Thanksgiving in London!

Girls in the kitchen fixing dinner 🙂

Thursday (11/22)- this happens to be my second Thanksgiving that I have spent away from home (last year I went back to Wales to visit my old flatmates  and this year I had a little bit of home brought to me because my friends from home happened to also be visiting during Thanksgiving. My roommate and I decided to host thanksgiving for not only ourselves and my friends from home but also our new friends in London. We had out friends from the U.S, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Slovenia, and England… it was quite the international Thanksgiving! Christine and I, having sent my friends out of the flat to go and do some touristy stuff, spent all day cooking in our tiny little kitchen. If we can cook at Thanksgiving dinner for 12 in a 5ft x 5ft. space a minimal amount of kitchen equipment I’m fairly sure we can accomplish any other challenges that life has for us!

All the food!

Because of our limited kitchen capabilities and time we decided against cooking a turkey ourselves and instead opted to purchase some lovely rotisserie chickens (best decision ever) but everything else was completely homemade  I personally made the mashed potatoes (no boxed stuff), sweet potatoes,  and the honey-glazed carrots. But overall we had cornbread, stuffing, pumpkin dip, green bean casserole and so many desserts! So much food and such great company… I have a lot to be thankful for 🙂

P.S : Here’s a picture of the cupcakes that my lovely mother had delivered on Thanksgiving as a special surprise. Thanks mom 🙂

Mahopac Arrives in London!

Apologies for the long absence from blogging… with the holidays and having to write essays over break I lost track of time but hopefully over the next few days I’ll catch up on writing 🙂

Friday-Saturday(11/14-11/24) was an exciting week because my 4 best friends from home  came to visit and stay with me in London! I had so much fun showing them around London and taking them to my favorite spots. It was great having them here, wish they could have stayed forever and I never wanted them to leave! I wish I had to energy to write in more detail about exactly what we did but we really did so much that it would take me hours (which I should be devoting to studying/reading) to do… so instead I put together a little slide show with highlights from our adventures… enjoy 🙂

Woke up bright and early to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace!

The first night.. unpacking and setting into my living room 🙂

Brittany and Mike’s first tube ride!

Late night view of London from Waterloo Bridge!

Late night pictures at Buckingham palace… those two little dots are my friends standing in front of the Prince Albert Memorial

Had to get a Sunday Roast!

Spent Saturday at Camden Market!

Mike goes to Pacha… his favorite place on earth.

They are so special… waiting for the bus!

Obviously couldn’t leave London without taking them to my favorite store in the entire world… Harrods!

We all bought hipster glasses at Camden Market!

Pumping up the much hated air mattress with a foot pump because the electric pump doesn’t work with the voltage here 😦

Friends! Boy Band picture! All dressed up for a night out.

Quick trip to gaze at Westiminster Abbey- we didn’t go inside too expensive 😦

Saw a crazy naked man on top of a statue in central London. Pretty scary… police were everywhere and we got separated in the crowds of people! Check out this article to see what it was all about :http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/23/naked-whitehall-man-climbs-equestrian-statue-parliament_n_2177026.html

Mr. Guy Fawkes

Monday (11/5) was Guy Fawkes day/ Bonfire night! For those of you that don’t know what Guy Fawkes day is check out this Wikipedia page because I am too lazy to type a full explanation right now. But essentially from my point of view it is a celebration every year on the 5th of November (‘Remember remember the 5th of November’- ring any bells?) where the English people mock some guy (Guy Fawkes) failure at blowing up Parliament by setting off tons of fireworks and having big bonfire parties! It happened to also be our friend Holly’s Birthday too so we knew we had to make the day extra special. We found out that there was a massive free firework show down in south London (in Southwark Park) so we went down there with everyone. The area was OK… kind of a sketchy neighborhood… but there were tons of people so we didn’t really need to worry. We followed that massive crowd (there must have been over a thousand people) to the park and we made it just in time to see the fireworks  The fireworks were great! It was about a 20 minute show and it might be one of the best displays I’ve seen in my life (second only to Disney world). It was awesome to get to experience a quintessential British “holiday” while living in London- definitely an experience I will always remember. After the Fireworks we headed over to our friend Gabby’s apartment (she leaves down in the south) for some cake and fun to celebrate Holly’s birthday!

