Chinese New Year

Gung Hoi Fat Choi!!

Well, it has been a couple of days since I last updated but there has not been much happening everyday except doing more work for classes. The weather is starting to get colder and nastier each day with brief breaks of nice sun coming through, which is nice.

On Friday, we went to a bar off of Mornington Crescent called Positively 4^th Street, which was supposed to be based upon a Rolling Stones song, I think. It was kinda cool, it more or less resembled a hipster pub/bar. It was also the first time that we met Mika’s girlfriend Noora, who is visiting for the next three weeks. It was fun, but the drinks were expensive, so we ultimately called it an early night.

On Sunday, they had the Chinese New Year celebrations for the previous weekend’s New Year. There was traditional Chinese dancing and festival style routines happening in Trafalgar Square. There was also lots of vendors in the streets surrounding Chinatown, which had amazing food. Jess and I wound up getting two of these chicken pie dumpling things, which filled me up so much that I did not even finish the second one. It was amazing though, spicey yet tastey all at the same time. We had ultimately though of staying dor the fireworks in Leicester Square but we considered the crowds and getting back to campus at a decent hour might be the better decision. There was work again from Golders Green all the way to Camden Town, which meant we had to take the bus making a usual trip time of 25minutes into almost 1.5 hours.

Otherwise, the weeks have been flying by and I can’t believe that next week is already March. Papers are finally coming due, so there is high stress at this point. I can’t wait to just turn these things in and just be done.

Chicken Dumpling!

Reading Week + Comedy/Italian Night

So, this reading week has gone by insanely fast and I feel right now that I still have a ton to do before papers start becoming due in 4 weeks. Scary, huh? But, I did manage in accomplishing to finish my critical review book for Global Politics, which was very interesting. I wish I had more time to just read it very leisurely, but right now I am on a time crunch. Hah. Gotta spend lots of time outside doing all the very London-y things aswell. :D

But for that class, I have been reading Our Choice by Al Gore, the followup book for An Inconvenient Truth. It was actually a very excellent read and I would definitely recommend it to anyone really. It truly takes on a devil's advocate position, it looks at both sides of the argument instead of taking on a this is bad, you NEED to do this NOW. I'm definitely going to have a not so bad of time writing the review of the book.

On to more exciting recap of the week, we went to a free comedy night and half price italian meal down in SoHo, by Piccadilly Circus, which was fun for being relatively cheap. We went to this italian restaurant named Nove, which had exceptional food, the service was eh and the portion sizes of the food was not nearly enough for me, but I'm nearly always hungry, so I guess that isn't the best way to rate something. I did wind up ordering the lasagna, which was fantastic by the way, but it was literally about 3inches by 3inches by 1inch. So after dinner, we headed over to the show, and on the way we stopped in this Belgium chocolate store and ordered several pieces of chocolate to only be shocked by the 9quid pricetag for only 8 pieces of chocolates. Granted after eating these chocolates they were the best things I have ever tasted in my life, but way too expensive to repeat.

We went to this comedy place nearby called the Source Below for this New York guy called Lewis Schaffer doing an act called "It's free until I'm Famous". He was funny but incredibly Jew racist, I'm really glad I didn't spend a lot of money to see it. But it was a good fun night and the place was kinda cool, very intimate setting, only about 45-50 people allowed downstairs.

Otherwise, right now, its Friday and I'm just sitting here doing work for class and then getting ready to go out for some fun later tonight. :)

-Your Ever Fearless Leader

Valentine's Day Premiere + Hyde Park + Football

So, wowza, time sure has been flying bye yet again and it has already almost been another week that I haven't blog. I swear, there just never seems to be enough time to blog and do everything anymore. It is kinda crazy to think about it that way. But onto the juicy weekly adventures...

So, on Thursday we headed out because the weather was somewhat decent and kinda just strolled around the area. The first place we went to was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which realistically is a fantastic museum, but it just seems like there is just sooo much history that it is just getting lost on me, ya know? Like after Italy, there are only so many ways you can depict the Virgin and Jesus, like there are only so many ways that you can look at tapestries and other old ancient things. They are amazing, like I still want to see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, but I feel like these things are just getting lost on me right now. After a couple hours at the museum, Cat, Jess, Mika, and I headed out. After meandering around the streets for a bit, we wound up in Hyde Park and had fun running around with the geese and swans, or maybe, just mainly me, while Jess and Cat snapped photos of my American-ness. Haha.

