if that sentence makes sense in either English??) But regardless, it's really funny and entertaining to listen to at the same time. For instance, they still say 'plait' instead of 'braid' ...it's seriously reminiscent of the 1700's. I'd feel like a settler on the prairie if I said was going to plait my hair. They also pronounce a lot of words strangely to me. Here are a few that stick out to me; 

- "Z" ..Sure, this isn't a word but I'm including it on the list because they pronounce it differently. While learning the alphabet, as I hope anybody who is reading this did, Elmo taught us to say the letter Z like 'zee.' Here that's not the case.. Z = 'zed.' I do not know how that happened to get warped when the Puritans got their colonial on, but it's really confusing at first. For example; there's these map books called London: A to Z which the college has. Bill kept saying 'if you need to rent out the A to Zed's.. blahblah' and so I just thought the title of it was London: A to Zed. I don't know, maybe Zed is some kind of cul-de-sac or map term or something.. who knows. Regardless, when I get to my internship they also have different codes of which were referred to as 'Zed-1, Zed-2, etc.' It wasn't until I saw that all of these things were Z1, Z2, Z3, etc that I realized 'zed' is just how they pronounce Z. So I'm giving you super helpful advice if you have any encounters with letters or codes, see? Moving right along...

- "Status" ..Believe it or not, British people use Facebook. With Facebook comes statuses; completely commonplace phrase. However instead of the traditional 'st-aht-us' as any American would say, they pronounce it 'stay-tus.'

- "Literally" ..This one is Abby and Melissa's favorite word pronunciation of the Brits, so I'm including it. Instead of saying it as it's spelled - 'liter-allee' - they shorten it a bit to 'lit-rellee.' I have no idea if those phonetic spellings make sense to you, but they do to me. If not, oh well. It's my blog, not yours.

- "Aluminum" ..A completely random word, yes. But instead of 'aloo-min-um' they pronounce it 'al-you-min-ium' or something along those lines. It's completely hilarious to me.. it sounds like a Harry Potter spell. If you ever meet a Brit, just ask them what the silver tin foil is. It's really funny, I swear. I may start using this in my everyday life, if I can remember how to pronounce it.

- "Tomato" ..You know that really catchy Top 40 Pitbull song 'You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato'? That's a real thing. Indeed here it's called a 'toe-mahhh-toe' not 'toe-mayyy-toe.' But they to say potato, not usually 'po-tah-toe.'

They also say 'wingardium levi-OH-sa' instead of 'wingardium levio-sahhh..' [sad trumpet wah wah wah plays here..]

After that pathetic joke/reference, I will now leave you with this quip about British accents that was actually in a pros and cons chart about American English versus British Pronunciation: "Americans love RP [Received Pronunciation]. If you speak RP in America, people will think you are intelligent and the opposite sex will take more interest in you."

Right you are, about.com. Right you are. Thank you for publishing that jewel of an article.

(Bolding for emphasis in that section not provided by me.. that was seriously there.)

Until the next time I plait my hair with aluminium and write a status about it;

 xx

Ignore my horrific title of this.. I couldn't think of anything. So "yum-day" it is.. ha hahah. *jumping off cliff now*

Anyways, I wish it were Sunday so it would be market day! Brick Lane and Spitalfields are my favorites that I've been to thus far. So much delicious food.. so little time. Markets here are generally only open on Sunday mornings/afternoons, due to it being traditionally the only day of the week that workers had off, and instead of going to church everyone would go out to the markets. With all that delicious food, I don't know if I can blame them..

My family can look forward to all their Christmas presents being from the markets.. :) haha.

Until next time,

xx

So, after a few hours of researching, we thought we had found the perfect club. It was in the O2 Arena, an area known for its epic concerts, and it was a Saturday night, the favored night of the week by 98% of society due to it's strategic location between Friday and Sunday.

Clubs are a tricky thing.. especially in a city such as London. Sometimes they're fun, filled with dancing and flirting and the odd couple making out not-so-discreetly in the corner. Other times they're filled with the 25+ crowd (aka the 40-year-old+ businessman crowd..) and ripe with aforementioned awkward businessmen looking for a girl to make them feel like they're Hugh Hefner or something. (Ew, I know, but I'm just being honest.)

Anyways..

We had thought we found a great place. It was a little pricey and across town, but for four floors of house music, DJ's and themed nights we thought hey - that's okay. Look at all of these options, look at these cool pictures of people dancing, look at this nice interior design. All appears good on the homefront.

Ha! Ha! Ha! If only I had listened to the wise words of Thomas Jefferson.. "Never judge a club by it's website." But alas, continuing on...

As we walk off the tube, there's quite a large stream of people going both ways on the sidewalk - promising. That means people have acknowledged this as a place that exists... great. Better than arriving at some barren alleyway somewhere. So we walk into the O2, which is quite an impressive place. Much to my surprise there's MULTIPLE clubs here.. egads! What kind of magic is at play here?! As we walk past there's restaurants pumping music, different songs from different places every few steps.. music usually means FUN. So this is a good sign.. but alas. None of these were the club we were looking for.

Side note: the O2 is like as if the Mall of America was put inside of the Metrodome.. seriously. It has the white Dome top and has tons of shops and restaurants like MoA. ..Why yes, I am from Minnesota, why do you ask?

Regardless, as we're walking I can't help but notice that nobody else is walking this far down the hallway. Right before I start to get discouraged, I see these big metal barriers for queues with signs on them for the club.. which is all very professional-looking, but there's no line.

There stands a security guard and another guard of some sort. They ask "Do you know what night it is?" and I respond "No? Do you know what night it is?" After establishing that I truthfully don't know what night it is, they tell us that lots of people are dressed up in costumes.. things like police officers, nurses, things like that. After giving an awkward pity chuckle to try and escape this bizarre exchange of words we walk on through the barriers, wondering what exactly they were talking about.