The 7 Deadly Sins… Halloween in London!

Some of the sashes.

Wednesday (10/31)- My first Halloween in London! My friends and I decided that we all wanted to dress up with some sort of theme costumes… so after throwing around a few ideas (like the 7 dwarfs and Disney Princesses) we settled on being the 7 deadly sins. I chose to be greed and for my costume I found a sparkly black dress at T.K. Maxx (Same thing as T.J Maxx in the U.S) and a lot of obnoxious and sparkly jewelry. We decided that in order to make our costumes a bit more obvious we would create “Miss America” style sashes that displayed the name of each of our sins. So with some cheap ribbon, markers and lots of glitter glue a few of us girls made all of the sashes one night.

The 7 Deadly Sins + A Sir.

For Halloween night everyone came over to my place and Christine and I cooked a big dinner of pasta and garlic bread for everyone before we went out to the club. That night we decided to try a new club right in the heart of London called TigerTiger. It is right in Piccadilly Circus- such a fantastic location- and might be one of my favorite clubs in London. It is enormous- with something like 4 floors! There are different themed rooms- one of our favorites was the Disco Room- where we got do dance and sing to some of our old school favorite songs like The Spice Girls and N’sync! It was such a fun night and made me realize that Halloween in London is not so different from the U.S… and it might even be better! 🙂

Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali!

Saturday (10/27) was a day full of new sights, experiences and sounds! It is days like today that make me realize how amazing and special it is that I am actually living in a city like London with such a diverse representation of different cultures that I am able to see and experience new things! That being said, today we decided to go check out the Hindu festival/celebration for Diwali in Trafalgar Square. Diwali, also known as the festival of lights, is a major holiday in the Hindu religion and is celebrated with great enthusiasm. We didn’t realize how big of a deal Diwali was until we got down to Trafalgar square and it was absolutely packed! There were thousands of people, a huge stage and tons of booths/vendors. All throughout the day there was live music and different performances going on, such as Bollywood

The stage!

dancing! Our favorite booth was the sari booth! We walked by the booth thinking that you just got to try on a sari and take a picture and walk away- but we were pleasantly surprised when we found out you actually got to keep the Saris! Awesome! So we waited on the line (or queue as the Brit’s say) for quite some time and then finally got dressed up in our saris. They were pretty comfortable… complicated to tie though so not sure if I could ever repeat the process- but right now my sari is functioning as drapery in my room so that’s fine with me! While dressed up in our sari’s we were harassed by some T.V guys wanting to interview us for some show but being shy and scared we all ran away (Except for Christine who got cornered into giving an interview!haha!). Still in our lovely saris we

Our Saris!

headed off to find something to eat. What we found was the one stall selling food (all completely vegetarian) and it had the world’s longest line. There was actually a line to line up for the line… if that makes any sense? Either way the line moved pretty quickly do to some volunteers screaming and shouting at people to move along. They only had the menu posted in one place so we didn’t have time to read it all… and it didn’t help that we had no clue what most things were… so needless to say there was some panicking involved and ultimately I just got french fries/chips. Yes.. I know… super lame- I should have tried some new and exciting Indian food- but I don’t like being rushed so I played it safe…. but I’m glad I did because most people who got the food said it was super spicy… and I would have cried if I got something spicy!  After we ate we watched some performances and then some of the girls went for henna tattoos (the line was over an hour long- so I decided to skip those and head home). Overall, it was such an amazing day and I loved getting to experience a new culture and holiday!

Trafalgar!

Girls Night and Wiley!

