Scene 25: Cambridge

I FINALLY GOT ON A TRAIN!

And I went to Cambridge. My UNC friend Tida is studying Shakespeare there and I got to hang out with her for two days!

The first night we ate dinner at a restaurant named Carluccio's. Both of us were starving, but thankfully, the meal there only took THREE HOURS.

Our waiter was presumed dead multiple times.

The next morning began with a stomach ache for Tida and four hours of sleep for me. Not the best combination.

Add to that spastic weather (raining one second, sunburn the next) and you've an eventful day.

The Music Video of Our Day

Tida had done some shopping (I was not surprised) and needed to return some clothes, so we hit up the stores.

Then we wandered around an open air market that sets up in the square every day and followed that with lunch, for me. Both of our eating schedules were off, so when I ate breakfast, an hour later she ate a croissant. I ate a cornish pasty, then two hours later she ate an ice cream cone. Eventually out of exhaustion (from walking and weather) we had tea together and from tea walked straight to dinner.

It wasn't... the healthiest day.

After shopping, it began to pour rain and we found shelter in a store called Cathy Kidston. Here is the video that ensued:

A Conversation with Tida

Tida persuaded me into going on a tour of King's College. I wasn't that interested because my knees hurt (at that time I'd been walking for, oh, six weeks) but went along with her. Props to Tida, it was beautiful.

Honestly, though? I prefer Carolina.

Tida had been carrying her shopping around with her all day, and when the rain hit her poor bag didn't stand a chance. A moment of silence for the remains:

After dinner I went to Selwyn College, where she's studying:

Someone didn't get their mail.

After Selwyn, I went to Tida's dorm and met one of her fellow Cambridge mates on the stairs and then caught a taxi back to my hostel, where I slept. It was marvelous.

And that was Cambridge!


-B

Scene 24: The National Portrait Gallery

One day, after lunch with the lovely Allison Norman, a fellow Tarheel, I decided to pay a visit to the National Portrait Gallery.

Turns out, I kind of love it there.

It's a tasteful mix of the antique and modern portrait worlds, ranging from sculpture to painting to photography. There was even a black and white Hollywood exhibit going on.

Any museum where a hundreds-year old painting of Queen Elizabeth and a Mario Testino picture of Kate Moss co-exist has to be cool.

The Scary Museum Lady took a while to catch me taking pictures, so I can show you some of what I saw!

First, a little look at some research of the Jacobites (act interested). They had a whole little wing!

A little placard for people who don't know anything about them (like everyone in the museum but me):

A family tree:

A timeline of sad events:

And look! Bonny Prince Charlie:

He was supposedly 19 at the time of the sitting, but he looks about 12. This painting helps explain how he was able to flee England when the revolution failed in the guise of a woman.

Look! A staircase!

But wait! That's not all! Beyond the pillars were creepy little statues of knights and kings and priests and people who looked like they could have accomplished either great feats of evil or piousness in their lifetimes. Odd combination.

Here is a lovely statue of Queen Victoria and King Albert:

Look! Heads!

Margot Fonteyn, famous ballerina:

TS Elliot:

My favorite painting in the museum, the royal family at Windsor:

You might remember this family from The King's Speech. I like how normal they appear. I say 'appear' because it's all an illusion.

That's all I could take before Scary Museum Lady came.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon :)


-B

Scene 23: The Replacement Theory

Human beings are built to adapt.

Wherever you go, after a while you begin to adjust. To the climate, the customs, the language, whatever.

I've always known this, and I've experienced it multiple times. Going to a different school, going to another country. But I always assumed that adaptation was a system that added things to your life- put new things in with the schema of what you already knew.

But what I've learned here in London is that adaptation usually doesn't mean addition- it means replacement.

When you find a restaurant in your new home (for me, London) that is your favorite restaurant out of the others you've tried, it's not your favorite 'London' restaurant. It's just your favorite restaurant.

The places you find that make up your 'new' life aren't new after you've adapted. They're just life.

I have a place I go to get coffee, a place I go to get groceries, to get my hair cut, to buy books. Being here for so long, they've simply become what life looks like to me.

I believe that's why you 'can't go home again.' When you return, you say, "Oh, that's where I used to love eating Chinese food," or, "That's where I used to get vintage cds," because 'home' is no longer your present. It's not until you adapt again that the things you considered your 'favorites' before you left home are your favorites again.

Obviously, relationships are different. No one replaces your family, or your boyfriend, or your best friend. But everyone has those 'high school friends.' That person you 'used to be close to.'

I'm excited to go home in two weeks, but it will be different than I thought it would be.

I'll see Starbucks, and I won't think, "Yay! I can have my latte again!"

I'll think, "Oh, that's where I got lattes before. I'll go there."

I'll see the movie theater I frequented and think, "I guess I'll see a movie at this theater, then."

And the same with everything else. I'll be adapting to my home, which is a strange concept to wrap your head around.

