My wisdom teeth are coming in and they HURT! I freaked out this morning for a few minutes worrying that maybe I had some freak incidence of tetanus resulting in lockjaw or a weird disease/accident/illness like that. And I thought for a moment trying to recall if I had cut myself or stepped on an old nail or anything like that but nothing came to mind. I looked like a slob eating breakfast this morning because it hurt to move my jaw and so all my food was dribbling out of my mouth as I tried to chew it. Good thing I have friends by this point in the program or else no one would have wanted to sit next to me.
I wish I had a higher tolerance for pain. And I wish I wasn't so afraid of everything. I feel like I'm always worried about getting hurt or afraid to try new things. I am terrified of the dentist and really nervous about getting my wisdom teeth out this summer. I also think pain is very much a mental state. If I could just not be afraid of getting my wisdom teeth out then I bet it would probably hurt a lot less and I would heal a lot faster. But just because I'm afraid of it, it will probably seem that much worse. I wonder if there is some way to teach yourself to be a less anxious person. I'm going to look into that.
Monday, April 26
Sunday, April 25
Hills and Parks and Beaches Oh My!
I feel really stressed out. I need to start working on medical school applications and I don't even know where to begin. And I need to decide if I want to try to go to Athens this weekend or not but I can't decide since I want to go so badly but at the same time I don't want to be stuck anywhere what with the volcano and flights being cancelled. There have been a ridiculous amount of planes in the sky this week. Wednesday night I went with some girls to watch the sun set at Primrose Hill- it overlooks the entire city of London. While we were sitting there for about an hour, every ten seconds two planes would cross at the exact same point in the sky, going in opposite directions. It was obvious the airport was trying to catch up flights after all the delays. The newspapers have been blaming the government for unnecessarily closing down the airports for too long in order to get more votes for the party out of power right now as the election draws near. I should probably know which party is in power right now, but I'm not going to lie- I have no idea. I do know the parties are quite different from the U.S. ones... my friend Monica was explaining to me, for example, that the liberal Democrats here do not align directly with the U.S. Democrats but rather share half their views with the U.S. Democratic party and have their views with the U.S. Republican party. So the parties here do not split in the same way, if that makes sense. Either way, I find politics uninteresting. Here's some pictures from Primrose Hill...
Thursday I went down to Borough market. It's a food market where all the best chefs buy their food for the week. I got a lot of free samples so it was a great free lunch! After that we walked over to the Tower Bridge and went up it to get some pretty views of the city.
That building there, called "The Shard", is supposed to look like a giant piece of broken glass when it's complete.
Friday after breakfast we walked to Hyde Park and laid in the grass for a while. Friday night we went to a Shakespeare play at the globe for my Shakespeare class. It reminded me of Starlight at home because they had all these stands selling drinks and snacks and the globe is open in the middle to the sky so it is pretty much an outside theatre. We saw Macbeth. It was pretty creepy and gory- a lot of people die in Macbeth. Unfortunately we had to stand as our tickets were for the "standing audience" in the front, but luckily we found a wall to lean against. It was nevertheless a long three hours of standing.
Maddie and I in Hyde Park
All the trees are blooming!
The white building with the thatched roof on the other side of the river is the Globe.
At the play they made us stick our heads through this canvas... they did some special effects with the canvas to incorporate the audience. It was supposed to represent the black depths of Hell... yeah, Macbeth is kind of intense. We didn't like standing with our heads through the canvas so we found a back wall to lean against instead. The canvas was kind of dirty.
I love St. Paul's at night. You can see the big dome lit up in the background... that's St. Paul's. It was a beautiful night and so fun to walk over the Millenium bridge on our way back from the play.
Saturday we went to Brighton beach for the day. It was a forty-five minute train ride, so we left at 9 in the morning to catch the 10 am train and made it there by 11. One lady on the train told us we had beautiful accents. I never thought I would hear that. I think she thought it was pretty because my friend from South Carolina has more of a southern accent and the lady said she just loved the way she said "in South Carolina". Once we got there we walked through some markets in the streets towards the beach and when we got to the Pier we spent some time riding the rides... they had a mini-roller coaster and this thing that carried you up really high over the water and then released you so it felt like you were on a rollercoaster and looked as though you would go smashing into the pier until at the last second it would swing you up again to the other side. That was terrifying but great fun. Then we got fish n chips and sat at a table on the beach and then we walked down to the water and laid in the sun all day. Then my friend Bree had some ride tokens left over so she begged me to go on the carousel with her. As in the children's carousel. I felt quite silly but whatever, it was fun. After that we headed home for the evening and ate dinner at the pizza place on our corner that used to be Princess Diana's favorite place to eat. I got the American pizza :)
We put on our sun screen! :)
We like jumping pictures.
