super bowl ... !

so i guess the super bowl is on. perfect time to make a blog post.

today was sunday. otherwise known as "lay around the house and do nothing" as well as "drink 14 cups of tea and watch episodes of tv shows you never cared about at all in the states". i love sundays.

another thing that sundays are good for ... or at least this sunday evening would be good for ... is giving you all a bit of a catch up, seeing as i started this blog just over a month after arriving in london. so where do i begin?

is billy joel singing the national anthem? funny.

ok, back to the "catch up". lets see. so like i said in the first post, i arrived in london on new years eve day. arriving in london for the ball drop seemed like the best thing ever. of course after becoming quickly reacquainted with the concept of jet lag, i started to doubt my ability to get pretty and get out of the house. thanks to franz's persuasive skills we got out of the flat. first stop: some random "tapas" restuarant for a quick bite. well... let's just say "welcome to london". overpriced, overall crappy food. out of the 4 tables is the place i think there were people at one other table. i felt extremely bad to be sitting there while i'm sure the employees wanted desperately to leave and go celebrate themselves. somewhere along the line this crazy south african guy with these two kind of scary looking russian girls came in and started buying everyone drinks. the night was getting cheaper... thanks to his desire to show off for one of the russian ladies. i'd like to say that the reason we never made it to central london to some classy club or funky pub was because the tube system would have been closed and we wouldn't have had a way to get home... but that would be a lie. the tube was running all night for the occasion. still, we ended up staying at this hilarious little place with these weird people. kind of entertaining. kind of pathetic. regardless, that was new years eve.

the following days were plagued by staying up incredibly late and sleeping in the same due to lack of time zone adjustment. we would drag ourselves out of the flat and make the trip into the city via tube after dark. the first few times we were in central london it was this way. it was weird and kind of surreal. there was usually no one on the streets. nothing open. it felt like a ghost town... hardlly the london i remembered or franz had expected. but it slowly came into focus. we started to get out of the house earlier each day (packing a lunch to save money) and started seeing the sights. we scraped the surface of both of british museum and the national gallery which are both amazing. a little too much to take in completely in one visit. here's some nice camera work by the master gastler outside of the national gallery one night.



we did a ton of just wandering around the city by foot and becoming familiar with the tube system (which p.s. i LOVE!). we even went to a service one sunday morning at st. pauls cathedral, thinking, what better way to see the cathedral than "in action". the attendance for the main service was surprisingly small, but the cathedral itself is beautiful. we also checked out a few more of the touristy sites like the london eye (which is i believe the worlds largest ferris wheel) and the various bridges/towers/etc that london offers. more entertaining to watch the other tourists in these areas than it is to see whatever it is you're standing in front of.

after the first week of being there classes started for me. i'll explain this in more detail later, but let's just say art school in london is in a class of its own... in many ways. basically we don't have "class". can't even go there right now. like i said, i will later.



a stairwell at central st. martins. one cool old building. awesome wood staircases. slippery i will say. last week as there was a tour going on, kelsey (my friend from uw) and i were walking down the stairs through the crowd of prospective students... and i proceeded to slip and begin to fall down the stairs. lovely. classic. only me. the tour guide stopped his speech to ask if i was ok. "no. i just fell in front of a bunch of people!" "yeah ... hahha... eh."

anyway, much of the second week was spent saying goodbye to franz. our last night i made rules. #1 no talking about money. we're not going to go on a date together for the next three months, so i'm getting dessert. #2 let's play it by ear. that was about it. it was nice. sad, but nice. a classic "london meal" of shepards pie along with pims and lemonade. yummy. then went to the haagen daz cafe. pretty much the best thing EVER! as if i wasn't addicted before.



followed by coffee at this hilarious little place that looked like the inside of a circus tent.







prince for the super bowl half time show? interesting. hmmm. i'm sure football fans are also huge prince fans. right.

basically... it was more than awesome having franz here my first two weeks while i was getting settled. not to mention that it was great getting to spend 2 weeks together in general. i can say that hasn't happened as much as i would like.



so it would be totally cool of me to keep writing this post until the end of the super bowl, but since they aren't playing the good commercials here in the uk, it's just totally not worth keeping it on and trying to stay awake. the commentary here is totally lame in a funny way though. i'm surprised i even turned it on.

another monday awaits me after the short 6 hours ahead of me.

thanks for tuning into super bowl XLI.