I finally got moving because my friend Serene had made me promise to go to pilates class with her at a rec center about two blocks from our house. Even though I wasn't a member I can still pay on the spot for group classes. When we arrived, however, the class was full! I had a few minutes to mull around on my own and long story short, I ended up joining the gym (yayyy student rates)! I figure if I'm PAYING a little less than £1 a day for a gym, I am probably going to actually go. Now I have pool privileges, exercise / weight machine rights, and group activities are all open to me. Plus, I can leave a child in daycare for up to two hours! Perfect! Serene and I have a whole list of activities that we are going to try, including Spin Class and Funky Buns, Tums, and Guns or something like that. I'm scared of that class, haha.
Anyway, while I was at the Leisure Center, I popped over to the Swiss Cottage Library and got signed up for alllll of Camden's library services. I have a keychain and everything. Rad!
It was so nice outside I decided it was a perfect day to make a second foray into Hampstead Heath. I rode my favorite bus up through Hampstead and jumped off just around the same place that I exited the park last time. I took a photo with my camera so that I wouldn't get as lost as I had (see exhibit 1, a third of the park represented in digital form on my camera).
This is the church by the bus stop where I was waited. I can hear the bells tolling from my house, yay.
The Spaniards. They are over there.
"Keat's House" was supposed to be somewhere nearby too, but I didn't find it.
"Keat's House" was supposed to be somewhere nearby too, but I didn't find it.
This is the chubbiest wild bunny I've ever seen. He didn't give a flip about anything. He stood his ground a very long time when I was walking towards him. Anyway, the next few photos are just pictures of the park that I snapped as I was strolling along on my three mile adventure (I brought a pedometer, haha).
This is one of my favorites.
Parliament Hill! The place I had been trying to find the first time I walked around in the park! Here is London Proper. You can see where my university is (roughly) because the tallest tower on the far right is only a few blocks away from UCL.
I preferred the view of the other side of the hill, facing away from London. If I am not mistaken, this would be Islington, or the very edge of Camden.
I decided that rather than walk towards London, I'd use my remaining daylight to check out the eastern entrances to the park. I popped out in a very nice neighborhood and got really excited about taking pictures of plants.
Macro settings!
I looked it up later and this would appear to be a neighborhood loosely defined as either Kentish Town or Tufnell Park. I would err on the side of the latter, as Kentish Town is a bit like Camden Town as far as I can tell, with maybe a higher immigrant population. This neighborhood was very posh. Lots of super fancy front yards and English garden type frontages, but also a lot of gates, and very few cars parked on the side of the road. On the other hand, there also weren't a lot of people walking dogs, pushing strollers, or talking by their gates like there are in my neighborhood.
It was getting cold so I took the first bus I recognized back to Belsize and started walking from there. Belsize Station was recently featured in a Coldplay music video, so Brad is incredibly jealous that I not infrequently go to and from school using the station, haha. Anyhow, here I am walking back! There are a lot of streets called "mews" that have a very particular look about them. Here is a typical one, though my favorites are the mews that kind of hook back into a private courtyard. The doors on those usually look as if they were once stableyards.
This poor little snapdragon has been blooming up against the side of my residence hall for several weeks now, so I wanted to give it some props by taking its picture.
Other than joining a gym and finishing my databases class, I haven't been up to too much. Oh wait, did I ever talk about the Steve Reich concert? Oh dear! I need to do that pronto! I was thinking I already had but I guess that will be my next entry, haha. Otherwise, I cemented my reading week plans and I just need to order tickets. Maia is going back to Prague to hang out with her family for a few days and invited me to tag along. I will fly out on Monday, stay until Wednesday morning, and then catch a 20 euro train to Berlin! I'm meeting Serene in Berlin where we will hang out until Saturday! Then Sunday I am going to have to do a whole lot of reading, haha. So I'm pretty excited about that! All the flights seem to be pretty inexpensive, for the most part. I was originally planning on visiting Brad on the Thursday - Monday of reading week before heading to Prague, but tickets from Malaga to Praha are more than about £30, so I am too cheap. I will visit Brad another time, haha.
