My Daily Walk to School

Just a quick note, I hope everyone who was affected by Hurricane Sandy is doing well and that life will return to normal quickly.  It was very nerve wracking to watch what was going on back home over here, especially when the media loves a good disaster.

Anyway, onto a more pleasant subject.

Approximately 2 to 3 times a week, I like to walk to school.  This is normally dependent upon the weather (which is unpredictable at best.  It could be sunny at home and pouring at school.), if I'm running late (90% o the time), or if I am carrying an inordinate amount of weight (i.e. Library books, or my laptop if I'm going to try to be industrious after lectures).  It's a pleasant walk, about 3 or so miles, and takes around an hour to complete due to waiting for crosswalk signs to change.

To begin, you head right out of my flat, heading down towards the Albert Embankment, a lovely stone paved walkway along the Thames.  On your approach, you pass an old boat building dock, which has remnants of old boats sticking up directly out of the ground.  To your left is the MI5, where James Bond works. To your right, Big Ben and Parliament gleam at you from across the river.  You head down towards this iconic part of London, the heels of your shoes clacking merrily along the path.  There are benches placed up every so often for people to rest and take in the scenery, a cafe or two is peppered along the walk in case you are in need of caffeine (I am often in need of caffeine).  On foggy mornings your footsteps are muffled, runners emerge from the mist and fly by.  Up ahead is the London Eye, you turn left here and go across Westminster Bridge, where the Scottish bagpiper is. Every day.  Always. You've learned to like bagpipes.

Over the bridge you go, fighting against tourists who invariably stop in the worst places, walk in the wrong direction, and try to take group pictures that people are constantly walking through.  At the second light, you turn right down a road that you don't really know what it's called, but you know it's the right one because you can see Westminster Abbey on the corner.  Walk, walk, walk.  Big Ben, at this point, has rung out at least once during your trek, letting you know if it's 15, 30, 45, or on the hour.  Mostly, this is important for knowing just how late you are running.  Along this next road you pass several important looking buildings, along with plenty of statues and memorials to the Glorious Dead.  You have often wondered just what is so glorious about being dead.  You bet that the dead would much rather have not died gloriously.  At the bases of all of these statues are wreathes of poppies, a sign of remembrance. On the left is the Royal Calvary, where men with funny candle snuffing hats sit astride giant horses all day.  You know that through that gate and across the street behind it lies Buckingham Palace.  You think that your walk to school is pretty cool.

Oh, look at that, the street is dead ending in a square.  Trafalgar Square, to be precise.  Behind the famous column is the National Museum, something that you keep meaning to go to but have yet to actually make time for.  Off to the right is The Strand, which has loads of shopping.  You continue up to the back right corner of the square, down Charing Cross.

This bit of the road is very uninteresting.  There are Chinese food shops, some neon signs, and a Chipotle (which is actually very exciting but you haven't gone there for the sake of trying new things.)  You pass a few theatres, a few cafes, a couple that you would really like to pop into one of these days.  You round the corner and viola! Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street.

Per usual, these streets are crazily packed with people.  There's an awful lot of shopping to do, and more than enough people willing to do it! You take a moment to wonder just when, exactly, all these people go to work.  There seems to be an oddly disproportionate amount of people free at 11 in the morning on a Monday for this to be normal.  You pass another theatre, this one is showing We Will Rock You (based on Queen's music, very fun, you should go see it).  The first time you saw this building you were wondering why there was a giant golden statue of Elvis on it. It's not Elvis.

Up the road you go, past grocery stores, phone stores, movie stores, something that is called a Casino but looks deceptively like an arcade, fruit stands, coffee shop, coffee shop, Starbucks, coffee shop, before turning down a small street next to a building that has already decorated for Christmas.  You think this is ridiculous, but forgive them for 3 reasons. 1, they don't celebrate Halloween all that severely here, so it's ok to start decorating for the next "major" holiday because 2, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving either (something which depresses you greatly because you do so love turkey dinner), and 3, they have chosen to decorate the exterior with legitimate pine boughs. Seriously.  These things smell AMAZING.

Down this small street you pass one of the very best pastry places you've ever been to, a luxurious and charming apartment building (where, this morning, you saw a parent holding their child up to the window so it could stare, amazed, at the world below. This made you smile), a Waterstone's bookstore which looks like some kind of Victorian castle, an old church, a beautiful fenced in park, and here you are, at last, at the Institute of Archaeology.

And that is my walk to school.

XO,
L

Empathy is a Bitch

I originally intended to do some crap sort of post about "oh no, I'm 25 now, quarter life crisis, wah wah wah." However, walking home from the post office today I changed my mind.