I guess it's preparation for graduation next year, when I'll truly leave and go off into the great unknown and fully implant myself somewhere different.

Then I'll come home for a holiday or quick trip and sit in what I'll then consider my 'old' bedroom, and look at my 'old' pictures, and pick up my 'old' teddy bear, and think, "I used to live here."

I think about America now and that's what pops into my head.

"I used to live there."


-B

Scene 22: A Harry Potter Review

The Odeon theaters in London played every Harry Potter film (one a night, starting from The Sorcerer's Stone) leading up to the premier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two.

1. The first was on a Friday and I missed it because I was switching hostels. I remember seeing it when my brother's 5th grade class went and being severely disappointed. This was in part due to my unfulfilled desire to play Hermione Granger.

2. The second was on Saturday. The Chamber of Secrets. I remembered it as being my least favorite book, but couldn't recall the film. It is now safe to say it is my least favorite film of the series. It's ridiculous! I don't know how people who didn't read the books stuck with the films. On paper (when you're reading) anything seems possible, because you're essentially watching it inside your imagination, where you imagine any number of impossible things every day. "One day I will be the Queen of England." "One day Brad Pitt and I will get married." "One day it will turn out the Little Mermaid was real and I'll get to visit the underwater castle."

But in a movie? I was watching it with increasing incredulity. I kept turning to Elizabeth next to me. "Wait, is this the one with the Polyjuice potion?" "This one had the flying car?" "I totally forgot the huge spiders!"

It just kept getting worse. More and more ridiculous things. I'm so used to being entrenched in the Harry Potter universe that I forgot how ludicrous all of it was. Thankfully, by the third movie I'd gotten over it.

3. Alfonso Cuaron is fantastic. It has been said that his directing the Prisoner of Azkaban saved the franchise, and I agree. Such a wonderful movie. It was dark and moody and mysterious and we got the new Dumbledore, who was much less genteel and much more devious.

4. Goblet of Fire, my favorite book. However, it was with the release of this movie that I realized Daniel Radcliffe and I were not meant to be and that he would never grow beyond 5'9''. It was sad.

5. Order of the Phoenix. Much, much better than I remember it being. I'm attributing my newfound fondness for the films on the distance I've accumulated from reading the books they're based on. The Deathly Hallows came out 4 years ago, and the others long before that. I can watch the movies now simply as movies, instead of a critic. "I wonder how they'll do this," or "They better not have taken that out, " or "Why did they add that scene in?" all have gone away. I just watch them like, "Ooooh, that's cool." It's much more enjoyable, actually.

6. Half-Blood Prince. I missed this one because it was on Wednesday, and I had a Connect Group with my friends at Hillsong London.

7. Deathly Hallows: Part One. I missed that one, too. Elizabeth, Allison and I were under the impression that the film started at 7 pm like the other ones had, but when we arrived at the theater at 6:50, we were told it began at 8:45, letting out just in time for people to get in line for the midnight showing of Part Two.

For everyone going to see Part Two at midnight, this was awesome. For the three of us, who had tickets for the next day at 6:15 pm, this was not.

Allison had to work early the next day, so she opted out. I had work I'd been planning to finish after the movie that I'd be unable to complete if I stayed, so I had to defer. Elizabeth stuck it out and informed us the next day that it'd been really good. She understood Part Two a lot better than we did because of it.

To pass time and wait until the movie started for her, we all went to Patesserie Valerie and then wandered through Chinatown. The amount of things those two places don't have in common is incredible.

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two! Oh, the bittersweetness of it all. So glad to have it finished, so sad to see it go. We already knew what would happen, of course, but watching the last movie was a bit like reading the last book all over again, except worse, because we no longer had the movie to look forward to. It was officially the end. I had to shed a tear at my favorite lines, and let a deep sigh go when the credits came up. In a melodramatic way, it was like the culmination of my childhood. All that magic I'd loved come to an end.

No matter what literary impostors rise, no one can fill the Harry Potter lack. And in a contrary way, I'm glad there were seven books planned and only seven books written. Series that never die give me anxiety. I'm always waiting and never satisfied, because the author needs to be sure the book I'm reading will leave me wanting the next one, thus financing their third home in Nantucket.

So now I can enjoy Harry Potter in its completion whenever I choose, in two formats.

But no matter how lovely the last film was and the ones before it, let's be honest...

the books win.


B

Scene 21: Wear, Wash, REPEAT

Okay, look.

I have been wearing the same clothes for 6 weeks. SIX WEEKS.

I have two sweaters. One is green and fancy. One is a navy sweatshirt.

I can only wear the green with skinny jeans. I can only wear the skinny jeans with sandals.

So, this means, if there is a somewhere to walk farther than five minutes away/ it's raining/ it's cold, I cannot wear sandals.

I must wear my tennis shoes.

Those who know me in 'real life' know that it's not that I don't wear tennis shoes. I do. At the gym.

Certainly not with jeans. Certainly not every day.

But every day I walk and every day it's cool outside, so...

