boo on getting robbed.

wish me luck.

this morning i toured the globe theatre where shakespeare put on all of his productions. i'm going to see "measure for measure" there in a couple of weeks. i'm not a huge shakespeare fan, but it's a good london-y thing to do.

my afternoon class was cancelled because the teacher has the flu. what a shame. i spent the earlier part of the afternoon in the tate modern and saw original picassos and henri cartier-bresson. aw. love it.

i decided to check out oxford street and i bought some hot pink lip gloss and silver ballet flats. i'm having a heart attack over the clothes here. the best vintage clothes i have ever seen. i'm a top-shop addict now.

katie and i have decided that london has stolen our hearts and that we need to switch majors so that we can make cash and live here. then i can sit in sidewalk cafes in my silver ballet flats and leave hot pink lip gloss imprints on my espresso cups.

muah.

i woke up at six this morning and couldn't fall back asleep. i grabbed a newspaper and headed to a cafe down the street for some toast and coffee. we don't have a television or radio in our flat and i haven't been picking up the paper, so i truly had no idea what was going on in the world, outside of the saddam trial. that is really pathetic for a journalism major.

i made a big pasta dinner for the guys last night and they brought a couple bottles of wine. we went to the pub for a drink but i ended up going back to my room around ten.

the sun has been out all morning. it reminds me of iowa. i woke up missing my strawberry waffles and iowa city and bubblebaths and big mugs of chai and my family and laying in the backyard in a bikini with a book but it will be okay because like he said, there will be ups and there will be downs and they seem more extreme when you are traveling.

on my way home from writing in my journal friday night i ran into quinn, aaron and tim on holloway and ended up going to shepherd's bush to see "my morning jacket" on a whim - still carrying my schoolbag with my hair twisted up in a messy top knot.

the first people we met (six boys including one named jeremy and one girl named faith) were from south africa. we talked about ryan adams, michael moore and visas. one of the boys died when i told him i was from iowa. "kerouac said the prettiest girls in america live in des moines." he told me he had a plan to drive through the states and eat nothing but apple pie and ice cream. a noble goal.

tim, aaron and i decided to head back to camden market on saturday, but it was really busy and was making me feel a little nervous. we hopped on the tube and went to picaddilly circus and to the virgin megastore so i could listen to british pop music because it's really dorky and puts me in a good mood and then this girl told me she was looking for people for this new british guy's music video and she thought i looked the part. haha, can you imagine me in a british music video sober? no way.

here's a excerpt from my personal journal later in the day:

"the boys and i are laying in the a park in the center of leicester square. i am enjoying my first uninterupted hour of london sun. people are milling about crowded onto the benches and green space drinking coffee, holding hands, talking.. i have a calmness and appreciation for these moments. moments when i'm twenty - so young, so on the verge, so untamed. i don't feel nervous or anxious about what is next, but just ready and that feels right."

aaron and i are going to make a big pasta dinner with garlic bread and red wine to celebrate the fourth of july. one jackass on our floor said that he is going to run around screaming "i love the usa" wrapped in an american flag. if he does have a thick enough skull to go through with that, then i will be home when he comes home bleeding and crying. i just hope he has enough sense not to. most british people have a definite respect for americans, but nobody has respect for ignorance.

an excerpt from my personal journal from yesterday:

"it's a chilly day - a very busy first of july. i had class in the morning then a tour of the theater museum in the afternoon, a latte in covent garden square, dinner in a delicious snobby restaurant and then saw "iphigenia" - a greek tragedy - at the national theatre. (i sat in the second row and could hear the actors whispering behind the curtain.)

no matter what area of london i'm in, i find myself sitting in a sidewalk cafe sipping coffee just watching the people. i'm not here to sight-see. i hate that philosophy of traveling, snap-shot traveling. i want to experience the people, the life, the ordinary days of london.

i want to live with my eyes wide open."

sporatic rain every hour/buying fresh flowers for my flat/wandering through the camden market/having my picture taken next to a stand that sells legal hallucinogenic mushrooms/having a vendor ask me if iowa was an island and then wishing it was/feeling slightly homesick when i woke up/eating a flapjack that was delicioso/getting lost on the tube with aaron and quinn/drinking a cappuccino/collaging my journal/going with the boys to buy a guitar for our flat/reading virginia woolf's jacob's room/going to an art exhibit on the 1960's at the tate/laughing so hard i cried when the bus driver called quinn a "bloody idiot" and slammed on the brakes/having a creepy old police officer named eddie ask for my phone number when i just asked where the internet cafe was/

classes are underway. i don't care much for my theatre in london class because it's held in a room with no windows for four hours, but i love my literary london class.

yesterday tim, aaron and i went for my first plate of fish and chips after class then for some espresso. they decided to go to the pub and after much convincing (okay, it didn't take toooo much convincing) i joined them for a beer. we met a few middle aged men from dublin who thought aaron was this famous swedish soccer player who also has blonde dreads and always sticks his tongue out when he scores a goal. they didn't seem too disappointed when we told him he wasn't and bought him a game of pool and me a very large beer.

