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 :)

Past Few Days...

So on Tuesday we went to the British Museum, which was okay but we only saw a few exhibits. The mummy exhibit was cool, and there was an actual preserved body of a man who was buried in sand... intriguing yet gross at the same time. On Wednesday, I had two classes so that took up a good chunk of the day. Later that night, Charine, Kathryn and I went to go try fish and chips at a restaurant that someone recommended to us. It was legitly a slab of fish.. I expected fish nuggets or pieces or something. But it was pretty good, just not as amazing as I thought it would be since everyone talks about how you have to try fish and chips here. Yesterday, Thursday, we decided to go explore Oxford Circus a little more. We went into a few shops, found abakery called Paul that had good reviews and had some baked goods there, then went to the shop next door called Joe & The Juice, which is sort of like Jamba Juice except a little nicer-looking and they make mostly juice rather than smoothies. We were going to buy the monopoly board game at a huge toy store called Hamley's, but we saw that it was £20 so we decided not to. After that, we ventured into some cracks in the wall and discovered a vintage shop, a few bars that have some specials, and a high-end-looking club in front of which girls were literally wearing only teensy skirts in the freezing cold. Then we walked miles and miles til we got to a mexican fast food joint called Tortilla. The burritos were pretty good, and Charine and I watched Easy A while eating them. After the movie, we finally decided to go out a little with some friends and walked around a bit. Tonight, we bought tickets to go see Skrillex and others at this warehouse so it should be pretty fun. I'm excited!

Classes Begin

Ahhh I'm slacking on my "daily" journal. Since Saturday night was basically our last night of freedom before classes began, we felt obligated to go out. After people backing out and finally convincing them to come out again, we decided to try a club named Scala, about 10 minutes away from the dorm. Unfortunately, the music that was playing there was some sector of electronic music called drum & bass, and I'm not particularly a fan of it. It was really hard to dance to and my ear drums were being fried so after about half an hour and a shot of tequila later we decided to head out back to The Rocket where we could actually request music that was good. Too bad it closes at 2AM, so we only had about half an hour there to hang out and half the group left to eat McDonald's instead. Overall, a decent last night of freedom.

On Sunday, NYU gave us a panoramic bus tour of London, on which we visited St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace among other places. We all slept relatively early in preparation of our first day of classes. Luckily, my first Monday class is at 1:30PM so I got to sleep in a little longer than the rest of the roommates. First day of classes was okay. I decided that English accents are nice, except when you have to listen to your professor lecture with the accent for 3 hours straight. Then it becomes a little annoying and hard to listen to. But so far, the professor for my first class of the semester seems decent, and at least we get a 30 minute break in the middle. I was starting to feel a little trapped in the tiny rooms NYUL calls "classrooms." The highlight of my night was playing monopoly with Lynn and Charine... haha. Tomorrow we are planning to visit the British Museum near campus with some people so hopefully that will be fun! Good night :)

Sleep at 7am, Up at 2pm

So yesterday was pretty fun. First we went to the lunch and book sale provided by NYU, which kind of sucked and was not worth waking up/walking for. Then on the way back we stopped at Tesco Express for some groceries. After getting back to the dorm and waking Charine up, Charine, Lynn and I decided to go explore a little bit. We took the tube for the first time using our oyster cards and took it to Oxford Circus. When we got there it was kind of like Soho, with a bunch of stores lining Oxford Street. We explored a bit and went into some stores we've never heard of, then found an alleyway and found a cute little candy shop in there. When we got back to Russell Square, Charine realized that her gold Kate Spade bag was missing from her purse... I guess pickpocketing is pretty common here in London on the tube. There are some dodgy people out there. ha. We finally got home and headed to the NYU dinner event at Tutu's in KCLSU. Unfortunately it took literally an hour of waiting in line to finally get our burgers. At least we got a free drink and had entertainment thanks to a few drunk people dancing by themselves on the dance floor... After things got a little boring, our new suitemate Emma led us to The Rocket, a bar. It was pretty fun after we requested good American songs that we actually knew and started dancing in the middle of the floor. Soon enough other people joined in after they realized how cool we were and how good the music was. :) This is actually one of the only places in London that closes at a relatively normal time, aka 2AM. After we got back to the dorm, we were still so energetic that we ended up dancing by ourselves for a good hour and then talked for another several hours. At 7AM we called it a night and went to bed. And here I am at 6pm, about to go out to eat at Pizza Express with the suite!

Orientation and Whatnot

NYU treated us to lunch today and followed up with a three hour long orientation. I don't know why they did that, because food coma set in for everyone except the four of us who were playing monopoly on Charine's phone. And FYI Charine, I won that game (or we won that game because Yan helped heh). :) Afterwards we did some phone shopping, and I finally settled on getting Vodafone, which has free bbm and email until July so it's perfect. Then we grabbed some burritos at Adobo, this Mexican fast food restaurant similar to the likes of Chipotle and Qdoba, stopped at Waitrose for some groceries, and then headed home to eat and rest. After showering and everything, we met up with some friends at other dorms and scoured the area for bars/pubs. We made stops at three different ones and tried some new things, some good and some not so good. There was a black currant flavored drink called Sourz and it was really good--it tasted like juice. Overall, it was a good day and we got to explore the area around the dorms and campus a little more so it was very productive. I'm just glad I finally got bbm back... it's been too long!

First Day in London

Now that we're all settled in our dorms, I finally have a little time to write! Except for the fact that I think I blew up the outlets so we don't have electricity in our room for the night (sorry Jocelyn and Kathryn :x), everything has been going relatively smoothly. The plane was really cramped so I wasn't able to get a good night's rest; I ended up passing out for a little bit on the taxi ride from the airport to the dorm. Lynn and I tipped the taxi driver 10%, which ended up to be a total of £80. I guess we didn't realize that a) we tipped an equivalent of $14 USD (yikes) and b) you don't have to tip here. We figured it out after the cab driver said, "That was very nice of you." Oh well.

After meeting the suitemates (there are 9 of us in total and 2 bathrooms), grabbing some food, unpacking, napping, and settling in, it was already 10pm. We decided to go grab some food and explore the nearby streets to see if we could find a pub... turns out most restaurants here close around 10 and pubs generally close at 11pm. Regardless, we found one after lots of walking and sat down for just one drink. It was an interesting experience, hopefully we will have more fun tomorrow now that we're all settled in. We have orientation in the afternoon and then some free time later. Looking forward to it!

pre-departure anxiety

So I'm leaving in 18 hours and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Everyone has been telling me that I don't seem very excited to go, and the truth of the matter is that I'm not. Well I am, but I'm mostly scared and nervous and not very willing to let go of what I have here at home and accept this huge change in my life. I have no idea what to expect, and while I know that it will be a great experience and a lot of fun, I am kind of dreading the consequences of being away for so long, be it bad grades, distanced relationships, etc. But I guess I should focus more on the positive aspects of studying abroad and make the most of it. Winter break has passed way too quickly... wish me luck.