If it's raining I wear my rain jacket. It rains a lot.

Aside from these things I have listed, I have some plain tank tops and three solid colored t-shirts and some running shorts. Yep. That's it.

This is what I'm getting at:


Almost every day for the past six weeks I have been wearing the same pair of jeans with the same tennis shoes with the same rain jacket and the same sweatshirt. Sometimes the tank tops and t-shirts get switched up. But you can't see them anyway.

So every day I look the same.

And it's not even a good look.

This is getting to be a problem for me.

I'm used to cardigans. Dresses. Skirts. Capris. Wraps. A variety of shirts. Belts. Purses. Totes.

I'm going a bit nuts.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking: Why didn't you pack more?

Couldn't.

Why don't you buy clothes there?

I decided not to purchase clothing over here until my last days because 1, I can't carry around extra weight, and 2, what I'd want to actually spend money on I couldn't wear around here.

However...

This does not mean I haven't been "shopping."

Oh, no.

I have.

I've been in every major store. Seen it all.

Sometimes (and this is really quite tragic) I try on clothes JUST TO REMEMBER WHAT I LOOK LIKE AS A NORMAL PERSON.

It can be kind of funny, because I go into the dressing room looking like a hobo traveler, and when I come out in whatever I've put on, the salesladies immediately perk up.

"Oh, she's normal! I didn't realize her hair was long with it all piled up in a bun like it was before."

"Why, I didn't know she had any shape whatsoever!"

"Now that I know she looks like that I think she might actually spend money in the store."

But I don't. I just smile and say, "None of it worked," and leave French Connection/ Topshop/ H&M/ Zara/ Mango feeling like someone who usually wouldn't wear navy and black together from sheer weariness.

It's wonderful.

When I get home, the majority of clothing in this suitcase will never see the light of day again.

And I'm SO. HAPPY. ABOUT. IT.

:D Three weeks!


B


PS. I bought a scarf. One scarf. I could only justify it because I was legitimately cold. And because something in my wardrobe had to change or I was going lose it.

Scene 20: A Backtracking

Alrighty, so.

After I left the London Eye Hostel I went back to the Blue Skies.

There I met some very lovely people, who (since I've taken so long to write this) I no longer remember.

Anyway.

Since I last updated this it's been 14 days/two weeks, which in travel-time is like saying a semester of school has gone by. At the end of it people ask, "What'd you do? Who'd you meet? Was it fun?"

And you're nodding, "Yes," while you wonder, "What on earth did I just do for an entire semester?"

You know you learned, you know you met great people, you know you did amazing things, you just... aren't sure what you learned exactly, and what was that person's name again?, and "Yeah, we had an awesome time! We... we... um... it was great!"

So basically what I'm trying to do is get out of not remembering what my life has been like the past two weeks. Working? Didn't think so. I'll try my best.

After the Blue Skies was the Astor Quest Hostel in Bayswater. Bayswater is right next to Paddington and sits on top of Kensington, right above Hyde Park. If you start at Bayswater and walk right you'll hit Notting Hill gate.

Interesting things that happened at the Astor Quest:

1. First night there, met a Canadian named Nita. We discovered a restaurant named the Waffle Palace. When her waffle came, it was so covered in whipped cream that you couldn't see it. Mine had so much chocolate on it it was not actually a waffle. It was a Belgian chocolate bar with a hint of waffle.

2. Queensway street is long. It has two separate tube stops on it about 100 yards apart. But why?

3. My suitcase broke. This was not my fault. It just wasn't built for cobblestones and staircases. Luckily, there were plenty of slightly sketchy stores on Queensway that sold luggage and I got a replacement. A slightly smaller, navy blue replacement. All the items that had been in my old suitcase that I was done with (or wouldn't fit) I mailed home. I won't disgrace my blog with how much that cost.

4. I saw Transformers 3 with Allison. I laughed a lot. More than anyone else in the theater. It wasn't the best movie, but it wasn't the worst, and I got a kick out of it. Rosie Whateverherlastnameis was... pretty.

5. I went back to Waffle Palace with Allison. And get this: a guy from UNC told me that his great uncle used to own it. WHAT?

6. I met a lovely girl from Ole Miss. We watched The Blind Side together and she told me she'd met one of the characters. Random. (Wonderful, fantastic, amazing movie, by the way.) She was really sweet and she wore around a fake wedding band while traveling-- like me. Ha! She thought it was hysterical.

7. I read a lot.

8. I drank a lot of coffee.

9. I met two other nice women- one from France and one from Italy (Naples). Holding a conversation with them was fun. It's always interesting to learn about other countries from someone born there.

10. People keep asking if I'm from New Zealand. I really need to work on maintaing my normal speech.


I know I've forgotten things. When I remember them, they shall be posted.


B

Scene 19: Shame

This post was prompted by my mother saying, "I checked your blog today. Are you DEAD?"



Let us all take this time to acknowledge how horrible I've been about updating this blog.




Am I suitably shamed?






Okay, moving on.