some of the girls from the study abroad program started talking very loudly about how "weird" british guys are. with the exception of four girls i have met, most of the girls in our program are very spoiled americans who came to london to hang out only with other americans and have no desire to experience british culture, but to complain about it. well, now that that is off my chest, i will mention that tim, quinn, aaron and i are taking the ferry to dublin in a couple of weeks for a long weekend. everyone i have spoken with has said it's beautiful and i've been reading a bit of james joyce and that makes me want to see it. oh, and we are going to to the guiness factory. jealous?

i found a new cafe to have coffee in in the morning near my place. it's called amici which means friend in french, i guess. besides having a corny name it is adorable and has tables outside with umbrellas and big windows and i spent the whole morning reading there. the workers on the tube/underground are on strike right now.. hopefully for just twenty four hours.. but this means that everybody is taking buses and cabs and holloway road is loud and crowded and resulting in all sorts of catastrophes i can watch from my window. london is one big beautiful mess right now.

yesterday was my first day of class. we went on a tour of bloomsbury which is absolutely gorgeous and spent time in the peace park (where there's a statue of ghandi in the middle) and then to the british museum. after class was over, i snuck away from my american counterparts and ended up meeting a girl from australia who is living here for five months. we decided to share a sandwich and get espresso in a sidewalk cafe on museum street.

after she left, i got out my map which i'm horrible at decoding and ended up just wandering around. i bought myself a long scarf at a corner store.

when i got home after taking the tube in the wrong direction not juts once BUT twice, i made it back to my flat and tea like a little english girl and read a few essays by virginia woolf. then six of the guys and one other girl and i found hopped on the tube and found a corner pub and i played typical english songs on the jukebox and drank a stella artois. yum.

more later.

london is amazing.. i live in a flat with three guys from the west coast. i've learned a lot of new card games in the past few days. the flat is on the top floor of a place on holloway road in north london. i have a huge window without a screen that looks out over the main road. as you can imagine, i spend most of my time with my head out of the window watching everyone pass by.

on the first floor of our apartment building there is a pub called "big red." my first night in london was spent drinking carlsburg and listening to a beatles cover band.

the weather changes every second. the mornings are a bit chilly and sunny, and by afternoon is warmer but overcast and then the minute you feel comfortable enough to take off your jacket, it starts pouring rain. i've been waking up early.. like around six am.. and finding a cheap cafe to eat some toast, drink coffee and write in my journal in. the rumors are true, the food really is disgusting here. i have been eating toast with nutella on it and drinking carlsburg. i think it's a better alternative to america's no-carb craze.

i had my first class today - literary london. my instructor is taking us on a tour of bloomsbury, where virginia woolf lived, later this afternoon. i think i might go down to camden afterwards. i guess they have a great market and kind of an indie crowd or something.

i'm in an internet cafe right now. the italian guy who owns it started playing a lot of three doors down after he found out i was from the states. he keeps pouring me coca-cola and asking me if i want to go on a date. uh oh, now he wants to know my star sign.

i think i'm seeing the world through rose colored lenses. it has been beautiful here and i have been falling in love with london all over again. yesterday i woke up early because the sun was streaming through my window onto my bed and i made tea and wrote in my journal and then tim came over and we hopped onto the tube. the first place we went was a place the history class toured called st. dunstan's. it is a church that was bombed during the first world war and all that is remaining is the structure. the inside is open to the public and overgrown with flowers. i just laid in the grass and wrote in my journal and soaked in the sun. next up was westminster abbey. i had the BEST sandwich i have ever had. it was called sandwich sofia. perhaps i'll name my first daughter after that sandwich. haha it was avocado, bacon, tomato and brie on a baguette. yummy. we walked to st. james' park (the park in the film "about a boy") afterwards and sat in the sun some more and then went to harrod's where i bought my mother some english tea because that is definitely the only thing i can afford in harrod's. i keep asking myself where this trip has gone? i only have around fifteen days left, five of which will be spent in london. yesterday i was standing on the london bridge and tim said, "i'm really going to miss this place." but the fact is that we are so young that we don't have to miss it. we can keep coming and going, we can keep saying goodbye.

one's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.
henry miller

i'm sitting in an internet cafe that is playing classical music. it's really warm here today.. probably around seventy degrees.. i just finished doing laundry with katie.. this afternoon we saw "the woman in black," a play that was supposed to be scary but seemed a bit hokey to me. i have one more essay to finish up for class and then i am finished and i'm off on my backpacking adventure with nathan. i can't wait to see him.. i miss seeing the people i know and love every day.. the other night i went to dinner at a four star restaurant called tamarind and sat next to ben kingsley of "Gandhi." i think i got my fifteen minutes of fame through osmosis. it's all over now.