At the end of the barriers we run into Adele!!! Not the actual Adele, of course, but she bore an uncanny resemblance and probably knew all the words to Rumor Has It. ...Just saying. But after Adele asked if we were on the guest list (obviously not..!?) we went through.

But wait - we aren't in the club yet. No, no. After navigating through two more sets of doors, a few flights of stairs and another set of doors, we hear the bass.. we've finally made it!

After our eyes adjust to the dark, it soon becomes apparent that everyone is, in fact, dressed in costume. We, in fact, are not. In fact, we seem to be the only two caucasians there.

Now, it's not like I've never seen people of a different race than me.. no. That's not it. It's just the fact that I've never really been smack dab in the middle of a Major Lazer video before. Some revelations were made in that moment by me:

1. Oh my god, I really am a white girl from rural Minnesota.
2. Oh my god, daggering is a real thing.
3. Oh my god, oh my god.
4. I hate being the only person not wearing  a costume.

So yeah. I mean, I don't really know how else to describe it except there was a guy robot-spazz dancing with the head of the statue of David on a podium. I also think we were the only two people who hadn't done ecstasy upon arrival to this place..yeeeeah... so. A very interesting night nonetheless, definitely the most "awkward white person" I've felt ever in my life.

Upon leaving, Adele looked at us very concerned and asked if everything was okay. I guess I need to work on more discreet facial expressions of "what the hell just happened to me/where was I/this isn't where I parked my car."

Until my next awkward life experience...

xx

It's no secret that I love street art. ..Well. Maybe it is? But if you didn't know, now you know: I love street art and graffiti. It's an artistic response to urban surroundings, and it provides a little something beautiful and unexpected when you come across it on the street. I respect the artists who do it so much, and part of the reason why I love being in a city, especially London, is that you come across it daily. Here are a few pictures I've taken of some of the street art here. We have a great big Shepherd Fairey 'Obey Giant' piece right by where I live, but at the moment it's all covered by scaffolding so I couldn't get a good picture of it. Anyways, I'll shut up now.. ;)

The last piece I was THRILLED to come across, because it's by my utmost favorite artists, Roa. A lot of his stuff is around Brick Lane, but I didn't have a ton of time to explore and find more, other than this stunning heron. Clearly, I'm obsessed. I don't care. Anyways, hopefully I'll find more (and have my camera on me as well) so that I can do another London street art post. :)

Hope your weekend is wild,

xx

Why don't we use electric kettles in the United States? They're so useful, and they boil water in maybe 30 seconds or so.. Oatmeal, tea, and anything that requires boiling hot water has never been made so quickly.

I will be sad to leave the electric kettle. But I plan to enjoy it while I can..

Live long and prosper, electric kettle. Except not in the United States, where people would rather boil water on the stove.

xx

So this weekend I took a trip with the college to Avebury, Glastonbury, Wells, Bath and Stonehenge. It was a lot of fun, not to mention that the English countryside is gorgeous! Driving through it I immediately thought of my dad.. maybe I'll buy him a retirement home there after I make my millions. ;) The countryside is filled with fields, sheep and cows, and is every shade of green you could think of. It's quite stunning and peaceful, it's hard to believe that it's only a few hours drive away from the bricks that are London.

We started our trip off in Avebury, which is a neolithic site of huge concentric circles, the outermost circle being a mile in diameter. It doesn't look like much, certainly not as well-preserved as Stonehenge, but the countryside where it's located is gorgeous and a lot less touristy than Stonehenge. The only downfall is that it is covered in sheep poop. Covered. It was like walking through a mine field, because there were these giant pieces of poop everywhere. And where there wasn't poop, there was slugs who were giant and black and looked like poop. So it was a lose-lose situation wherever you decided to walk. I wish I could say that this was only at Avebury, but sheep are everywhere ergo.. their poop is everywhere.

Next we went to Glastonbury, which is the site of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey as well as the Tor. Glastonbury Abbey has many legends associated with it, amongst the most famous are that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's bodies were found buried there by monks, and that the Holy Grail was brought here and buried by Joseph of Arimathea. Looking at the ruins of the abbey and trying to imagine the sheer size that it must have been is a little mind-boggling, considering there's really not that much left of it.

Climbing the Tor was beautiful.. an easy walk compared to Arthur's Seat. Way back when it used to be an island called Avalon, but today it's a large hill with one part of a monastery left on top. It is quite beautiful, and there are sheep all over it.. obviously.

A side note about Glastonbury; there are weird spiritual shops EVERYWHERE. Magic, psychics, tarot card readers, crystals to heal you, magic water.. yoga studios. Haha. Let me put it this way - if you ever wanted to purchase acid, you'd probably purchase it here.

 Next up on our little jaunt across the English countryside was Wells, which is a small town but there's a beautiful abbey there, and it's just very quaint and cute all around. There are also swans that ring a bell when they want food there, which we didn't get to see, sadly.

After that, we finally made it to Bath, which is a World Heritage Site. It's gorgeous, it's built on hills so it's basically like Duluth, except that it matters more to the heritage of the world. But there we visited the Roman baths which used to be here when it was called Aquae Sulis back in the day.

 And then we went to Stonehenge.. Which is not nearly as large as you're lead to believe. It's still impressive, but at the same time it's a little bit of a letdown too. I think most people just like it for the photo op. I have many more pictures from all these places in my Facebook album, because I didn't want to make this a ridiculously long post, because it already is one! Regardless, Stonehenge was really pretty but I must say I did like Avebury better.. Plus there weren't any sheep at Stonehenge (!!!? I know right) so that got some cool points deducted from it.

That was a long post. Oops. Until my next obnoxiously long post..

xx