Saturday (10/6) was a girls night! Us girls decided that we wanted a nice relaxing and cheap evening in so we decided to just stay in for the night and get some take out and have some laughs. Since Christine and I have a pretty big place with a nice living room we had girls night at our place. Once everyone arrived we ordered Thai and Chinese food! One of the great things about living in a city is that there is pretty much any type of food you could ever want a phone call away. In our case we have both the Chinese and Thai food place a 2 minute walk away… which could be dangerous! After eating an enormous amount of food for dinner we had some wine and then ate an enormous amount of food for dessert (chocolate cake, cookies, chewy chocolate stacks, and some brownie things). We just sat around all night talking and sharing funny stories… lots of laughs and lots of food= a great night!

Sunday (10/7) in celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving (one of my good friends here is from Canada) we all met up a the Metropolitan Bar at Baker Street for a Sunday Roast! The roast was delicious as usual… I don’t think I’ll get tired of having roasts anytime soon. But it may not be the most budget conscious thing to keep buying Sunday roasts so we may try to make our own in the following weeks… hopefully it will turn out as good!

Dresser from the Great Exhibition at the V&A

Monday-Wednesday (10/8-10/10) nothing really eventful happened. On Monday I had to go to the Victoria and Albert museum for class. I had to go look at some items from the Great Exhibition and fill out some questions on a worksheet to discuss in our seminar. It’s pretty awesome to me that for class part of my assignments are to go to these great museums (another benefit of studying in London). It’s great to actually see this stuff in person instead of reading about it- or worse hearing a boring lecture about it! Tuesday and Wednesday I spent most of my day either in class or doing reading for class…boring… but everyday can’t be an adventure- after all  I am here to get an English Masters… although it really doesn’t feel like it just yet- I’m sure it will hit me when I’m even more buried in work over the next few weeks!

View from the top floor of the club

Thursday (10/11) we decided to check out another on the student nights and one of the top clubs in London. This week we went to Ministry of Sound which is in South London by the Elephant and Castle Tube station. The club was pretty nice. A lot smaller than the club from last week- but it had one huge room playing like the Top 10 hits etc. and then another room playing old school/90’s/80’s music- so we were in heaven with all the choices of music! Because this night was one of the first student nights for the club they actually had a rap artist there preforming. His name was Wiley- he is really big in the UK (not sure if he’s made it in the U.S yet) and he has a couple of top 10 hits like “Wearing my Rolex” and “Heatwave.” It was really awesome to see him preform… he was amazing. Also- it was such a small venue and although there were a lot of people… I still was the closest I’ve ever been to the stage/artist at a concert- it was great!

So close!

After a fun night of dancing we got a little lost on our way to find our bus… after a couple detours (mostly involving food- we were on a quest for chips (fries) and cheese…) we finally made it to Waterloo, where we catch our bus, only to be a few block away and see our bus pulling away. Because it is so late the buses only run like twice an hour so we were stuck waiting out in the cold for half an hour- not the worst experience… but it was already so late- we just wanted to be home!

Boring Classes, Partying in Piccadilly Circus and Shakespeare at the Globe!

Monday & Tuesday (10/1-2) were pretty uneventful days. I spent most of Monday doing the thousands of pages of reading for my classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday was my first day of class! I had a lecture for my core class. It wasn’t that bad… only an hour long. The lecturer was pretty interesting… the topic of the lecture not so much but I sat there and took notes nonetheless.

Wednesday (10/3) I had my seminar for my core class. Seminars are different from lectures because they are done in really small groups- and in this case it is in a small room where about 8 of us sit around the table and talk about yesterdays lecture. Seminar was OK. I’m not the biggest fan of talking in class so this will take some getting used to- but it’s still fairly interesting. After class I went to explore my library. The library is absolutely gorgeous- it’s huge! There are tons of computers and little study areas- and I only saw the first floor! I’ll definitely be spending lots of time there.

