Camden Town & Kew Gardens

Happy Halloween! I have no plans yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. :)

Tuesday Kat and I went to Camden Town, which is this crazy cool area of London that has endless markets. It was really fun, and I got some gifts while I was there.

Tuesday night was another play, this one was "The White Devil". It was ok, but really the most exciting thing was that I had my fourth Harry Potter sighting; Alan Rickman who plays Snape in the HP movies and has been in Love Actually, Galaxy Quest, Robin Hood, etc, was across from us in the audience. I don't think he liked the play very much either. :P
Wednesday we took a field trip for Bio to Kew Gardens, which is a botanic garden. It was huge and it was BEAUTIFUL!

I wanted to take a million photos, but my camera died pretty early in the day. :(

Wednesday night we had a Halloween/birthday party at the house. Jen, our RHD, decorated the lounge and bought us all sorts of candy and treats! We just hung out and watched Shaun of the Dead.

Thursday I had class all day and then I went to the weekly film screening at Imperial College with the Film Society. It was a really bizarre french film called "Play Time".

Later we hung out in the lounge and watched Resident Evil.

Alaska in Winter and the BFI London Film Fest

Friday night Jen and I went out to go see this band, Alaska in Winter.
http://www.myspace.com/alaskainwinter

It was a cool performance. We stayed there for a while dancing and whatnot, and Jen got some pictures with him.

We ended up going outside and walking around afterwards, and happened upon this couple who were dressed in tiger costumes for a birthday. It was really bizarre but they were cool people so we followed them around for a while. We went to this party at their flat and then back out to another pub.
Well, since I was out pretty late Friday and Thursday, Saturday was my do nothing day. I slept in really late and watched a movie in the lounge with Jen and Sarah and Sarah's friend. Unfortunately Sarah and her friend couldn't get into her room because her door wouldn't open, so they were stuck in the lounge for a while.

Sunday I went to a film screening of "I Know You Know" at the BFI London Film Festival!
http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/i_know_you_know

It was very exciting to be part of an actual film fest, and the director/writer Justin Kerrigan was there to introduce the film, as well as Robert Carlyle, the lead actor. Kerrigan also directed and wrote Human Traffic, which I haven't seen yet but hear is very good. Carlyle had been in a lot of big movies, but probably most known for The Full Monty and Trainspotting.

Wellcome/The City/Metro

Sorry for the delay everyone; I haven't even been that busy this week, just lazy.

So, Tuesday I went to an Amnesty International meeting at Imperial College. It was kind of lame because everyone was coming and going and had to get to class, but I'm glad I get to be involved with the group while I'm here. Also, I think I will be using my weekly Amnesty meetings as part of my Urban Antro ethnography project, so that's handy.

Wednesday I went to the Wellcome Collection with my Biotech class, which is a museum of sorts that deals with human issues such as medicine and disease.

This picture is of this machine they had that took your picture and then showed you by morphing your photo how your face shape relates to the average persons. Apparently my forehead is not big enough:
This is a photo of a spinal cord

I also picked up a ticket to see Flogging Molly in a few weeks! I am very excited to see them, and this is actually my first 'real' concert so that is exciting as well.

Wednesday night was also another play night, we all went to see Ivanov, which is a play about this guy in Russia dealing with depression, except it takes place before despression was ever really known about. It was actually quite good, and it had some bigger actors in it, including the third HP actor, Prof Lockheart from the second film.

Thursday was Anthro all day, but we took an interesting walk during the second part of class. We actually went to the East End and to Brick Lane, where I'd just been, but it was cool to get more information about the history of the area. We also walked through 'the city', which is the financial district of London.

Thursday night I went to the Film Society screening of "The Hustler" at Imperial. I also signed up to go see a film at the BFI London Film Fest, so I'm very excited about that. Later, Kat, Jen, and I went to a club called Metro in Soho. It was really fun dancing all night and meeting new people.

Brick Lane & British Museum

So, because my wallet was hurting from my mid-week antics, I had a chill weekend. Saturday I went to Brick Lane, which is the Bangladesh area apparently. It's in East London, so it's grey and dirty and hip. Seriously, there was SO many crazy dressed people. So, mainstream hip vintage is 80s, right, with the skinny jeans and cool flats and all that jazz, but the underground hip is pure 70s punk, and that's what EVERYONE was dressed like. Because Brick Lane is also a big area for art students. In fact, I went to this art gallery called Kounter Kulture; it was really good.

This was my favorite piece.

Anyway, Sunday I went to the British Museum, which was awesome. They have the Rosetta Stone, and cool stuff from the Parthenon, and lots of Egyptian stuff.

This piece was cool; it's actually nylon, with tiny little pockets, each containing a pill. Apparently, a British person will, on average, be prescribed 14,000 pills in their lifetime, and this exhibit is showing the size that encompasses. Crazy stuff.

Big Ben, Big Money (at bars), and Big Momma's Door

Tuesday night we all went to a play; it was cool that the actors who play Dumbledore and Filch in the HP movies were in it, but I didn't really particularly enjoy the play.

