I was so excited because Sophie (aka the sweetest person ever) was going to be in London for a couple days at the beginning of this week before heading off to work at the Olympics, no big deal (I'm going to brag for her because she refuses to). Sophie and I met at a First Friends (Honors College name drop) event at Alabama this past fall, she had shown up without a first friend so she was looking for someone to adopt her and I saw that her name tag said she was from London, so Georgia and I introduced ourselves and the rest is history (basically we just become friends. Not much history), but I (and the rest of my friends and entire sorority) am obsessed with her so I was excited to experience London life from a true Londoner.
After my first class she picked me up and we hunted (for 30 minutes, no lie) for parking, we ended up cheating the system and parking in a Sainsbury's and headed to Pizza Express. Wow, I forgot how great pasta was and it was such a cute little restaurant. Also I found out there was a Nando's in Putney. Holla. It was good to catch up with Sophie too. I liked feeling like I had my first visitor even though she actually is from London, but whatever. She's a horrible influence though, and pushed me into ordering cake after I destroyed my pasta, but it was delicious so I can't be mad. Also she may or may not have retained a concussion, but we're just gonna go with the blanket statement that a good time was had by all.
Excuse the horrific photo of me and the fact that my right eye seems to have completely gone missing, but I was just really excited to see her.
Monday and Tuesday were probably the laziest days I've had since I was here. I was still getting over being sick and it was rainy and gross, so besides going to class, my biggest accomplishments were finding a link to watch Modern Family online and eating an entire pizza by myself (not the first time I've done that). Then Wednesday, I don't have class, but it was still raining, so I woke up with big plans of exploring more of the city, but I looked outside and just said, "No." So I think I did something insane (not really) like watch 15 episodes of Modern Family or something. I'm not sure. Those three days I was so lazy, it's kind of a blur.
Wednesday night though, we had our first organized excursion with our study abroad program. It was a tour of historical sites around the city that were involved with Jack the Ripper murders. To summarize, Jack the Ripper was a murderer who targeted prostitutes and was just super gross and violent and would cut them open and steal their uteruses (rude) and throw their intestines over their shoulders and all kinds of horrific stuff like that. It was freezing and raining the entire time though (did I mention this was a walking tour?) so we ended up not seeing many sights and instead just hopping from one shelter to the next, finally giving up and sitting in a pub and having the tour guide just talk to us for the last hour of the tour.
The churches here are insanely beautiful. This one was interesting because it's where prostitutes used to stand outside and try to pick up customers. No judgement, I was gay once, all God's children, etc.
Hopefully someone gets that reference.
Huddling under a office building.
So after the tour was over, we ran (literally) to the nearest Nando's and took shelter under the loving arm of Peri Peri sauce and free soda refills. I fall in love with Nando's the more I eat there. It's just so great and spicy, but not too spicy. Also, I feel really connected to Niall when I'm there because it's our favourite restaurant now.
Literally could eat it forever.
Free refills are my love language.
I signed up for this Art History of London class or whatever because it started at ten and I thought, "Hey, that's reasonable. That's not bad at all. Let's do it." (Actually, let's not). The past two weeks, we've had to be ready and at the bus stop before 8:30 to meet and travel with the group, and this week was pushed even earlier. No. Not okay. I'm not a fan of traveling on public transportation with large groups of people because it gives me (real) anxiety, so we ended up bailing and going on our own and getting breakfast (bagels, hell yeah) and stuff and just meeting everyone at the Tower of London.
Tower of London was super dope. Its formal name is, "Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress" (casual). As the name would imply, it's this giant castle-fort thing that's basically a little town inside. It holds the crown jewels (The Most Important) and a bunch of history, so it was cool to see. I just can't get over how old everything is here. So many of these things that we saw have been around since before America was even a country. I feel like I say that every time I talk about being here, but it's true, and I can't get over it. Also I liked it because they had a section catered to kids with games where you got to pick up guns and shoot a bow and arrow and stuff (I'm five, okay?)