Chinatown!

After exploring the library I went to go meet my friends for dinner and drinks. We all decided that we would check out China Town for some good cheap food! We settled on a Chinese buffet- which was pretty good- kind of expensive and the service/staff were not the friendliest but we ate and then left to go to O’Neills to get drinks. After hanging around and chatting for a while Christine and I headed over to King’s Cross to pick up a cheap printer that we found on gumtree (kind of like craigslist . The printer ended up being way nicer than we expected- and for only 10 pounds it was a bargain- so we were super excited!

View from the club!

Thursday (10/4) we decided to check out a student night at one of the clubs in central London. The club was called Piccadilly Institute and it is literally located right above Piccadilly circus (the equivalent of Times Square in NYC) and has amazing views of the area. The club is pretty big- it has like 6 floors and a whole bunch of different rooms laid out in a maze-like manner- which makes for quite a confusing night trying to find your friends etc. Each room has a different theme- I don’t really remember most of time- it was too crowded to get a good look at some of the decor but the room where we spent most of our night was the disco/90′ room. Now this room was supposed to play all like 80’s/90’s music… but apparently that was a lie… after harassing the DJ numerous times we finally got a Backstreet Boys song out of him- but we were holding out for Spice Girls all night! We left the club fairly early and took our night buses home because we had to be up early tomorrow to go to the Globe!

Friday (10/5) we all decided to meet at Borough Market (the most amazing food market in the world) to grab a quick and cheap lunch before heading off to the theater. After quickly browsing the market for my options ( by the way the market is a lot less crowded on Fridays so I will definitely make that my new day to go there) I settled on what I will call the Thanksgiving sandwich. Essentially it is turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy and stuffing on a roll that makes for a delicious mash-up of the best thanksgiving food in your mouth. This sandwich is going on my favorite list and I will totally be having more of these in the future. Following my delicious experience with the sandwich I grabbed a quick cookie (turned out to not be that good- kind of burnt) for dessert and then we headed off to the Globe Theater.

Inside! *You weren’t supposed to take pictures so apologies for the poor quality.

It is pretty amazing to say that I’ve seen a play in the Globe Theater (even if it’s a replica from the 80’s- who cares!) I really got such a good sense of what it was like to see a play during the Elizabethan era. I especially got a sense of what it must have been like to be a peasant during this time because we bought the 5 pound tickets (aka the “groundlings” tickets), these tickets are so cheap because they are standing tickets. So we are standing below the stage in the big circle area with a couple of hundred other people for the three hours of the performance. Thankfully  we arrived there fairly early, before the mad rush, so we were able to secure some pretty decent seats (by seats I mean standing area) so that we were able to lean up against that wall. The play itself was amazing! It was “Taming of the Shrew”  (The movie 10 Things I Hate About You – is based on this play) which just so happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play- I’ve written tons of papers on it so I felt pretty familiar with it- but there’s nothing like actually seeing it performed!

The Stage!

The actors were amazing and the play was actually quite funny- it had more of a comedic tone than I initially read in the text- which made it really enjoyable! Even though my feet were aching and in some extreme pain after standing for so long getting to see an actual Shakespeare play in the Globe Theater was completely worth it!

Borough Market!

Apologies for the lack of posting this past week has been pretty hectic… between recovering from my plague to catching up on reading for the first week of class… I’ve been quite busy. In any case here’s some highlights from my past week:

Saturday (9/29) I decided that I was recovering well enough to head out with some friends to another one of London’s great markets! We went to Borough Market which is down in the South of London by London Bridge. I know I’ve probably said this a million times about each and every one of the markets but I’ve officially decided that Borough Market is my favorite market in all of London… simply because it is a market filled entirely with FOOD! JUST FOOD! There is food everywhere!