In order to from the post office to my flat, you have to walk alongside and cross some fairly busy roads, ones that are large enough and full of enough crazy drivers to make you want to just wait for the walk light to turn green.  On the way back, I noticed that traffic was significantly heavier than it was on the way up.  I saw in the distance a few cop cars and just assumed, "oh, fender bender, no big deal." At least, that's what I thought until I saw the long black lump on the ground.

I'm not sure if it's just a sign of how much of a suburbanite I am or if it's just part of the human condition, but when faced with a dead body, the first thought in my mind is not, "oh, that's a dead body."  I actually can't grasp it. I kind of just stared at it, and I remember running through a list of different things it could possibly be that did not include "dead person."  I thought it might be an investigation bag brought by an investigator.  I thought maybe it was some other part of the evidence left on the road.  The closer I got, the more my brain spun trying to rationalize what this object could be, until I saw shoes sticking out the end of it.  I'm guessing they don't make a "one size fits all" body bag.

I don't handle death particularly well.  What limited experience I have with it (which, realistically speaking, I probably have more of it than other people my age in my same relative situation), had not shown me to be a very accepting kind of person.  I hear that they've passed on, I read about it, hell I've seen the person laid out in a casket and it still just has a level of surreal that I subconsciously refuse to overcome.  It's like my brain takes the information and says, "no no, that's unpleasant, we don't know how to deal with unpleasant! Let's lock it away in a box somewhere and forget all about it."

Walking down the sidewalk, catching glimpses of this person between passing cars, all I could do was think about the whole situation.  The cars in line to get around the accident scene probably either thought the way I did, or possibly worse, were annoyed that someone was dumb enough to cause whatever scene that was delaying them from where they were heading.  This man's passing is suddenly reduced to an annoyance, yet another thing to have to "deal" with for some people.  I then thought that while these people were parading past, honking and cutting each other off, they were possibly being the first people to acknowledge this man's death, or at least be aware of it.  Somewhere in this world is a collection of people who don't know that their son/husband/brother/uncle/father won't be coming home.  Instead, he's spending the night in the morgue.  And right there, I felt so strongly for those people, going about their daily lives, never suspecting anything, and I could see it so clearly in my mind the moment when everything changes.  I've had that moment, I've lived it.  It's terrible.  And I relived it all over again in the moments it took to walk by.

So, I suppose, as some kind of lesson to take home with you, please, tell the people you love that you love them.  Be a little kinder and more patient with people who may annoy you.  You don't know when you or they will be ripped from this world.

XO,
L

Two Weeks In

Well, the real work starts tomorrow.

It's been a little bit of a crazy set of weeks, I've been spending a lot of time adjusting and trying to get my bearings in a new city.  On top of that, I'm trying to adjust to a different life style as well, which is going... ok.  I never really knew how inept this whole move would make me feel.  It's like being back at square one from just the basics.  It took me ages to figure out the oven, which still terrifies me, and the washing machine is no better.  It's the little things that I just took for granted to know how to do that are really coming back to kick me in the ass.  Additionally, my entire room looks like a disaster area because all of the drying racks (that's right, no dryer, although I guess I should just be happy that I don't have to haul my dirty laundry all over creation) were being used by one of my roommates.  I have no idea which, but I'm seriously considering investing in one just for me.

That brings me to the other issue.  Part of me wants to make this feel like "home," but it seems like a wasted effort when I'll be moving less than 4 months from now.  Is it worth investing in any kind of furniture? Do I really want to have more stuff to haul around?  It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to go buy another pillow even if I think it'll help me sleep better just because I don't want to move more crap.

It's probably dumb.

On the bright side, the people in my major seem really nice.  There's a nice variation in interest and experience so I think it'll be good to get to know everyone.  The only thing that keeps eating away at me is the fact that there's too many of us in the first year program to make the second year program.  There just aren't enough spots.  Just about everyone that I've talked to is really interested in going on to the MSc, and wether we like it or not, we're all vying for the same limited amount of spots.  It is a competition, no way around it.  Which means I should really stop being such a lazy ass and finish my readings for Wednesday and get over to the museum to see the exhibits I'm supposed to write a paper on.  I'll get there.  Just give it time.

I had a really nice week with Steph here, it was great to spend some time with her and be around family.  We even got to see the majority of the English cousins, which was awesome.  They're just such good people.  It's nice knowing I have someone looking out for me over here.

Anyway, I'm off to the grocery store to see what I can possibly throw together that marginally resembles a meal.

XO
L