Humped Zebra Crossing

...Or Further Thoughts on Culture Shock

This post is brought to you by witty and hilarious British roadsigns, particularly the one pictured at the left.

The past few days have been somewhat less jam-packed that the first few, but they have nonetheless been very interesting and educational.

Thursday night several of us went to the mixer party that the student life office had organized for us at a bar near Covent Garden. It wasn't a bad event, but it was much too crowded and loud to carry on a conversation with anyone, so the proposed purpose of meeting people was somewhat lost. Despite all that I did manage to meet a couple of new people, and a group of five or six of us has since become our staple traveling/sightseeing/shopping group.

Friday morning was our first truly free morning, so Robyn and I got up early (though I did not get up as early as I had hoped seeing as my alarm clock was being wacky and decided to reset itself one half-hour late). We headed over to Picadilly Circus and went to Waterstone's, the British version of Borders or Barnes & Noble. I picked up a copy of The Cypriot, the latest release by the publishing company I will likely be working for this semester.

Then we wandered over to Covent Garden and through many of the shops and stalls there. On the way we passed all the tourist traps on the way -- numerous pubs, not more than a few decades old, boasting the most authentic fish & chips, shops full of cheap souvenirs, and the obligatory Hard Rock and Planet Hollywood. But Covent Garden was
bustling with a mixed local and tourist crowd. The shops were open and full, and the street entertainers were entertaining to their fullest. The most exciting thing there was a waffle shop, run out of a kiosk in the middle of the Apple Market area. The waffles themselves smelled and looked amazing, but so did the ice cream and chocolate sauce they sold to go on top of the waffles. We immediately decided we must return to try the waffles.

That afternoon I had my meeting with the BU placement team, and they gave me the time and location for my official interview, which is on Friday. The company, Black Spring Press, is located in the Hoxton area, which is near the Old Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane, and area known for its many curry restaurants. The area is also supposedly home to the most vibrant nightlife for young twenty-somethings, but our search later that night turned up less than we had hoped. We did, however, have a successful dinner hunt, ending at a restaurant called Shish, which as you might have guessed is a kebab restaurant.

The most exciting part of Friday, in my opinion, involved a trip to the grocery store where I found these self-sealing ice cube bags. How cool is that?! Of course I had to buy them mostly on a novelty basis, but I really did want to have ice sometimes, and there are no ice makers in our freezers.

On Saturday, Amanda (left), Robyn and I met my friend Drew and took the train to Chislehurst to tour the caves. The caves were started by the Druids almost 8,000 years ago and were later continued by the Romans and Saxons as a chalk and flint mine. They were used as an arsenal during the First World War, and they house up to 15,000 local residents during the air raids of World War II. Because people lived in them, there are areas set up as bathrooms, bedrooms, churches, hosplitals, and evne a concert stage. During the 1960s the stage hosted several concerts including Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. The tour was pretty cool, but I think the train ride out to the area was even better because we got to see a lot of the London suburbs and areas with trees. But the whole experience in the cave brought new light to one of the differences I never think of between the U.S. and Britain. We were touring the caves as bomb shelters, and even though such shelters surely existed in the States during certain times in our history, no one ever had to live in them. People would pile into these caves at night, and into many of the Tube stations near the docklands, and they would emerge in the morning wondering if their home or place of work or worship was even there anymore. And there are still people a live who remember living like this, which amazes me a little.

All the walking of the past weke must have been catching up with me because I took a three-hour nap when I returned in the afternoon. I think a bit of homesickness was beginning to hit as well, but I've always heard that the best way to fix that is to get out. We couldn't decide where to go, so we all put on out coats and walked until we found something. Difference about Britain #2: Many restaurants close fairly early, bars close at 11 p.m. during the week, and pubs stop serving food at 10 p.m. even on Saturday. So when we left the house a little after 10 p.m., there were no food options. But we did find ourselves at the Prince of Wales on Kensington Church Road, a very cute little pub with lots of atmosphere and lots of people (and lots of smoke). Once again we decided we had to return for dinner very soon.

This morning I found the local Church of Scotland (one of two in London), which is located near Knightsbridge and is only about a 25 minute walk from here. (NOTE: To put that in context, it's not any farther than I had to walk to church from Hinton James during my freshman year.) The streets were already full at 10:30 a.m. will tourists and shoppers and families with their 2.5 kids and a dog. The church service at St. Columba's was very nice -- pretty much just like traditional services at home, except the pastor had a Scottish accent. Gorgeous santuary too; it was rebuilt after the war because the orginal building was bombed. After the service every Sunday they serve lunch in the lower hall for 1.80 GBP. I sat with these very sweet older ladies and had a lunch of ham, a potato, peas, a tomato and a traditional Scottish dessert called cranachan, which was delicious.

The rest of my day has been pretty low-key, and tomorrow I have my first day of English class. Tomorrow morning I want to go to the Natural History Museum, which is just down the street. And tomorrow night I can't quite decide what to do (everyone else will be at the opera, which sold out before I could buy tickets). But things continue to be exciting, and the group of girls I've been hanging out with is really quite perfect. We've already started to discuss plans for Spring Break, and we've unanimously decided that little British kids' accents are the cutest things in the world.