Myself and one other person are going to be representing the Digital Humanities course at the department level soon, which is kind of fun. It will be a nice resume builder, and I'll probably learn some stuff about administrative workings in academia.
On Sunday we had a small birthday party for Pep. Serene and I tried to make a lemon meringue pie, but a combination of not having corn starch and having a horrible oven meant that our quick 20 minute pie turned into an hour long ordeal. At the end of the day (and using a downstairs oven) we actually got a pretty nice pie, though! Everybody pitched in to make something, and Pep himself made two giant wok-fulls of risotto. It's a good thing I joined a gym...
The bad news is that somebody in the house is turning to the dark side. Serene was doing laundry one day and came down to find that her drying had been tampered with. Somebody had put their own stuff in with hers in the drier, and it was underwear of all things! So she put them on the floor and took her own stuff back to her room, haha. One of the guys on first floor had a pretty nice wok go missing, though I hear that has since been found in one of the other kitchens. And a girl whose boyfriend sent her flowers never got them. The delivery service says someone signed for them, but could only give their initials. Two days later and many private investigations later we have yet to figure out what happened to her bouquet! I am glad that I don't have anything valuable in my kitchen drawers and that I always lock my door, even when I'm just going to the bathroom!
We realized that at some point this week someone had come from the residence halls and cut all the chains off of old bikes in the backyard. Not very many people know yet, and I still need to go out there and see if there's anything worth salvaging. I'm cheap, but I would be willing to buy some tubes, a seat, maybe brake pads if I thought the bike was going to work out. I'm not sure how I feel about biking in downtown London yet, but I wouldn't mind having one to go to the grocery store with! It's kind of a first come first serve basis right now, and only one person has actually gone out and bought a lock in order to claim one of the abandoned bikes, haha.
Okay, I will wrap this post up and start on the Steve Reich one, because Saturday was a pretty good day!
Myself and one other person are going to be representing the Digital Humanities course at the department level soon, which is kind of fun. It will be a nice resume builder, and I'll probably learn some stuff about administrative workings in academia.
On Sunday we had a small birthday party for Pep. Serene and I tried to make a lemon meringue pie, but a combination of not having corn starch and having a horrible oven meant that our quick 20 minute pie turned into an hour long ordeal. At the end of the day (and using a downstairs oven) we actually got a pretty nice pie, though! Everybody pitched in to make something, and Pep himself made two giant wok-fulls of risotto. It's a good thing I joined a gym...
The bad news is that somebody in the house is turning to the dark side. Serene was doing laundry one day and came down to find that her drying had been tampered with. Somebody had put their own stuff in with hers in the drier, and it was underwear of all things! So she put them on the floor and took her own stuff back to her room, haha. One of the guys on first floor had a pretty nice wok go missing, though I hear that has since been found in one of the other kitchens. And a girl whose boyfriend sent her flowers never got them. The delivery service says someone signed for them, but could only give their initials. Two days later and many private investigations later we have yet to figure out what happened to her bouquet! I am glad that I don't have anything valuable in my kitchen drawers and that I always lock my door, even when I'm just going to the bathroom!
We realized that at some point this week someone had come from the residence halls and cut all the chains off of old bikes in the backyard. Not very many people know yet, and I still need to go out there and see if there's anything worth salvaging. I'm cheap, but I would be willing to buy some tubes, a seat, maybe brake pads if I thought the bike was going to work out. I'm not sure how I feel about biking in downtown London yet, but I wouldn't mind having one to go to the grocery store with! It's kind of a first come first serve basis right now, and only one person has actually gone out and bought a lock in order to claim one of the abandoned bikes, haha.
Okay, I will wrap this post up and start on the Steve Reich one, because Saturday was a pretty good day!
No comments:
Post a Comment