Happy New Year

Happy Chinese New Year! I should really have gone to the Chinatown here in London to check out the decoration and whatnot, and eat some yummy food but alas, there is no time. We are departing for Paris this afternoon in a matter of three hours so I'll have to wait and hope that the decorations are still up when we arrive back home on Sunday!

So a quick recap of what I've been doing since I last wrote an entry:

Skrillex was great.. unfortunately I was unable to enjoy it because I was busy bawling in the corner since someone took the liberty to reach under my coat, unhook my bag, and reach in and take my blackberry. And this was fifteen minutes after my friend's blackberry had already been stolen. I'm over it for the most part by now, but I still mourn for the loss of my best friend. Haha just kidding but it was really sad. Think about it: no more foursquare checkins, tweeting, checking emails as I get them, or looking at facebook notifications? It's sad to admit but my life felt pretty empty for the few days after I lost it. Oh well, I got myself a phone with bad touchscreen sensors but it will have to suffice.

On Sunday, Lynn and I ventured over to Tottenham Court Rd to look for my new phone and to look for the bookstore. We stumbled upon the K-Town of London, AKA three little shops and decided to stop in one of them for a quick snack. We had kimbap and kimchi fried rice. Later that night, Charine cooked us an authentic Korean dinner. Haha. It was kimchi stew.. with tofu and spam. My first time eating spam and the dinner was delicious! Props to Charine.

After class on Tuesday, we ventured over to Sir John Soane's Museum, which was actually very cool. It was his house, but also had hundreds of paintings and various sculptures, busts, etc. It's hard to imagine that someone designed and lived in such a huge and intricate house. He was a great Gothic architect and had his students paint all of the rooms in his house, which was how the museum keepers ensured that the way all of the artwork and objects were laid the way they were when Soane lived there. It was also cool how he incorporated daylight into the design of his house, playing with reflections and light seeping through grills on the grounds so that even the lower floor and basement were lit up during the day. I wish we were able to stay for the candlelit tour, where they light the entire house by candlelight on the first Tuesday of every month, but the queue was already building up by the time the daytime version of the museum closed at 5pm, and Lynn, Charine and I decided to go explore the Lincoln Inn buildings nearby instead.

Finally, last night a few of us bought some discount tickets from the student centre to go see a production titled "War Horse." While the story line sounded a little silly and the pictures of the horses on the website looked very minimal and mechanical, it was actually a really great play. What the whole audience found intriguing was how detailed the movements of the horses were. The story is about a boy who raises a horse, but his dad sells it to the army to make a profit and the boy runs off to the army to make sure that his horse is still alive and to get him back. In order for the horses to move around, there were two men standing under the horse inside the shell of its back, and there was one other man standing on the side, controlling the horse's neck, head, and movements of the ear. The play began with the horse grazing on its own, and when it poked at the grass and began to eat, or when it whimpered and sneezed, or when it whinnied and jumped or ran, the movements corresponded to those actions so realistically that it could have passed for a real horse. It was truly amazing and I'm glad I decided to go see it!

This post has gone on for too long. Expect an update on Sunday. We are heading out to Paris this afternoon by train and returning on Sunday! I'm very excited :)