this website is for the world to see

Not that I think the world is looking, (on the contrary, only family and friends are looking, really) but there's a wide potential audience. So even though not a whole lot has gone on this week, here are some more pictures from previous events. We've been busy unpacking and settling into the bay house, and I've been reading a looooot for the research project I'm working on for the internship, but this weekend should yield some more interesting sight-seeing adventures and updates.


This is me, expressing my enthusiasm about the (relative) wilderness of Hampstead Heath.


This is Joey, expressing his enthusiasm about Hampstead Heath.


This is an english dog, expressing whatever it is dogs feel about geese, at a pond at the Heath.


This is me, very excited about the abundance of cheese on sale at Neal's Yard Dairy in Covent Garden.

This is Joey being dwarfed by a mountain of cheese.

Interesting fact: if you click on the pictures you can see the bigger versions of them on a new page. Thought I'd share that. That's the sum of the offering for now; more later!

pictures!

What that means is that we are now in our proper London digs, have connected our phone and can be reached on our regular (Santa Barbara) home number as well as our mobiles, and, internet gods willing, can share images of our adventure. Since the last post, the following has happened. We met our prospective bay house housemates, and took a shine to them (Saturday). We went to the London Borough Market and fell in love with it and everything in it (later on Saturday). We walked across the Millennium footbridge over the Thames and saw St. Paul's Cathedral (even later on Saturday). We saw a room for our friend Henning - a German classmate who spent the last term at UCSB - and as his proxy secured said room for him, so that now he has somewhere to live (Sunday). We hiked in the lovely Queen's Woods - formerly "Churchyard Bottom Woods", no joke, what a wise name change - in Highgate (later Sunday). We moved to Stockwell (today). Joey promised to post to the blog (someday). For your viewing pleasure, a few select images from the weekend are below. They are, in no particular order, mounds of chocolate on sale at the Borough Market (how could one not fall in love? They had me at hello), various shots of Joey and me in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, Joey contemplating what to do with our suitcases having finally gotten them into our room in Stockwell, Joey giving up on the suitcases and collapsing over them.

heavenly voices

Today I sat next to the tomb of Sarah Nevill, wife of the Earl of Nevill, I think, who died and was buried so long ago that the etching that states the year on her epitaph has been rubbed away after centuries of being walked on in processions and such by devotees at Westminster Abbey. If my chair had been placed 8 inches to the right, I would have been sitting on Sarah Nevill, wife of the Earl of Nevill. I think nowadays her family name would be Neville. As in Longbottom. But she’d be less handy with a wand, probably, which is good considering I had to walk over her to leave the place. We went to the evensong service at Westminster, and it was absolutely heavenly (and not just because of the large number of deceased attendees – in fact it occurs to me there may have been fewer live people at the service than otherwise). The choir was perfect in a way that makes you understand why music has been so central to worship for so many centuries. There was a good assortment of tourists and people who seemed to know what they were doing. We were surrounded by a good assortment of monuments to/tombs of famous Brits who contributed to history in big ways, regardless of whether they knew what they were doing. We said ‘ah-men’ at the end of our prayers. Nobody talked.

I kind of like that about London. People seem to know when to stay quiet. So far, we’ve been in several situations (once on the tube at the height of morning rush hour) where lots of people are together in a small space and nobody is saying anything – not a thing. I’ll report on our first cinema and theatre experiences and let you know if it holds there too. As for the choir, they did an excellent job of not staying quiet. As far as I could tell, not a note was out of place and the entire a cappella service was exactly as the Lord intended. I’ll bet Sarah was pleased – I was.

After the service we walked to Chelsea. For anyone not familiar with London, that’s about an hour of pavement time. Some of us who shall not be named (me) thought of taking the bus. Some of us who shall not be named, but are male, encouraged others not to. It was a pretty walk, through some of London’s most prime real estate, judging by the cars parked along the road. We had dinner in Chelsea (wild boar sausages were on the menu) and made our way home. Suffice it to say we are properly knackered. Note the use of British colloquialisms.

Someday we’ll get pictures up. Goodness knows we take enough of them.

ten thousand leagues across the sea

And we're here. Well-steeped in understanding of tube navigation, experienced in pounding the apartment-hunting pavement (by which I clearly mean 'flat-hunting pavement'), and finally clear on what a quid is. Speaking of which, I will now embark on the rant that has been bubbling and brewing over the last week. My god, London is expensive. I know, everybody told us that before, but nobody said it was actually completely unaffordable. We've done expensive. We've done New York, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara... some of the least affordable places in the world. I mean, if Oprah lives there, it's probably expensive, and somehow we pulled it off. London, on the other hand, is a completely ridiculous real estate bubble. Even people who've lived here for years are surprised every now and then when they check rent prices. They have this fabulous scheme going where they charge rent by the week, so you don't quite realize that you're expected to hand over your soul every month. But when you take £260, multiply by four and then again by two (more math than I'm used to, let me tell you), it adds up. Oh well. It could be worse. I could be mutliplying by ten.

That said, we're not homeless (yet), Aunty is keeping us housed (bless her), and we're working out the logistics of moving to what was our back-up but may now be our best hope. That place, which we'll call 'bay house' for ease of reference, is in Stockwell which is south of the river. It's very close to the tube (~25 minutes to work) but not particularly close to anything else. It's pretty cheap, compared to the other options. The people sound super-friendly - older than we are but a laid-back group of friends who've figured out that they can afford better housing together than alone and happen to have an extra room. Thank goodness. The organizers are out of town on holiday until Friday, so although we've been in email contact we can't have a proper phone conversation or a room viewing until then. We'll let you know how that works out.

Other things we've done... Walked along parts of the Thames, past Whitehall, Westminster, the Old Scotland Yard, the London Eye, various museums I didn't pay enough attention to seeing as I can't remember their names, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace... a lot of walking, basically. We've sat in a number of parks, including St. James Park and Hyde Park. We've taken pictures of ducks. Okay, so I took the pictures of the ducks and Joey stood around and indulged me because he had to because I had the map. We've eaten fish & chips, steak & kidney pie (Joey), steak & ale pie (me) (priorities) and cornish pasties. We've obtained mobile phones. They're mobile phones on this side of the ocean, not cell phones. If you'd like to talk to us, email us and we'll tell you our numbers. You have to work for it. We've figured out how to work the many transformers and converters we need to work our small appliances here (Joey) and blown a few small fuses (me). We've learned to say a few enjoyable sentences with a cockney accent. We've seen a friend or two.

As soon as we're set up and have a wireless internet connection, we'll plug in the VOIP phone so we can be reached on our regular phone number. The Santa Barbara one. It will be great to hear from all folks across the water (but only if you call at decent hours given the time difference, otherwise we'll say one of our new cockney sentences and then hang up). We're 5 hours later than east coast time, and 8 hours later than west coast time, which basically means that late morning/early afternoon over there is late evening here.

Hopefully we'll find the stamina to keep this blog going, pictures and all. Feel free to send words of encouragement, pictures of miscellaneous things, news, etc. Stay tuned!