Today it is rainy and our internet is down at the dorm so I am at the Wellcome gallery club room using their free internet. I feel extremely stressed out though at the moment and wish I could figure out what to write my medical school essay on. I also need to start studying for finals. I should probably get going.
Thursday I went down to Borough market. It's a food market where all the best chefs buy their food for the week. I got a lot of free samples so it was a great free lunch! After that we walked over to the Tower Bridge and went up it to get some pretty views of the city.
That building there, called "The Shard", is supposed to look like a giant piece of broken glass when it's complete.
Friday after breakfast we walked to Hyde Park and laid in the grass for a while. Friday night we went to a Shakespeare play at the globe for my Shakespeare class. It reminded me of Starlight at home because they had all these stands selling drinks and snacks and the globe is open in the middle to the sky so it is pretty much an outside theatre. We saw Macbeth. It was pretty creepy and gory- a lot of people die in Macbeth. Unfortunately we had to stand as our tickets were for the "standing audience" in the front, but luckily we found a wall to lean against. It was nevertheless a long three hours of standing.
Maddie and I in Hyde Park
All the trees are blooming!
The white building with the thatched roof on the other side of the river is the Globe.
At the play they made us stick our heads through this canvas... they did some special effects with the canvas to incorporate the audience. It was supposed to represent the black depths of Hell... yeah, Macbeth is kind of intense. We didn't like standing with our heads through the canvas so we found a back wall to lean against instead. The canvas was kind of dirty.
I love St. Paul's at night. You can see the big dome lit up in the background... that's St. Paul's. It was a beautiful night and so fun to walk over the Millenium bridge on our way back from the play.
Saturday we went to Brighton beach for the day. It was a forty-five minute train ride, so we left at 9 in the morning to catch the 10 am train and made it there by 11. One lady on the train told us we had beautiful accents. I never thought I would hear that. I think she thought it was pretty because my friend from South Carolina has more of a southern accent and the lady said she just loved the way she said "in South Carolina". Once we got there we walked through some markets in the streets towards the beach and when we got to the Pier we spent some time riding the rides... they had a mini-roller coaster and this thing that carried you up really high over the water and then released you so it felt like you were on a rollercoaster and looked as though you would go smashing into the pier until at the last second it would swing you up again to the other side. That was terrifying but great fun. Then we got fish n chips and sat at a table on the beach and then we walked down to the water and laid in the sun all day. Then my friend Bree had some ride tokens left over so she begged me to go on the carousel with her. As in the children's carousel. I felt quite silly but whatever, it was fun. After that we headed home for the evening and ate dinner at the pizza place on our corner that used to be Princess Diana's favorite place to eat. I got the American pizza :)
We put on our sun screen! :)
We like jumping pictures.
Today it is rainy and our internet is down at the dorm so I am at the Wellcome gallery club room using their free internet. I feel extremely stressed out though at the moment and wish I could figure out what to write my medical school essay on. I also need to start studying for finals. I should probably get going.
Sunday, April 18
Weekend in Athens! OH wait... I'm still in London
Well, still no flights taking off in the entire UK and pretty much most of Europe for that matter. Yesterday and today they started flying some test flights without passengers and so far they've experienced no trouble, but it sounds like all the test flights are at lower altitudes than planes normally fly at. Also, the volcano is expected to continue erupting. Found this funny quote on a news article...
"Normally, a volcano spews out ash to begin with and then it changes into lava, but here it continues to spew out ash, because of the glacier," said Reynir Bodvarsson, director of Swedish National Seismic Network. "It is very special."
Special indeed.
I forgot to upload this "funny" picture I took right before boarding my plane to Athens that was then cancelled after we all boarded. Everyone was watching the news as we waited to board and it said that all UK flights would be grounded after noon and our flight was scheduled at 11:50. I took the picture cause I thought we were going to make the cut-off, but obviously I jinxed it by taking the picture. Anyways, here it is...
