'this, my friend, is a pint'

itching to go home. itchy.

absolut ice bar (basically they put you in a freezer and make you a mixed drink in a 'glass' made of ice). pub. pub. pub.

pubs close so early here; last night they rang the bell at 11. basically instead of pregaming at 11 and finishing up around 3 you start at 5, straight from work, and leave at 11. on a wednesday. second verse, same as the first.
things i will not miss: the machines at the underground for adding money. seriously if the bill has been folded in half the machine won't take it.
my mattress. i can feel everyyyy spring.
another underground one (all londoners hate the underground, but i think you'll find that in every city): the barriers where you swipe your card and the banisters open; too many times i've been rejected with a swift ram to the gut.
that hole in my pocket that's been growing and growing since i got here. i currently have a cozy six dollars in my bank account.

...that's all i can think of. honestly the pros outweigh the cons by a longshot.

today i thought of my favorite poem; i first read it my senior year in high school and i've found that the more places i go and people i meet i understand it better and better. so i leave you with

Elizabeth Bishop
One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

our finest hour

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Winston Churchill - June 18, 1940

don't mess with this dude. today i learned that in all probability there was a bottle of whiskey strategically placed outside the frame of this and many of his portraits.

i'm ready

camden market. pub. class. pub.

beer is free when it's for a class. i got my pint and fishnchips and when i go back to sweethome i will miss it so much. i'll miss the scottish accent. i'm planning on bringing the phrase 'good work!' to the states. i'll miss the tube and the newspapers and pret a manger and my hilarious roommate. i'll miss british tv and the people i bump into on the street and seeing the london eye from my window. all the bikes and motorcycles and sandwich shops and pubs and people crowded outside the pubs smoking on a tuesday afternoon and the old buildings the war spared and beautiful parks and markets and children in their school uniforms and the history and the humor and many other things i can't think of right now.
my problem is i went to school so close to home. i'm not as used to missing my family as others in my group are. i have to get used to the idea that i will always be missing someone from moment to moment for the rest of my life.
i will miss london but i'm more than ready to go home. and in a couple months i get to visit boyfriend on his birthday <3.

alan davies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezr2vlWbPKM&feature=related

and all

. . . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.
-an old favorite

bell bottom blues

lots of paper writing. national archives. the nutcracker.

no photography allowed!
mostly wrote my papers over the weekend. basically done with the quarter and only five days left of london.
nutcracker was my first ballet, and it was very beautiful. my favorite was the dancing children. adorable.
very much aware of how much space i take up.

more later.

gravity always wins

oxford, aka the search for thom yorke.

today we went to oxford, the hometown of my all-time favorite band, radiohead. it started with a tour of the university area (i've never seen so many bikes in my life---hundreds of them crammed into enormous bike racks), including, of course, the harry potter filming locations. somehow the tour guides never fail to mention when a place has been filmed for harry potter. whatever.
anyway, what was interesting about the tour was all the connections to alice in wonderland---lewis carroll went to oxford ('it was a wednesday') and based alice on the dean's daughter alice, and the white rabbit was based on the dean. and the story goes that before trains made it necessary for times to be constant across the country, different towns would have slightly different times. so oxford was 5 minutes behind london. which is why the white rabbit is always five minutes late. amazing, right?
after the tour, the search for thom yorke began. i heard from a friend where thom likes to write his lyrics, and ventured to find the tiny pub. my goal, my expectation, was, of course, to meet thom yorke, pee my pants, then tell him how much fake plastic trees means to me, and become his best friend. if that didn't happen, then at the very least i wanted to visit the pub where he hangs out.
four of us found the pub, a cute lil pub in a cute lil avenue. got a few pints. asked the bartender, 'i heard thom yorke hangs out here...where does he usually sit?' and he said, 'he doesn't have a usual spot. he mostly comes in the evening. he doesn't like being approached.'
well yea. i don't like being approached by creepy americans either.
so we left him a note. yes, i know. weird. but we wanted to buy him a pint. so we left four pounds and a note letting thom know exactly how amazing he is. we gave it to the bartender and he looked pretty creeped out. whatevs.
i hope thom enjoys his pint.

yet again, no good pictures. distracted by the biting cold and the search for thom, i only got a few pictures of buildings that inspired some of the buildings for my very own school back in sweet home.