Me surprising Cat

Jumping for Joy in Hyde Park

Now with it being close to lunch time, we went to a small cafe around the lake and warmed up, while laughing over the ridiculous photos taken in the park.

After that, Jess and I got ready to head out to the premiere of Valentine's Day starring more or less everyone in Hollywood. We got there around 5pm and wound up seeing a sea of people surrounding the ODEON theatre where the premiere was to be held. As we had come all the way into Leicester Square to see it, we braved the crowd out and managed to get somewhat close to the barricades in the front. After a couple of minutes, the celebrities starting showing up (namely Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Jessica Alba, Topher Grace, Emma Roberts). We wound up getting some really cool photos and in the end decided it was too cold to continue standing outside, thus leaving back to Colindale.

Jessica Alba!

Demi Moore!

On Saturday, we decided to hit up a "new to us club" called KOKO in Camden. At first, we thought this was going to be another Fabric fiasco, since we had to get "invited" to the party and then print the invitations to just get possibly in. So, I was kinda wary about that aspect, but once inside, this club was actually pretty amazing. It was an old theatre that has been converted into a club and painted red. It was phenomenal and I wish the photos I had justified the sheer awesomeness and the coolness of it. The "Buttoned Down Disco" was a ton of fun and ultimately left around 2:30 to take the N5 bus home, but notwithout stopping at the nearby Kebab shop for some chips. Brilliant!!

Today, we went to the Fulham Fc vs. County football match, which was fan-freakin'-tastic. It is such an intrinsic part of English culture that you truly cannot miss when you come to England. The game, although was bitter cold, was truly exciting and never once was there really a slow part - either between the team crushing county or the fanatic Fulham Fc fans. I truly had an awesome time sitting outside for 3 hours in 15degree weather. (I never will get used to Celsius, therefore I will probably just always use Fahrenheit, how American of me ;) ) Fulham ultimately wound up winning the game and also won the FA cup. Whatever that means, but to me, it was an amazing afternoon.

-Your Ever Faithful Python Wrangler

Windsor Castle + Stonehenge + Bath

So, yet again, I have failed to update this thing regularly, but it has been just insane these past couple of days. Mainly classes and the like have been hectic and I have my first presentation that is due on Monday, which should be interesting. Anyways, did a tid bit of traveling this week. Jess and I had classes cancelled for Development 1003 this week, so we took advantage of going to Windsor, Bath, and Stonehenge on Thursday.

Thursday was crazy, prior to even getting on the bus to the places! We all started off late, leaving Colindale around 6:55am and then made it by the skin of out teeth to the stop where we thought we would get picked up, only to find that since we never called the place, they weren't stopping there. We then needed to figure out how to get to Victoria station where the coaches were going to be leaving from. So, we made it there and everything was good from that point on.

We first went to Windsor Castle which was really cool. It is the out of town residence of the Queen and where Prince William and Harry lived when they were boys. It was a very quaint British town. It was kinda cool to see how massive the place is, and how it has varied over time. It started out as a section and then has been added on since then. I'm not sure it would be worth making a special trip there, but it was actually cool to see it. It also had the Queens guards and we were able to see the changing of the guard, which took a long time and had way too much music, probably lasts about half an hour, give or take a few.

The next place was Bath, home to the famous Roman Baths and the famous Bath sandstone that the entire town seems to be made out of. These were actually very cool and was happy that we wound up going there. I really do recommend it and it was very cool to see the place, though we did not get to the try Bath water, which is supposed to be very disgusting but very beneficial. Supposedly it also was able to cure a Princes' leprosey. Crazy stuff.

The next stop was STONEHENGE!!

I was soo excited to see Stonehenge and even more importantly was all the sheep! I kinda wanted to let the sheep roam free and let the sheep wander around Stonehenge, which would have made it a lot better I think. :) Stonehenge was a win for me in my books, but there were some people on the tour that did not like it as much as they thought it would be. I did my little happy dance and paid some tribute to the stones through worship. :) All in all, it was a good little trip, also it was cool to see all the fake "henges" all the way to the place. Ie. Carhenge, Woodhenge, and the like.

We went out to this club last night called Fabric, which was cool, but very expensive. 15quid entrance, but the place was huge! The drinks were expensive too, but this is obviously one of those places where you are meant to be seen, and also to be very casual in dressing. Mika almost didn't make it in because he was dressed "too dressy." Crazy.

And on the way out this week, I send you with a picture of me dancing my way out. :)