London: day fifteen

Okay, day fifteen.

Today was a good one. Went to class and sat through another lecture on British Youth Culture, still pretty interesting, and as I predicted, the professor is starting to warm up to us now that the uninterested ones have dropped. From here out, I think the class will go smoothly and be quite interesting. After class, I made my way back to NIDO and bolted down a PB&J sandwich (REALLY need to learn how to cook other things – I’ve had PB&J’s for FAR too many meals than I care to admit) and met up with Hannah. We took a look through her guide book and decided to go check out the Camden Market.

Camden Market, or Camden Lock, is a place where there used to be a type of farmer’s market surrounded by stables, and set next to the Regent’s canal and locks. It started out pretty ordinary, but then the British youth culture got a hold of it. The stables eventually closed and became an extension of the market, it became a gathering place for eclectic and “hip” youth; the Rockers, the Mods, Punks and Goths, among other youths. As a result, the place is now packed full of vendors selling band t-shirts, Gothic clothing types, flashy and bold accessories, some paraphernalia of sorts, quirky items, food vendors, music shops, souvenirs, tattoo and piercing shops. All around a pretty eclectic place with some equally different people. In short: it’s AWESOME. For a while, in the States I’ve been searching for a tank top with the Nirvana logo on it (the smiley face one set on a black background) as well as one with the Jack Daniels logo – designs that you think would be easy to find, yet I have not seen ONCE even after months of searching; and finding them online means paying fifteen bucks for one t-shirt, plus shipping, which is of course ridiculous. At Camden, it took me maybe five minutes to find all the designs I was looking for, plus some – and at a much more reasonable price 4 for ten pounds. Also up for bargaining as the whole place has a feel of Mexico or Honduras where each vendor is trying to get you to buy from them so they start bartering the price with you. Makes me sad there is not a place like this back home, because it was SO easy to find clothing and accessories that were EXACTLY my style – cheaply.

After bumming around there for a while, checking out the sprawling expanse of the whole market (very dense and vendors crammed in between equally interesting shops), we walked until we found Regent’s Park – the second largest city park in London aside from Hyde Park. There we walked through the beautiful gardens which, surprisingly still had a decent amount of flowers, and past the zoo. It was nice to get a dose of green grass after living with nothing but concrete in sight for so long. One thing is certain, you don’t take grass or green trees for granted here – you don’t realize that’s what you’ve been missing until you actually walk through the park, smell the grass, and realize that some fundamental craving within you has been filled. As it is a park of some considerable size, we just walked and talked for a while, weaving in and out of the garden and along the shore of the pond, taking some pictures as we went.

When we reached the other side of the park, we consulted a map and realized that we were not at all far from Baker Street, so we made for there. Because Hannah hadn’t seen it and because on my previous trip there with Tula I had forgotten my camera, we made a stop by 221B – not going in, but at least to check it out and get some nice pictures of the outside. A block down we caught the Tube and rode it to Angel where we made a necessary pit-stop at the store and an equally necessary pit-stop at a cupcake shop that caught our eye – yes it was necessary, especially if you’d seen how amazing they looked. I got some sugar for the tea that I have been drinking – yes I have for the first time in my life found a tea that I like, it’s called English Breakfast, and even though I have NEVER been a tea person, I think the problem was that when anyone ever had me try tea, they never put any sugar in it. So I’ve been drinking this tea and with sugar, I’ve discovered that I actually really enjoy it. I know, if you had any doubts that I was in Britain…But yeah, that’s become my substitute for coffee since 1) it’s too expensive to keep up a caffeine addiction like that here, and also 2) since my doctor said I should probably try to cut back on said addiction…But so far, so good; actually not addicted anymore and eased off it over Winter Break, so the headaches were at least manageable, and now I haven’t needed crazy amounts of caffeine to keep me going throughout the day (also mostly credited to my medication though, that has helped significantly and is actually probably what made breaking that addiction even a possibility in the first place). But, also at the store, I decided to try these shortbread cookies with strawberry filling called Jammie Dodgers. I remembered a reference to these cookies that occurred in an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor pretends that a Jammie Dodger is a self-destruct button and uses it to bide time with the Daleks, and save the world and so on and on.  I am absolutely a Doctor Who fan, not obsessively so (as much anymore), but I do dearly love the show. So when I saw them, it was kind of a “hey, I’ve heard of those” moments and since they’re a pretty characteristically British snack I decided to give them a try – which turned out to definitely be a good decision as they are very tasty.

We walked back from Angel, and settled ourselves to the task of making dinner. I actually made pasta for the first time since being here – something other than PB&J!!!! It actually turned out alright even though I overestimated how much I could eat, so, I guess I also made lunch and dinner for tomorrow at the same time…maybe breakfast. There’s rather a lot of pasta.

I’m not a chef.

If I don’t live with someone who cooks, I swear, it’s going to be PB&J and coffee until the day I die…

Anyway, making dinner and chatting kind of eventually morphed itself into Hannah and me both sitting with our laptops open, comparing favorite music for the next couple hours. Though our tastes weren’t completely the same, we did find some good overlaps, and really were just enjoying listening to music and talking.