Apparently someone gave King Henry III a polar bear as a present once, so I had to document this for my girl Mabes. #stpb
I'm really proud of this picture because you can see Tower Bridge on the left and the Shard towards the right and I just really like skyline-esque pics, basically.
#Vogue
Churches in London are so old and rad, so I'm gonna really need them to stop having restrictions on taking pictures.
My British boyfriend, he could loosen up a bit though.
A giant dragon made of old weapons. Bad ass.
Tower Bridge.
Fergie actually should have checked her facts because this isn't even called London Bridge, whatever. The song was still stuck in my head all day.
You weren't allowed to take pictures in here and it was the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Okay, I'm still trying to figure out the deal with these guys because I thought they wore red coats and apparently they're soldiers, not beefeaters? My whole life is a lie.
I found this thing in the gift shop and it made my whole entire life. It made clapping noises like you were being cheered on, it was so great.
After we finished our tour, we grabbed some fish and chips because Allison and I hadn't had any since we've been here. Let me just tell you, fish and chips is where it's at. I feel like I've heard about them my whole life, so to eat them in London was dope. They know what's up with the fried food, y'all. Then we returned to campus and I just chilled for the rest of the night and ended up FaceTiming with a bunch of my real life loves (Hi, J babe/kcvickery/Botch/Fig/Conner), so that was grand.
thebomb.com
Friday was another rainy day and all my friends had gone out on Thursday while I stayed in (cLaSsIc), so they all slept in. I ran to Putney in the morning just to grab some groceries and stuff, but we basically relaxed all day long. Then that night we decided to go to Funky Buddha so we slipped our names on the guest list really quickly and then got ready (not so quickly).
We got there, waited for like 30 minutes in the (somewhat) rain. Alex had her umbrella out the entire time even though it was barely sprinkling because she's a drama queen. And Rachel Higg was there!! I felt like a proper Londoner that I went out in London and ran into people I knew, like what even? So we got in and checked our coats and bags and got our wrists stamped, the usual. First thing I noticed, it was awesome. Second thing I noticed, it was so not how I thought it would look. Also. drinks were hella expensive, so the only thing I drank (in true Rachel fashion) were a couple glasses of water. That's one thing I love about London, is that I can actually get water when I go out places, unlike in Tuscaloosa where all they have is alcohol (looking at you fraternities. Is it so hard to have some water bottles around?)
It was an absolute blast though. Aside from the fact that I made the mistake of wearing heels (I hate your dress code for clubs, London) and so my feet were killing me, it was fantastic. They played such good music, like 2 Chainz and Beyoncé and Usher and 50 and Kanye and Drake!!!! And they were having a Chinese New Year celebration!! They had a little performance-parade-thing. I was actually ecstatic. Unfortunately, Niall couldn't make it because he's still recovering from knee surgery (even though he went out the next night and neglected to tell me about it. Rude). We danced the night away and then took an Uber (my absolute favourite) home. I always feel so fancy in those.
I wore a dress with cutouts because I'm fancy, huh
Lion Dance Performance
If I don't take a mirror selfie in the bathroom it's like I didn't even go there.
Saturday I again, did nothing. I stayed in my pyjamas all day and only moved to make food, but Jesus decided to start rocking my world. I literally did nothing exciting all day, but by the end of the night I was so pumped and having a freak out and just so freaking happy because I was overwhelmed by the love of the Lord. I read Psalm 16 (which I highly recommend to everyone) and it talked about how the Lord gives us fullness of joy and eternal blessings in Himself, and I was just brought to my knees with excitement about the fact that I need nothing else to satisfy me or keep me joyful besides the Lord, yet He still chooses to give me so many awesome things that make me so happy as like, extra joy! How incredible. I was planning to write a long thing about everything I was feeling that night, but now I can't even find words for it, so...