Wednesday during the day I went to Trafalgar Square and walked down by Parliament and Big Ben. I also went to the National Gallery.

Wednesday night was another play, this one was really good and very stylized in their use of lighting and the movement of the stage. After the play, about five of us went out to the Drayton Arms, another local pub. We stayed there just for a bit and moved the party back to the house, successfully waking up a few people. oops.

Thursday night a few of us went out to the 'Ain't Nothing But...' blues bar in Soho. It was the tiniest little bar ever, and we had to wait to get in as well as pay a cover charge, but it was definitely worth it. The band was amazing; they were this blues/jazz band called Big Momma's Door. http://www.myspace.com/bigmammasdoor (scroll down their myspace page and check out their youtube video. It's from the same bar, but earlier in the year. Music like this is always better live.)
The whole place just had this amazing energy with everyone dancing and drinking and having a good time. Some people had a little too much fun, like this one woman who drunkenly knocked over the mic and then got into an arguement with a guy from the band, another guy who kept trying to steal the mic while he danced on the table, and the numerous people who dropped glasses on the floor, leaving shards of glass and sticky beer all over. But hey, it was an amazing time. We stayed there till just before close, around 2 am I think, and then it took us quite a while to find our way home. The tube closes around midnight, so we had to find a nightbus to get us home and we had some trouble with that. I think we finally got home around 3:30.

Friday night some of us went to go see this indie band, Tilly and the Wall. They were pretty good, but they didn't play for very long and since we got there late, we only heard about three songs or so. Afterwards we went to Chinatown for dinner.

Harrods/Leicester Sq/Soho/Chinatown

So, Sunday I went to the one of the shopping districts which includes Harrods, the Macys of London. Harrods, however, is much more elegant and grand; there was even a woman singing opera from a balcony inside the store.


There was also a French Connection United Kingdom. I was disappointed that the actual UK store didn't have any witty shirts like the one in NYC.
Whenever I think of Benetton, I think of the 80s and their crazy bright colored clothing, so seeing their store made me laugh.
I'm not sure what church this is, but this is the second time I've gotten lost in my neighborhood and stumbled upon it.

Monday night Kat and I took the tube to Leicester Square, which is near Picadilly Circus and is also known as a touristy area as well as a theatre district.
Our goal was to find Chinatown, but somehow we just kept circling around it, wandering through the Square and Soho.
In our wanderings we found an actual Banksy, which was extremely exciting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Anyway, we finally found Chinatown and had dinner.

The Park to Portobello Rd

Let's see, where did I leave off? It's been a few days... Wednesday I had my morning bio class, then I walked to Hyde park because it was such a gorgeous day. I stumbled upon these really comfy lounge chairs by round pond, and I was sitting in one for quite a while, falling asleep and listening to music, when some guy came up to me and informed that you actually had to pay to use the lounge chairs. oops. I also took some good creeper photos of random people, haha.

I think that was really the most exciting thing of Wednesday, except for the late-nite trip to Sainsbury for a cookie dough craving. It's funny because when you go to Trigs or something they have literally dozens of choices, but here they had only one choice of chocolate chip and I think one sugar; kinda says something about the US versus the UK, huh?

Anyway, Thursday we had a meeting with a local cop, I think he was, or at least he does something in law enforcement. We taked about being safe in the city and what not. Some interesting things I learned is that you cannot have a sharp object on your person with the intention of using it as a weapon; so, for example, if I happened to be talking to a friend about how I have this pencil in my bag in case I should need to stab a pickpocket or something, and a police officer overheard, you could be arrested. Also, I found out that our neighborhood, The Royal Burough of Kensington and Chelsea (officially), is the richest area in all of the UK. Crazy stuff. After the meeting, I had my Urban Anthropology class, which meets twice on Thursday for a grand total of four hours of the same class, how fun. And though there are 22 people in this house, only five of us are taking Urban Anthro, which means everyone else in the house has a four day weekend. Not fair.

Friday I walked to the Natural History Museum, which was neat.

My favorite exhibit was the human body, where they explained how your senses work and they had neat things to test your memory, and creepy giant fake babies.

Seriously though, this guy was huge. His feet were about the size of my head.

The earth exhibit was cool as well; they had this giant screen made up of many televisions and mirrors that told the story of the water cycle.

There was also a neat dinorsaur section, complete with an animatronic t-rex, which I took a video of for Sofia :)

Friday night a group of about six or seven of us went for a walk in search of a cool pub. On the way, we stumbled upon this guy in a reflective vest with his pants down 'round his ankles, doing pushups and jumping jacks while his friends/coworkers watched. It was rather funny and we gave him a nice round of applause. Eventually we found a pub called Bunch of Grapes; it was a cute little place that had a very chill atmosphere and it was surprisingly not that busy for a Friday night. http://www.pubs.com/pub_details.cfm?ID=157

Saturday during the day we went to the Portobello Rd market in Notting Hill. It was ridiculously warm out as well as ridiculously busy. But it was cool.

We also found a blue plaque for George Orwell, so that was exciting.

Well, that's all for now, but I'll try to do a better job of keeping everything up to date.