[Day 13] Sunshine

As I said, yesterday was my day off. It's nice having Wednesdays and Fridays off, but I definitely have enough work to fill my free time during those days. Since we only have class once a week, I have a lot of reading to do for each class.

Yesterday it rained on and off for most of the day, but it wasn't too cold out. Around 3 I went to Brick Lane with Sammi, Talhah, Kate, Erin, Daphne and Kate's friend from home, Peter. Queen Mary is in Mile End and Brick Lane is about two towns away. We walked through Mile End, Stephney Green and Whitechapel before we got to Brick Lane. On the way we passed a lot of fruit stands and clothing stands on the side of the road. There are markets all over the place here and they sell everything you can think of.

Brick Lane was different than I expected, as is everything here. I thought it was going to be a little shopping district, but it was more of a market area with either really strange cheap things, or really expensive vintage stuff. I took a couple pictures there, I'll put them on here once I upload them. This area has a high Indian population, but it seemed like Brick Lane was basically only an Indian community. Needless to say, I had a hard time finding something to eat. We walked for a long time, of course I complained the entire way because I was hungry, and by some miracle we stumbled upon a Mexican restaurant. I was the only one that was hungry so we went in there just for me basically. We got a plate of nachos to share and I was the only one to get real food. I got really tasty spicy chicken fajitas while some of the others got fancy mixed drinks. My food was so good, but unfortunately I think for the first time in my life I experienced heart burn. It was awful and it was just like the heart burn commercials. I'm not letting that stop me though, I love spicy food and I love Mexican...that was the first time I've had heart burn anyway, it was probably a fluke. I hope.

On the subject of food real quick, I said this yesterday, but I really need Italian food. Everyone that knows me knows that all I eat is some form of spaghetti, pizza, cereal and occasionally a burger or steak. The food options here are the following:

chicken

fried chicken

curry

potatoes

chocolate

I can only eat so much chicken, fried chicken and potatoes. I don't eat curry. I eat chocolate all the time, but unfortunately I can't live off of it. The chicken is starting to taste like cardboard, the fried chicken is making me sick and the potatoes need some sort of flavor besides potato, but they don't have any flavors here. 


I'm obsessed with talking about food right now so I'll continue...there's a farmer's market on Thursdays and Fridays on our campus, I might go buy some bread and vegetables. Mostly because I haven't eaten many vegetables while I've been here, and because our bread got moldy after like three days. Wait, speaking of weird things. They don't refrigerate their eggs! Isn't that bizarre!? I googled it, and it seems fine, but it's just really weird to me. Also, sneak peak for later in this post, I finally found a McDonald's. Best Christmas ever.


Anyway, back to Brick Lane, after we ate and walked around in the rain (my rain coat is wonderful for it because it's long enough that my legs don't get wet), we took a bus back to QM.  I changed my shoes and then I went to central to go on the London Eye! I'll put up a picture of the Eye later today or tomorrow.


The London Eye is a giant ferris wheel in central London on the river that over looks everything. It's amazing. I went on it with my Villanova program group, so I took the district line in to Westminster and transferred to the Jubilee line and got off at Waterloo. The Waterloo station was huge, but I'll get to that later. I kind of wandered a few blocks in the rain looking for the Eye. You would think I would've been able to see it from the station, because that's what I thought, but I couldn't.


I was walking down a street when I just happened to glance over my shoulder and I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I had to turn around and walk towards it, I navigated through the streets til I got to it. I can't wait to put up my pictures because it's astonishing up close.


I met my group and they gave us our tickets (it's normally 18 pounds) and we split up into two groups to get on the pod things that take you up. It moves very slowly, you can barely tell, and it lasts about 30 minutes. I really liked going at night, especially because I love Big Ben and Parliament, and they were lit up brightly against the dark sky. Pictures didn't turn out too well because of the rain, but it was still so worth it. All you see is lights and city for miles and miles. Afterward we walked through this 4d exhibit they had set up, which was just 3d glasses and bubbles in the room, nothing special. Then I took pictures outside with Kerri and Mary, two Nova girls, and walked back to the Waterloo station.


This is the part when I found McDonald's and my semi bad day did a 180. I stood back for a while deciding what to get and I settled on a McFlurry because I still wasn't hungry from the fajitas earlier. The man waiting on me couldn't understand me when I said, "what kind of McFlurries do you have?" and he kept saying "caramel sundae?" so I just eventually said yeah that's fine. Well, he gave me a vanilla McFlurry with chocolate chunks in it, so I paid him the pound and got on the tube a very happy American girl.

Also on a note relating to the tube, look how steep the escalators are in the tube, they go so far underground and they're so steep:

Anyway I didn't do much after that. I learned a little bit about futbol from some British guy I talked to, that was the most exciting thing. I had another class today, but I'm going to take a nap now so I'll post again later today.


M