From East to West

We went to Hampstead Heath to play football on Sunday.  We had trouble finding an open space at first, so we played in this little stretch of land.  Little did we know that there were ridiculously stingy nettles on either side of our pitch!

I guess you can't really tell, but we figured out pretty quickly that we were going to need to find a new field.  My legs were still itching yesterday night when I went to bed, and today they are bruised!

An old english couple stopped by while we were looking at our injuries and showed us some dock leaves to rub on the nettle stings.  We were a bit dubious at first, but I think they actually worked!

Even if we couldn't play football, we could at least hunt the King's deer.

After we played for a while, we went to the Spaniard's Inn, a pub near the edge of Hampstead Heath that has been there for several centuries.  It is a dog friendly pub, so you can buy dog treats and there are water bowls under all the tables.  :D 

Yesterday I walked to campus to eat lunch, courtesy of the hari krishna, and then I carried onto Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.  I didn't realise that St. Martin in the Fields was free entrance!  I waltzed on in and sat a while before going to the National Gallery.

The Nat. Gallery was nice, but it was an art museum....so....meh.  I am just not cultured when it comes to art history, although I try constantly. 

This morning Serene and I woke up early in order to go to Greenwich for the Equestrian paralympic event. We avoided the busy DLR lines and took a train out there, which probably was a little more time, but much more relaxing.  We had to walk for about twenty minutes into Greenwich from the train station, but it was worth it.  I like London because just a little bit out from the city, you can find awesome open green spaces like this:

We had a nice view of the city from the stands!  Look, a dancing horse!

The winners being led out (the riders were already on the podiums).

After the dressage, we ate lunch at the Greenwich Market by the river, and then decided to use our free travelcards to go to Notting Hill.  Look at all the pretty coloured houses!

We went to an antiques market and got cool Christmas presents for some of you guys, haha.  Notting Hill was not that special compared to the other parts of Kensington I've seen, anyway, which are very fancy pantsy.  It was an interesting part of town though, so I'm glad I got a chance to look around!

No immediate plans for tomorrow, although I'm sure I'll come up with something fun to do!

Post-dissertation bliss

My dissertation is done!!!  I even got it done early, I'm so proud.  It's not due until tomorrow but I turned it in Thursday.  I don't know how revolutionary or even "good" it is, because I was trying to write about computer science and I'm pretty much a humanities person, but we'll see what comes of it.  I'm pretty sure I should at least pass, so that's something!

Everyone in the house is still cramming for theirs at the moment (I would be dying from fear at this point...less than 24 hours left), and I am bored because nobody wants to do anything.  For the few of us who did get our dissertation done, it's party and sleep time!  The other day I went to pick up the Paralympic tickets from St. James Park.  I think I was just a few minutes ahead of the torch or something, because there were thousands of people and lots of police that I had to try to get through.  It was raining pretty hard too, so overall I was just not particularly a happy camper.  But we got the tickets and on Friday we went to East London to the ExCeL center!

Whoo Paralympics.

We had tickets for Judo, but somehow had managed to get a full day pass!  For only £15 we could have gone to any sport all day, but we didn't know so we only got there at around 3pm.  We went to see the US v China Sitting Volleyball.  They are not sitting in this photo, but soon after they took off their prosthetic legs and started to play.

The US won the first match we watched, and then we decided to go to judo.

Yay, judo!  The only different between Paralympic Judo and traditional judo was that the judoka started with grips, because they have visual impairments.  It was really fun, I've never seen a real judo match before, except those at UNL when I was in the club.  I went with my friend April, who practices judo and ju jitsu, and Pep and another guy from my house.  I think the other guy was bored, but Pep really liked it which surprised me because a lot of people don't like judo if they don't have any experience with it.

Oh this poor guy.  In the gold medal match for men's < 81 kg, a dude named José from Argentina was up against some big Bond style villain from Ukraine.  José had brought his family with him, and boy were they vocal!  He had a mother/girlfriend/sister or somebody who kept screaming "VAYAAAAA!!!  VAYA JOSÉ!!!!  MATALO!!!"  Go, go José!  Kill him! etc.  Her shrieks were piercing even in the pretty big auditorium.  Pep and I started cheering for him too just because she was so ridiculous.  His father or older brother or somebody was giving him very detailed advice in a decent bellow too, but we couldn't make out what he was saying.  Alas, poor José, he managed to get into "overtime," in judo terms, but he got too tired and the other guy managed to get a throw in.

Our tickets came with a travelcard, which is great because the tube is expensive, so while we were on that side of town anyway we decided to try to ride the newly opened Emerites flyover dealbop, but alas, they would not let us use our travelcard.  :(

We could see the Olympic Park from the north side of the river where we were.  Pretty neat.

We went back afterwards and threw a surprise party for Serene.  She picked a bad day for her birthday, haha.  She is very stressed about her dissertation still, but she only has one day left so I hope she finishes soon!

Last night we went to Maia and Pep's new apartment for a housewarming party.  They found a pretty cool house about twenty minutes from here.  I'm glad it's close, because we had to carry a hide-a-bed all the way over there.  It took about six of us a LONG time to cover that mile and some stretch, let me tell you, plus the four stories of stairs at the end!  The party was fun though.  April and I used the hide-a-bed to teach Pep some basic judo moves, haha. 

I have lots of grand ambitions for the next couple weeks.  I have the job interview in a few days, although I can't decide what I think of it.  I don't know that I want to spend so much time and effort looking for a new place to live on pretty low wages just for the next three months, but I'm counting my chicks before they've hatched on that one, obviously.  In the meantime, I plan on doing a lot of exploring on foot.  Lakshmi is also trying to mount an expedition to Scotland or Wales or some place, which sounds fun.  I'll have to see how much it is going to cost us to go before I decide!

Oh, and I went to a friend's house in north London yesterday to hang out and watch Gilmore Girls while she packed.  She's going to Australia for a month to visit people and attend a wedding. It was fun being in a proper English house, if you know what I mean.  She lives in a part of town with the rows of attached houses, so when you walk in, you find out that the house is only about fifty feet wide and it's made up of several stories all connected by a main staircase.  They had a really nice walkout garden from the kitchen!  Very cool.

Okay, well now I need to start my day, because it's already almost noon and I haven't even eaten!  Adios!