To make up for not going to Athens I made sure to jam-pack this weekend with London events since I may only have one more weekend here if I decide to rebook my Athens visit. Friday we played soccer for a solid three hours in Hyde Park with a bunch of students. It was so much fun and I think I want to join a soccer club when I get home cause I'm really starting to like the game. I got drilled pretty hard twice... once in the stomach (knocked the wind out of me) and once in the head... but soccer balls don't hurt as much as softballs do so it didn't phase me like the time I got hit in the head playing softball.
Friday night Lauren and I went to see the movie Shutter Island in Leicester Square. That movie is awesome. My psychopathology class had just finished watching Its A Beautiful Mind and I thought Shutter Island had an ending very similar to that movie. I don't want to ruin it for anyone but the ending to Shutter Island was completely unexpected and a superb ending. Good endings make thriller movies like that so much better. It was pretty intense though and I was kind of nervous walking around that night just from being nervous through out the whole movie. After the movie we went to a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden and got some nachos. I don't know why since we had already eaten dinner, but oh well... it was realllllly good. I ate a lot this weekend. Oh, also on the tube ride home there was a guy doing a pretty cool tap dance. I took a video of it.
Saturday morning we woke up at 7 am to go to Oxford! The school had a planned trip there and since Athens didn't work out I was able to go. SO that worked out nicely. When we got there we got a tour of the place from the Richmond Dean because she is a graduate from Oxford. It is a really pretty town. I was expecting Oxford to be like an American campus but there is not a single enclosed campus since it is made up of a ton of different colleges which each have their own area and buildings and such. Interestingly, the grass there is spotless but you are forbidden to walk anywhere on the grass or else you'll get yelled at. Kind of strange in my opinion. It was all very beautiful but unfortunately the famous dining hall where Harry Potter is filmed and where there is a giant Alice in Wonderland stained glass window was closed down for the day for construction. It was rather disappointing as that was the main thing I wanted to see, but oh well. See the picture below...
The famous Harry Potter dining hall.... woooow, what a beaut.
After the tour we went and ate lunch at a cafe on the river. After lunch we walked around and happened to find Alice's Shop, all Alice in Wonderland themed. Lewis Carroll went to Oxford f.y.i. So of course I bought a new Alice book and some Alice postcards and a really cute Alice poster that I am going to hang up in my room. I want to make my room Alice in Wonderland themed now next year. It will be shabby chic/English cottage-like style. If I can figure out how to do that. After that we found a Rugby Polo shop!!! I have been looking for an England Rugby shirt ever since I got here and I have not been able to find a single one but they had Oxford ones here so I hopped right on that and it was a really good price too. After that we walked up to this tower in the Oxford University school church and then we walked down to the Botanical Gardens. Finally, we ended the afternoon by getting a drink at this famous pub where C.S. Lewis (author of Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkien (author of THe Hobbit) used to meet every Tuesday morning to discuss their work. Here's some more Oxford pictures...
This is the famous pub that J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis met at every week.
When we got back from Oxford (it was only an hour and a half drive by bus) we walked to Whole Foods and got sandwiches to take to Hyde Park. Gosh, now that the weather has warmed up I really see the advantage of our location. Hyde Park is just one block away and I've been there five out of the past seven days. It's really superb. After eating we threw around a frisbee and baseball for a while. The baseball accidentally rolled into the pond and we spent about ten minutes trying to figure out how to reach it. We ended up making a long line holding hands so that our friend Tyler wouldn't fall down the slippy wet slope into the water as he reached for the ball and everyone was laughing at us and a few people pulled out their cameras. I don't think the English quite respect the baseball like us Americans.
I would have been very disappointed if I left London without a telephone booth picture, so I made sure to get one when we walked by this one and I happened to have my camera.
After that everyone went to Gloucester Arms (a pub on the corner of my street). THere was probably thirty kids from our program there so it was really fun. The British workers there kept getting mad at us though and told us we were being too loud. Honestly, we weren't being any louder than thirty people sitting around laughing and talking. But I guess Americans are just naturally more lively than the British.