Sunday was the best day. Sundays here are always the best days. Allison and I woke up (kinda) early and headed to Chinatown (!!!) for the spring festival celebrations, then we were gonna go to church. The only bad thing about this whole day was that my phone wasn't getting service (thanks, Vodafone) at all, so I felt really stranded. When we got off the tube in Chinatown, I was so excited. It smelled literally so good I could've cried and we started walking around looking at all the shops and stalls and stuff that they had set up for the celebration. One of the first stalls we looked at had giant bao zi and I could've jumped to the moon I was so excited, so I made Allison wait in line with me while I got one and then I ate it so quickly I was sad that it didn't last longer. Then we went to a supermarket where I found jia duo bao (only the best Chinese drink of all time) so I was seriously in heaven.
ACTUALLY ECSTATIC (pardon the crazy eyes)
This is what 10000% happiness looks like.
We headed to Trafalgar Square after that because they were supposedly having some parade and performances and stuff, but it ended up just being a whole lot of people and a whole lot of me not being able to see or hear anything that was going on, so we ended up escaping into the National Gallery. It was awesome. We saw paintings from rad people like van Gogh and Monet, and we could've waited in a 75 minute long queue to see some sunflower paintings, but we (obviously) didn't do that. National Gallery was cool except (again) you couldn't take pictures. So lame. Also all the rooms were laid out the same and it was like a maze, so confusing, and I kept getting lost because I couldn't remember where I had come from or where I was going.
Shout out to the guy who felt it was extremely necessary to raise his weird hand at this exact moment, but this was Trafalgar Square
This isn't my best (like I really ever have a best) photography because I had to take it quickly so I wouldn't get yelled at (which I did, anyway), but the ceilings in this city are hella dope. Brits are into ceilings, lemme tell ya. (Also, hey Allison).
After we meandered through there for a while, we walked down towards Big Ben looking for somewhere to eat and ended up getting on a bus to Tottenham where we were just gonna hang and eat before church. We went to this place called EAT. which must be a huge chain because I've been seeing them everywhere, but it was really good and surprisingly healthy-seeming. I'm always shocked at how unprocessed everything is here, but I guess it's not killing me as much as food in America is, so I'm into it. But I still don't really know how to interpret their food labels, so I could be consuming millions of calories for all we know (fingers crossed I'm not).
I obvi chose something you had to eat with chopsticks.
Then we went to church where we ran into Yuri and his friends and met up with Rachel and the FSU crew and we made a new friend named Dana who was really cool. It was Vision Sunday, which was basically reflecting on how far Hillsong has come as a church and then just laying out and refreshing the vision for the years to come. Seriously such a great service. It's insane to think that just 30 years ago, the two head pastors started this church on their own, just the two of them, and now they have churches in 46 locations in 16 countries. Like, whaaaat? God is so incredible!!
At the end of the sermon they showed a video where they interviewed the pastors from all of their churches around the world and I just started crying because I just love people so much and want them all to know how much God loves them and the joy that comes with knowing Him and He wants me to help Him do that and I just cried happy tears because life is so beautiful and God is so awesome and I'm really so lucky. Then they sang "Oceans" and wow I actually lost it and I was ugly crying and shaking (but still trying to sing like Beyoncé, obviously) through the whole thing because I just love God so much and I really do want Him to lead me where my trust is without borders and I will follow wherever He calls me and I am just so happy that I am His and He is mine. I just can't wait until Heaven where I get to live in moments like that for eternity.
Then I came home and made a pizza and today I bought train tickets to go to Leeds to see Hayley this weekend and wow life is amazing. I love and miss y'all so much and hope everyone had so much fun celebrating the super bowl and let us all just remember how that we are all beautiful and important and special and how much Jesus loves us and that Beyoncé's super bowl performance will hands down be the best one forever and ever amen
xx
Also, I'm trying (AND CURRENTLY LOSING) to win a free ride to the airport at the end of my program so I don't have to carry all my bags on public transportation and be a sweaty mess all over the city of London. Basically, all I need is the most Instagram likes on all my pictures with #CISLondon, so if you would like to help me out with that you can do so here.
I MISS YOU. i love lov elove you and miss you a lot. i am sitting in starbucks drinking a caramel macchiato and wishing i had your life. xoxo
ReplyDeleteanother awesome post!
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