[Day 37] Birthday Week!

Sunday, my day to relax and not doing anything...besides homework of course. I have a lot of homework to do, but I'm taking a break right now. I need to catch up with what I've been doing the past couple of days.

Thursday afternoon I went to Salusbury World, the place I'm volunteering at this semester. It wasn't as far away as I'd expected and the neighborhood was nice than I was expecting. Salusbury World is an after school program for children who come from refugee families. All of the preparation talks and explanations that we've had of the program made it seem like these children were basically going to be aliens. I'm not sure what everyone else thinks, but kids are kids. Basically every job I've had in my life has been working with kids: teaching skiing, tutoring, teaching swim lessons, babysitting. Some are more well behaved than others, but I don't see what was so crazy about these ones. Actually, these children reminded me a lot of the kids that I tutor in NE Philly. Their parents don't necessarily speak English and they don't live in the best neighborhoods. The kids in Philly are usually Hispanic, black or Asian, and the kids in Salusbury World are black or Middle Eastern. It's pretty cool. When the program director introduced me and the other volunteer, a guy from Nova, the kids were so excited to hear that we were from America. Immediately they asked us a bunch of questions, like if we've ever been to Disney Land or if we're from California.

I played football (soccer) with this one 10 year old boy for like 45 minutes. He told me his name and I had no idea what he said, I guess I gave him a weird look because he said, "Most people call me Zack." I had fun playing with him. I also learned that my soccer abilities are that of a 10 year old boy, maybe a little better. That's kind of sad, but at least he didn't beat me.

I also spent sometime teaching two kids how to play PIG in basketball. It was really fun playing sports with them, especially the girl because she really had no idea how to shoot the ball and I kind of taught her. After that she and I did jump rope (skipping as she called it) for a while. Unfortunately, volunteering with the kids isn't going to get me the 30 hours that I need, so I think I'm going to be doing some other projects for Salusbury World also. I might do some paperwork and I suggested to them that I can decorate and/or paint things if they need that, so hopefully I can do that.

Thursday night I went to the New Globe for a little bit with Peter, Kate, Sammie, Talhah and Anna. It was college night, so it was unbelievably crowded and hot. We left after an hour or so and came back to my flat. Kate, Anna, Erin and I spent like two hours taking pictures on Kate's photobooth on her Mac.

Friday was partly a homework day, but mostly a shopping day. We went back to Camden, which was absolutely amazing. Last time we were in Camden we thought we'd seen everything, but boy were we wrong.

Kate, Erin and I walked to Camden High Street and found the Camden Lock Markets. I can't even begin to describe how many stands were in that market. Seriously you walked into it from street level, got to the middle and there were a million different directions and levels you could go to. Some were inside, some were outside, some were upstairs, some were downstairs, some were in a horse stable, some were behind the horse stable...they  never ended. They had the cutest things, tons of clothes and jewelery, and lots of food. I got four chicken samosas and they were delicious! I bought a beaded necklace, soap, a scarf, two hats and some other things. Before we left I got the most amazing churro that I've ever had in my life. It was from a Brazilian stand and she made it on the spot and put caramel and chocolate in it, with cinnamon sugar on top of course. I would go back to Camden just for that churro it was so good. We spent a good 4 hours just walking around and looking at everything. Eventually Anna, Sammie, Sammie's friend Swati, Vijay and Talhah joined us as well. The place was insane, there was so much stuff there.

Friday night I went to a night club called Madame Jojo's in SoHo. It was Sammie's friend's 21st birthday and she'd invited Sammie to this club, but Sammie just brought all of us with her. So Sammie, Swati, Anna, Kate, Erin, Vijay, Talhah, Kirit and I all went. Everyone that we talked to there was so amused and excited that we (well me, Kate, Erin and Sammie) were American. The bouncer was excited that I was from Pennsylvania, I don't know why. (That also happened when I got my nose pierced. I had to show them my license for the paperwork and the girl was thrilled that I'm from Pa.) A lot of the people inside were foreigners, I met people from Amsterdam, Dublin and other European countries and they were also excited that we were American. It was weird because that was basically the first time anyone's been excited we're American, aside from the children as Salusbury World.


Yesterday I did some homework before I decided to go to Chipotle with Sammie, Swati, Erin and Kate. The Chipotle was around Trafalgar Square and it was so busy! Erin said she thought it was the only one in the UK. The only bad thing about it was that it was so expensive. I got my normal steak salad with tons of random stuff and hot sauce on it and it was almost seven pounds. It was definitely worth it though. Erin, Kate an d I wandered around Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus for a while and eventually made our way to Hyde Park. It was getting dark, but we wanted to see the Peter Pan statue. Of course it started raining as soon as we got to Hyde Park. And of course we were on the opposite side of the park from the statue. Since we were already there we walked to the statue anyway. It was creepy...it was raining and the sky was orange, the water was calm but there were crazy quacking ducks everywhere. It was really secluded too. I had to share an umbrella because I'm trying to make it the whole time here without an umbrella, so I ended up getting mostly drenched anyway. I wish we would've been there during the day, I'm sure it's beautiful.

We finally got to the statue about a half hour later and it was kind of disappointing in my opinion. It wasn't as big as I'd hoped, only like 10 feet tall. I also really couldn't see it, it was so dark, so maybe I should just wait to form an opinion until I go back.

We walked to the tube in the rain and came back to campus. After dinner we hung out and looked up places to go for my birthday. I haven't decided on one yet, but I still have a few days. Also I'm celebrating my birthday the entire week so I'm sure we'll do lots of fun things.

I have to register for classes Wednesday night. It's a lot easier to pick classes when you can talk to other people to see what they took. So far I think I'm going to take Junior English Research Seminar, Contemporary British Novel, Logic and Critical Thinking, and Advanced Spanish Grammar. I have to find one more class, probably either Ethics or English. My registration time is 10pm est, which means 3am for me. Greatttt. Anyway I have to go write a Poetry paper!

M