London: Polite Acentos and Transporte Muy Fácil

This past weekend I met up with Sarah, a friend from home and ISU who’s studying in Sweden this semester, and we spent our Thursday through Monday being supertourists in the land of no language barrier!

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  I was previously well aware that American English and British English have some dialectal differences ( “fries” vs. “chips,” “chips” vs. “crisps,” “garbage” vs. “rubbish,”), but I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be understood when asking for “band-aids,” or that candy bars don’t contain pieces of “cookie,” but rather “biscuit.” I was also surprised to barely be able to tell if a recorded announcement was in English, because the strong accent combined with lots of speed and little breath made all the little words run together and sound like something totally foreign at first. 

I do need to express my love for the British accent though. It just makes everything sound so much more polite. Even when people are swearing up a storm or whining to their family members or yelling at a crowd of people to back up, they sound so much more pleasant! 

We did basically everything you can think of and LOVED IT. The two hours waiting in customs and hostel that seemed a suitable set for a horror movie’s murder scene? Merely minor setbacks. 

We started our adventure Friday morning with the intention of going to Madame Tussauds, the wax museum, but we got there and realized the entrance price was 29 pounds, which is almost 50 US dollars. We quickly decided to save 25 pounds and instead explore the area while eating our £4 amazingly delicious crepes from the stand on the corner.

bananas and nutella!

We then took the tube to King's Cross Station, the train station where the famous Platform 9¾ from the Harry Potter movies was filmed. I'll get to that in a minute, but let me take this paragraph to declare my love for London's public transportation system. IT IS SO EASY TO USE. The maps are easy to read, the lines are easy to figure out, and there are helpful signs in all the right places. It is the epitome of organization, which is a beautiful thing in public transportation. You know what I mean if you've ever had to take the subway in New York City, or are generally half as directionally confused and incompetent as myself. Whoever is responsible for the tube's layout, give yourself a giant pat on the back! And feel free to share your brilliance with the US.

Anyway, Platform 9¾ was filmed between platforms 4 and 5 of the station. Unfortunately, you have to actually buy a train ticket to get onto the platform. They do, however, humor Harry Potter fans with a consolation site cleverly placed between platforms 9 and 10- a laminate brick-patterned wall with the back half of a luggage trolley sticking out under a Platform 9¾ sign. ...Yay?

The pillars between platforms 4 and 5. Look familiar?

We later ventured to the Australia House, the building whose lobby was used to film Gringotts wizard bank, but they only let you inside one day a year and that day did not happen to be April 15th. Oh well, I can still say I've seen the building! After that, we walked through The National Gallery and saw famous works of Van Gogh and Monet, which we didn't even know were in there until they were in front of our faces.

We had tickets for an evening performance of the musical Les Miserables, so we found the theater with two hours to spare, then ate dinner in a restaurant of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean food. Les Mis was awesome, though I didn't completely pay attention for most of the first act. I know, I know, but I was unfamiliar with the storyline and it wasn't exactly easy to follow. Thankfully, Sarah filled me in at intermission and explained the second act to me before it actually started so I wouldn't have to be the annoying person that asks questions the whole time. Like I said though, the show was amazing, the music incredible, the actors amazingly incredible. It still doesn't beat the Broadway production of The Lion King (because nothing can), but I'd recommend it. 

Sarah being excited outside the theater

We wandered directly across the street and found ourselves in Chinatown, where I bought a ricecake. It was essentially a gummy pink ball with a really sugary bean-ish filling. I approve. 

 

We got up bright and early the next day for a bus tour of the city. Being a passenger where vehicles drive on the left side of the road is a very odd sensation. Every time the bus turned, I was instinctively screaming in my head "WRONG LANE WRONG LANE WRONG LANE" and bracing myself for the head-on collision that would (not) ensue if we didn't move over.  


We saw just about every famous site in London you can think of including Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben (which, by the way, is the name of the bell inside the clock tower, not the clock tower itself), the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, and the changing of the guards ceremony outside of Buckingham Palace. (Pictures on facebook!) Our tour then gave us a break for lunch, so Sarah got fish & chips and I got vegetarian "fish" and chips- the "fish" was basically mozzarella sticks. Our tour resumed with a 2-hour coach ride outside of London to the famous prehistoric World Heritage Site that is Stonehenge. We had both already learned quite a bit about its history, so we ditched the pre-recorded audio tour to seize the perfect jumping picture opportunity. We spent a lot of time feeling amazed, happy we could cross this off our bucket lists, bummed that we weren't allowed to touch it, and trying to wrap our minds around the fact that this mysterious man-made stone structure in front of us was over 4,000 years old. Awesome experience, and probably my favorite part of the trip.