There is one whole enclosed market filled with fresh fruits and vegetables (at pretty cheap prices), fresh squeezed juice stands, bakery stands, fresh bread stands, cheese shops, sandwich shops… every food item imaginable is in this market- and the best part is (Especially for us broke students) is that everything is affordable… and sometimes even downright cheap! The one downside is that on Saturday it is outrageously crowded… there were people everywhere! But that didn’t stop us- we just made a mental note to try and get back on a weekday. After browsing around the market taking in all the sights and smells and evaluating our possible choices for lunch and dessert I decided on a lovely veggie burger for lunch. Now usually I’m not the biggest veggie burger person but this burger looked and tasted absolutely out of this world! You could see it being made right in front of you with freshly ground up vegetables and cheese… and it just tasted so amazingly fresh! I am officially obsessed with these particular veggie burgers and will make a point  to head back at least every couple of weeks to get one… or two 🙂

For dessert I got a fresh lemon tart from one of the bakery stands that was really great! It was a little on the “tart” side (but that’s to be expected with a tart) and I enjoyed eating it with the fresh raspberries  that I also purchased at the market for a dirt cheap price. Because I’m always thinking ahead (or always thinking about food maybe?) I decided to buy the best looking red onion and red pepper focaccia bread from one of the bread stands, which I ate for dinner, with just some balsamic vinegar and olive oil– it was literally to die for! After sufficiently stuffing our faces we decided to walk off some of the calories that we ate in the past few hours and we headed out to explore the Southbank area.

While exploring we stumbled upon a pirate ship (yes- a pirate ship in London). We also went into the Tate Modern again to take a quick look around and finally we ended our adventures at the Globe Theater! While we were at the Globe we decided it would be a good idea to see if we could get some cheap tickets for a show… and guess what? We did! For 5 pounds we got standing tickets to see “Taming of the Shrew” (which just so happens to be one of my favorite Shakespeare plays) for the following Friday!After exploring and some more coffee we all headed our separate ways and went home to start on our ten thousand pages of reading for next week!

MetraLosLocsWalkabout & Notting Hill

Friday (9/21) was a pretty relaxing day. I hung around my flat for most of the day (while Christine was doing her school’s orientation) and then that night us and a bunch of our friends decided to head to a club called Metra down in Piccadilly Circus. We were really excited about this club because it looked really nice (not your typical student dive-bar) and we had received coupons (or vouchers as they call them here) from a really cool website called hellou.com, which gave us free line jump, a free drink and discounted entry at the door. Overall the club was nice… it was a little small, and had some pricey drinks but we weren’t complaining because we got such a good deal. The best part about the club was the music… all night the DJ was playing a lot of throwback music, like some hiphop and r&b from when we were in middle school that was really fun to sing along to and dance to. We spent a few hours dancing and then took our lovely night bus home- which I am slowly developing a love/hate relationship with because of the fact it only runs every 30mins after a certain time and it was really cold- but eventually we got home and went to bed.

The Market! I love the houses!

Saturday (9/24) we decided to head out to another one of London’s most amazing markets- Portobello Road market in Notting Hill. I had never been to Portobello Road before so I was really excited to go- I had heard a lot of great things about the market before and I was anxious to see if it would live up to my expectations- and it in fact exceeded them! I think Portobello might actually remove Camden Market from the top spot on my favorite markets list because it is slightly less crowded and overall has a better vibe. Portobello is known for it’s antique shops and vintage clothing which it did indeed have plenty of.! But my favorite find in the market was the cheap stalls that I found selling name brand make up! I got lip gloss, foundation, and bronzer for 5 pounds… when each of those items individually would have cost me 5 pounds in the store! I was super excited about that find and will be only shopping there for make-up from now on!

Mango Bubble Tea!