This morning Maddie, Chelsea, Leigh and I went to Brick Lane market. I've been dying to go since January so I'm sooo glad I finally got to go! It was so much fun. The one thing I wish I would have done more since I've been here is explore the East end of London. I've never really ventured very far out of the West End other than on school fieldtrips. The East End is a completely different world than the West End. Brick Lane had the most interesting people all with their own styles walking all over the place and was filled with Thai, Indian and Bangladeshi food stands. I had a Turkish pizza with lamb, hummus, lettuce and tzaziki sauce (i don't know how to spell that). I bought a really pretty old Alice and Wonderland book from a book stand and a straw hat. The cool thing about the market there is that it is a mixture of all markets. It is part flea market, part food market, part vintage clothing market, etc... I'm wondering if you need a permit to sell stuff there cause I'm thinking about setting out a blanket with all the old clothes I won't have room for in my suitcase before I come home...
The red bus there is actually a restaurant!
The old Truman brewery is famous on brick lane... it is over 300 years old but sadly I think it just shut down a couple years ago.
I think I read in my Brick Lane book that this is the last Kosher place on the street... the street used to be pretty much a Jewish community but now it is predominantly Bangladeshi.
Yes, that is a whole fish for sale there... head and all.
this is the turkish pizza i got... it was reallllllly good.
a lot of the street signs in this area have Bengali writing underneath since this is now a predominantly Bengali area. French Huegenots originally moved to the area in the 1700's to escape persecution, then it became a Jewish community and now it is Bengali.
This mosque here started out as a Catholic church, became a Protestant church, then a Jewish synagogue and is now a Muslim mosque. Interesting.
After the market we went and kicked a soccer ball around some more in Hyde Park and then Leigh, Chelsea and I went to eat at Wagamama on High Street. Then I went and got chocolate covered raisins. (Food-filled weekend, like I said). Now I am sitting in the common room and going to bed soon cause I am exhausted. And everyone around me is getting sick so I'm afraid I'm going to get sick now too. Lauren felt feverish all day (but I think that's just because she is stressed about a 10,000 word paper due tomorrow) and our other friend Bree has strep. Yikes.
"Normally, a volcano spews out ash to begin with and then it changes into lava, but here it continues to spew out ash, because of the glacier," said Reynir Bodvarsson, director of Swedish National Seismic Network. "It is very special."
Special indeed.
I forgot to upload this "funny" picture I took right before boarding my plane to Athens that was then cancelled after we all boarded. Everyone was watching the news as we waited to board and it said that all UK flights would be grounded after noon and our flight was scheduled at 11:50. I took the picture cause I thought we were going to make the cut-off, but obviously I jinxed it by taking the picture. Anyways, here it is...
To make up for not going to Athens I made sure to jam-pack this weekend with London events since I may only have one more weekend here if I decide to rebook my Athens visit. Friday we played soccer for a solid three hours in Hyde Park with a bunch of students. It was so much fun and I think I want to join a soccer club when I get home cause I'm really starting to like the game. I got drilled pretty hard twice... once in the stomach (knocked the wind out of me) and once in the head... but soccer balls don't hurt as much as softballs do so it didn't phase me like the time I got hit in the head playing softball.
Friday night Lauren and I went to see the movie Shutter Island in Leicester Square. That movie is awesome. My psychopathology class had just finished watching Its A Beautiful Mind and I thought Shutter Island had an ending very similar to that movie. I don't want to ruin it for anyone but the ending to Shutter Island was completely unexpected and a superb ending. Good endings make thriller movies like that so much better. It was pretty intense though and I was kind of nervous walking around that night just from being nervous through out the whole movie. After the movie we went to a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden and got some nachos. I don't know why since we had already eaten dinner, but oh well... it was realllllly good. I ate a lot this weekend. Oh, also on the tube ride home there was a guy doing a pretty cool tap dance. I took a video of it.
Saturday morning we woke up at 7 am to go to Oxford! The school had a planned trip there and since Athens didn't work out I was able to go. SO that worked out nicely. When we got there we got a tour of the place from the Richmond Dean because she is a graduate from Oxford. It is a really pretty town. I was expecting Oxford to be like an American campus but there is not a single enclosed campus since it is made up of a ton of different colleges which each have their own area and buildings and such. Interestingly, the grass there is spotless but you are forbidden to walk anywhere on the grass or else you'll get yelled at. Kind of strange in my opinion. It was all very beautiful but unfortunately the famous dining hall where Harry Potter is filmed and where there is a giant Alice in Wonderland stained glass window was closed down for the day for construction. It was rather disappointing as that was the main thing I wanted to see, but oh well. See the picture below...