We ate Indian food later that night- YUM! - and talked our way out of paying for a six-dollar bottle of water. We attended the Palm Sunday service at Westminster Abbey the next morning and explored Westminster School, which reminds me of Hogwarts to the max. It's also had some cool headmasters, such as John Locke (If you don't know who he is, shame on you. Go take a US government class.) and Henry Liddell, friend of Lewis Carroll and father of Alice Lidell. (See the Alice in Wonderland connection?)

 We later tube'd over to Oxford Street for some Thornton's fudge, and figured out the (incredibly organized and easy to follow!) bus system to get to a pub for dinner that did NOT have scratch n' sniff wallpaper as rumored. We changed our minds and settled on Dominoe's pizza instead (exotic, I know). We talked for hours, mostly about our language/cultural differences, with cool people in the hostel that night- two Canadians, two Italians, and an Irish guy.

Monday morning and afternoon were spent in the beautiful Hyde Park seeing how close the swans would let us get before flying away, and as it turns out, they don't fly away. Maybe they would if you touched them, but we were too scared of how that might go down.

After that it was off to the airport and back to our prospective countries. You can bet I will be returning to the polite, navigable, vegetarian-friendly city of London at some point in my life! I hope you have enjoyed my exceedingly long update, because I am sufficiently sick of writing it. Happy Easter, Congrats to Holly and Michael on baby Joseph's arrival, and goodnight!

Mullet count in England: ZERO (round of applause)
Mullet count in Spain: 25

¡Tú hablas mal!

For the past few weeks, I've been working in the 3-year-old class at the daycare. I LOVE THEM. Though they get into much more trouble, I have to admit they're a bit more exciting than the 5-month-olds. The most rewarding thing I've experienced throughout my semester here has been successfully carrying on conversations with the kids, and understanding them well enough to tend to their needs. It's safe to say I've learned more at the daycare in the past few weeks than I have in my classes all semester.

My favorite (not that I have a favorite or anything) is a boy named Fernando. He has curly, dirty-blond hair and carries around this old blue stuffed dog that's missing an eye. He smiles at everything, he's super ticklish, and he often climbs all over me or throws himself in my lap without warning. When he's explaining something or telling a story, he is quite expressive and dramatic, utilizing swooping hand gestures, facial expressions, pauses for effect, and drastic variations in the intonation of his words. And today I discovered another charming attribute of his: honesty. He cut me off and said "¡Tú hablas mal!" ("You talk bad!"). Thanks for the confidence boost, buddy.

Excitement has been building in Sevilla all week with preparations for Semana Santa. The marching bands are practicing in the streets for the parades, parts of streets are being blocked off, and best of all, my host mom has introduced my roommates and I to an Easter specialty so heavenly you'd swear Jesus made it himself: torrijas.

How do I begin to describe these? They're slices of bread cooked and fried and soaked in all kinds of stuff- milk, sugar, cinnamon, eggs, honey, and white wine. I guess you could say they're the Spanish version of french toast, but they're served chilled and they have sort of a custard-y taste and a denser consistency. If I come back to the US weighing twice as much as when I left, it will be entirely the fault of las torrijas. I'm not sure if they look quite as appetizing as they sound, so trust my words over their appearance:

More roommates have been moving in and out of the apartment, as usual. The two Italian girls, Sara and Fabiola, left Sunday morning and later that night we got a new girl from Germany, Alex, who is staying until the end of next week. Living with people from other countries and learning about our cultural differences has been pretty fascinating to me. We've spent hours after dinner discussing differences in daily routines, media, school systems, food, holidays, and stereotypes.

Fabiola, Sara, and myself in Parque de los Principes on their last day here

 I would love to elaborate on the previous paragraph, but I have to be at the airport in a few hours and I still have to finish packing and print my boarding pass. That's right, I'm going to London until Monday.

¡Hasta luegoooo!

Mullet count: 23