Another thing I loved about this market was the vast selection of good quality food! Walking down the street the smell was just incredible! There were falafel stands, quiche stalls, smoothie places, and panini shacks- so many choices! When I was at the market I started the day out with a vanilla cupcake from Hummingbird Bakery (one of the really well-known bakeries in London) and then I ended the day with some homemade churros and chocolate sauce- I was in food heaven! I also decided to try this really cool drink called bubble tea. It is iced tea (you can get all different flavors- I chose mango) with little fruity flavored tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup. It is a really interesting experience drinking something with that sort of texture but there is something sort of fun about it at the same time! I would have to say I’m on the fence now about how I feel about bubble tea- I think I want to go back and try a few more flavors before I give my final verdict.

After wandering aimlessly around the market for 3 hours we all decided that we were getting tired and that we were going to head home and eat dinner before meeting up again later to go out to another club. Everyone came over to my place around 8/9 and we all just hung out and played some fun games before all taking the bus down to central London together. This night we decided to try out another new club called LosLocos. It was an OK club we ended up getting in at the door fairly cheap and they gave us a free drink- so that was a plus, but overall it was just really small so after a while we were getting too hot and claustrophobic and a little bored. We then decided to head to another club (where we went last week) called Walkabout and there we ended up having so much fun! The club played great music and we just spent all night dancing.

Sunday (9/23) was the first official rainy day I have had in London so far. Because the weather has been so nice- sometimes I would actually forget that I was in London- where it was meant to rain 24/7. Because of the not so great weather we decided to just hang around the flat for most of the day and then because it is a new tradition- head out to a pub for dinner to get a Sunday roast. We tried a new pub this week that was a little closer and a little cheaper- and the roast was really good! We got a full roast, drink and dessert (I got a waffle with ice cream) for under 10 pounds! It was incredibly delicious and I am now incredibly full. The end.

Freshers Fair Mayhem

Thursday (9/20) was the day of the freshers fair. What is freshers fair you may ask? Well it is soon to be one of my most favorite days in the entire year (Eventough I will only be participating in it this once) because of the amount of free stuff that I received… anytime I am really a sucker for sales so free is a magic word in my mind. So for those of you that aren’t so familiar with what a fresher is it is how here in the U.K they refer to first year/ freshman students. So during the first week or two of school starting (What is commonly known as freshers week) there are a whole bunch of events (and parties) to welcome the new students. Being that I am indeed somewhat of a fresher (a graduate fresher) my friends and I decided that we would take part in the mayhem that is freshers week and attend the freshers fair.

View of the fair from the top floor (there were even more booths on another level)

The only comparison I can make between the freshers fair and anything else I’ve seen like it back at my old university is like the club and involvement fair but on crack… and the sheer scale of the event multiplied by 20. It was absolutely huge! The fair actually wasn’t even held at our school it was at an event.convention center place. The place was filled with wall to wall tables and booths of every club imaginable and then every sort of club promotion teams, job search websites, student discount card booths, and more! It was quite overwhelming! At each booth you would get hounded with flyers galore, free pens and sometimes other odds and ends. I put my name on so many sign up sheets and filled out so many contact slips for various vendors that I couldn’t even guess the number right now. My friend actually compared the fair to like trick-or- treating on Halloween where you go around to each booth trying to find and get the best free stuff.

Free photo booth photo that we took at the fair!

The highlight of my day was receiving enough pens to last me the semester (around 10), a free  coffee mug, post-its, reusable shopping bags, photo booth photo, and candy… I was very happy with the haul to say the least. Although by the end of the fair I had a bag that weighed about 10 pounds from all of the flyers and materials I had collected… I felt slightly disgusted by the sheer amount of trees that had been killed in order to produce this nonsense but at the same time I was in some sort of euphoric state (most likely do to being brainwashed with free items) that I didn’t let that fact bother me too much- although the school should definitely make an attempt to cut down on the amount of paper/flyers distributed… it was beyond absurd. But enough of that, then after the freshers fair a group of us went to this cute pub/club to eat (We got a really cheap meal deal with a sandwich and a drink for 5 pounds) and then I headed home now thoroughly exhausted to sort through my random flyers and then finally go to sleep.