So last week we got to attend a bunch of different classes as a sort of “trial run” for course selection. I finally settled on Chinese Ethnography, Chinese Language III, Government and Politics of China, and Society, the Environment, and State in the History of China. The wonderful news about classes in London is that they only occur once a week. Therefore, my schedule is unbelievable: Mondays from 9-1, Tuesdays 11-1 and 3-5, and an optional tutorial 3-5 on Thursdays. That’s all. So, I will be enjoying a delightful 5-day weekend, every week that I’m here.
This week on the SOAS campus I had my first run-in with the so-called “Hare Krishna man”. This guy comes to the campus every weekday at 12:30pm with a cart full of homemade Indian food, and people line up across the center square of campus to get a huge plate of free food. While I don’t quite get his motivation for doing this, apparently it’s the Hare Krishna way to spread happiness through whatever way you see fit, and this guy has taken pity on poor college students struggling with London prices. Needless to say, I’ll be visiting the cart multiple times a week. Free food is the best food.
After a week of thoroughly exploring pubs, I felt it was only right to give the London club scene a try. On Wednesday I headed to a club in Piccadilly Square with Ayenat, Shweta, Taylor, and some of Shweta and Taylor’s friends from Wash U. The club we went to is called Tiger Tiger, and they have a wonderful 50% off all food and drinks (before 10pm) offer that runs through the month of January. This club has four floors, each with a different kind of music playing: one with current pop-ish music, one 80s, one techno, and another similar to the first. It was quite a good time, but the 80s floor was closed and we decided to come back later in the week to see it at full swing.
Other highlights of the week include Susie and my trip to the British Museum, which is conveniently located a block away from the SOAS campus. Good thing, too, because it looks like it’ll take a number of return trips to fully explore. We focused in on the Greek and Egyptian sections of the museum, and it was a lot of fun until Susie Q started feeling ill. Managed to get some noteworthy pictures though
Cool Greek Sculpture
Poseidon, looking a little worse for the wear
Uncanny...
Mummies!
Where I want to do homework...feels like Harry Potter
Joyless museum trip
Failed attempt at a "jumping" picture
The British Museum is so cool
We went our separate ways, and decided to meet up later that night if Susie was feeling better…Lo and behold, a several hour nap did the trick, so we made plans to return to Tiger Tiger with Ayenat, another girl from Princeton named Katie, and Susie’s friend Teena. To say that Saturdays at Tiger Tiger are better than Wednesdays is the understatement of the century. We danced for probably 4 hours, and switched things up a lot between floors, which gave our night a lot of variety, including some Backstreet Boys, 80s jams (i.e. It’s Raining Men, a Grease medley, Summer of ’69, and other gems), current pop hits (what’s up, Justin Bieber), and a mish mosh of techno. It was great fun, and Katie, Ayenat and I took the night bus home and befriended some friendly Brits who insisted to us that Americans are much friendlier than Brits (it’s true…).
On da' tube, creepin.
Tiger Tiger dance floor (guy in the right bottom corner looks possessed...)
The group
Today I attempted to go to Piccadilly with Shweta, Taylor, and Taylor’s boyfriend Chris, to watch the NFL playoff game (very out of character for me…), but apparently there is only one sports bar in London, and the entirety of the American male population in London was there to watch the game. We tried several other places that we thought might have the game on (T.G.I. Friday’s, Planet Hollywood, etc), but our efforts were in vain. We ended up eating at a restaurant called the Texas Embassy (Mexican food), where they informed us that the reason no one had the game on was that in order to get the channel it is played on (Sky), you have to pay 25,000£ a year for a license of some sorts. The lack of American sports on TV was much more understandable after this information.
Oh, the chips reference… I have ended up just ordering chips (that’s “french fries”, for all you Americans) a lot of the time when we go out to dinner, because a) everything is expensive here, and b) I’m so perma-hungry due to all the walking we do that I’m constantly eating/unable to wait for real mealtimes to eat (case in point, I ate dinner at 4:30 today…). British chips are quite delicious, with my only complaint being that they don’t put enough salt on them. I LOVE salt, and so I always excessively salt my chips, to the mild disgust of restaurant owners. But yeah, chips are delicious. Tangent ended.
Tomorrow=classes! And Hare Krishna lunch. Possibly a visit to the 3.95 all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. Exciting stuff!
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