The famous Harry Potter dining hall.... woooow, what a beaut.
After the tour we went and ate lunch at a cafe on the river. After lunch we walked around and happened to find Alice's Shop, all Alice in Wonderland themed. Lewis Carroll went to Oxford f.y.i. So of course I bought a new Alice book and some Alice postcards and a really cute Alice poster that I am going to hang up in my room. I want to make my room Alice in Wonderland themed now next year. It will be shabby chic/English cottage-like style. If I can figure out how to do that. After that we found a Rugby Polo shop!!! I have been looking for an England Rugby shirt ever since I got here and I have not been able to find a single one but they had Oxford ones here so I hopped right on that and it was a really good price too. After that we walked up to this tower in the Oxford University school church and then we walked down to the Botanical Gardens. Finally, we ended the afternoon by getting a drink at this famous pub where C.S. Lewis (author of Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkien (author of THe Hobbit) used to meet every Tuesday morning to discuss their work. Here's some more Oxford pictures...
This is the famous pub that J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis met at every week.
When we got back from Oxford (it was only an hour and a half drive by bus) we walked to Whole Foods and got sandwiches to take to Hyde Park. Gosh, now that the weather has warmed up I really see the advantage of our location. Hyde Park is just one block away and I've been there five out of the past seven days. It's really superb. After eating we threw around a frisbee and baseball for a while. The baseball accidentally rolled into the pond and we spent about ten minutes trying to figure out how to reach it. We ended up making a long line holding hands so that our friend Tyler wouldn't fall down the slippy wet slope into the water as he reached for the ball and everyone was laughing at us and a few people pulled out their cameras. I don't think the English quite respect the baseball like us Americans.
I would have been very disappointed if I left London without a telephone booth picture, so I made sure to get one when we walked by this one and I happened to have my camera.
After that everyone went to Gloucester Arms (a pub on the corner of my street). THere was probably thirty kids from our program there so it was really fun. The British workers there kept getting mad at us though and told us we were being too loud. Honestly, we weren't being any louder than thirty people sitting around laughing and talking. But I guess Americans are just naturally more lively than the British.
This morning Maddie, Chelsea, Leigh and I went to Brick Lane market. I've been dying to go since January so I'm sooo glad I finally got to go! It was so much fun. The one thing I wish I would have done more since I've been here is explore the East end of London. I've never really ventured very far out of the West End other than on school fieldtrips. The East End is a completely different world than the West End. Brick Lane had the most interesting people all with their own styles walking all over the place and was filled with Thai, Indian and Bangladeshi food stands. I had a Turkish pizza with lamb, hummus, lettuce and tzaziki sauce (i don't know how to spell that). I bought a really pretty old Alice and Wonderland book from a book stand and a straw hat. The cool thing about the market there is that it is a mixture of all markets. It is part flea market, part food market, part vintage clothing market, etc... I'm wondering if you need a permit to sell stuff there cause I'm thinking about setting out a blanket with all the old clothes I won't have room for in my suitcase before I come home...
The red bus there is actually a restaurant!
The old Truman brewery is famous on brick lane... it is over 300 years old but sadly I think it just shut down a couple years ago.
I think I read in my Brick Lane book that this is the last Kosher place on the street... the street used to be pretty much a Jewish community but now it is predominantly Bangladeshi.
Yes, that is a whole fish for sale there... head and all.
this is the turkish pizza i got... it was reallllllly good.
a lot of the street signs in this area have Bengali writing underneath since this is now a predominantly Bengali area. French Huegenots originally moved to the area in the 1700's to escape persecution, then it became a Jewish community and now it is Bengali.
This mosque here started out as a Catholic church, became a Protestant church, then a Jewish synagogue and is now a Muslim mosque. Interesting.
After the market we went and kicked a soccer ball around some more in Hyde Park and then Leigh, Chelsea and I went to eat at Wagamama on High Street. Then I went and got chocolate covered raisins. (Food-filled weekend, like I said). Now I am sitting in the common room and going to bed soon cause I am exhausted. And everyone around me is getting sick so I'm afraid I'm going to get sick now too. Lauren felt feverish all day (but I think that's just because she is stressed about a 10,000 word paper due tomorrow) and our other friend Bree has strep. Yikes.
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