Londowners Grove

Un-Henged

Well, I haven’t updated in about a week because I’ve forgotten to take my camera around with me until today, and I feel like text only updates are somewhat of a pain in the ass to read. Any recap that I attempt at this point will be incomplete and insufficient. Still, here goes, in approximately reverse chronological order:

Today my flatmates Kevin, Blake and a bunch of girls from the flats upstairs took an STA tour bus to Bath and Stonehenge. As I’ve been warned by various people who have been there, Stonehenge was somewhat underwhelming. But it was nice to bask in the ancient mysticism and modern tranquility of the English countryside.

On the other hand, Bath was altogether a different story: Much, much more enjoyable than I expected. The pictures should have given you some idea of the kind of historically significant quaintess we found there. This is, of course, an English village of wealthy retirees and the site of derelict Roman bathouses. The whole town is an interesting fusion of crumbling ruins and modern technological wizardry- stuff like broken down pillars, plasma screens and health spas.

A few kids touched the supposedly toxic, pea green groundwater that has been bubbling in the main bath for centuries (against the advice of the guides) but as of yet, they haven’t suffered any abnormal effects. Blake got saddled with a bunch of the free audio-tour devices once everyone discovered how impractical and lame they actually were.

The busride itself to and from these locations took a total of about 2 hours, which were occupied by blissful sleep for the majority of the occupants. The only one who was consistently awake was our friend Hallie from upstairs, who spent the trip reading the popular vampire romance novel Twilight, now being made into a film that MTV cannot hype enough. We arrived home to find out our typically energetic flatmate Alan Tejada had spent the entire day sleeping, after staying up all night watch season finales of American TV shows on his laptop.

Maybe he was just restless from our trip, both literal and figurative, to the Tate Museum of Modern Art yesterday. The place is full of surrealistic stuff by the likes of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miro. To top it off, we finished the night watching the film Vanilla Sky for the first time on our flat computer. That combination should be enough to keep anyone’s thoughts running for some time, but for some reason I hit the pillow like one of those giant rocks at the ‘Henge.

The week had been alternatingly exciting and painstaking. Alan’s 21st birthday was Friday night, and the histrionicaly drunken celebrations were preceeded by another group visit to the London Print Studio, a small, iMac friendly establishment in the ghettoist area of South Kensignton I’ve been to yet. The exhibit we were attracted to was called “AgitPop,” and featured a bunch of promotional posters for various social movements that would be totally trendy additions to any college dorm. Fortunately, the visit gained slightly more meaning beyond this, as the enthusiastic, middle-aged, gap-toothed, shifty-eyed owner showed us around and explained just how important this area London was to all the social upheaval of the late 60’s and early 70’s. The greatest thing that I learned was that Alan Ginsberg laid down a “rap” on the Clash song “Ghetto Defendant” in a recording studio just a few blocks away.

Monday through Thursday was pretty much occupied by class and chilling out in the flat, with occasional trips to get take out food and/or groceries. Fortunately, there’s a ton of great restaurants that cater specifically to this niche right down our street, including the realtively cheap China Star (4.50 pounds for a vegetarian meal of Bean Curd, Spicy-Chili Bean Sauce, Steamed Rice and a Fanta).

Tuesday night, the boys from the flat hit up the Zoo Club in Picadelly Circus. It was pretty intense; After getting shuttled to the front of the “queue” (English for line) after being identified by the bouncers as naive Americans, I got kicked out a few seconds later for trying to pull my customary move of sneaking past the doorguy without paying. To be clear, I only tried this because I didn’t have enough cash to cover the five pound charge for entry, and they weren’t accepting credit. Fortunately, I was able to pull some cash out of an ATM and rejoin my friends. Alan paid for several rounds of Tequila, Blake got thoroughly wasted, and I tried to dance on some British girl who I thought was giving me the eye. Two of these three events I would consider successes, I trust you to figure out which was the failure. We tried to catch a bus back to our flat but after a few moments of intoxicated, impatient waiting, Alan insisted on paying for a cab back.

And on a side note: as this blog has been shaping up, you can probably figure out that Mr. Tejada is not hurting for the funds, at least not yet. Apparently, his parents are quite well off, both financially and politically, and his godfather is a Peruvian government official of some hefty prominence.

Finally, on Wednesday went to the campus of our host University, Imperial College to catch the sporting event of the summer, the 2008 European Champions Cup League Final in Moscow. For those ignorant Americans who don’t follow Football (Soccer-And yeah, that includes me too, I’m a hypocrit, I know), this was an English civil war between traditional working-calss underdogs Machester United and the wealthy, superpowered Chelsea.

That makes it sound as though the game was weighted against Manny-U from the start, but from what I heard, the odds of either winning were pretty damn equal. In fact, that’s how the game played out, going from a 1-1 tie to a 30 minute overtime (or, as I was corrected by an English bloke at the bar; extra time) to penalty kicks- with Manny U finally emerging victorious. We have a couple of pretty avid Chelsea fans in our group, including my flatmate Stewart Norman, and we are staying in one of the nicer areas in the city, so it was a dissapointment to see “our team” lose. But whatever, the event was fun in and of itself and it was a good excuse to get wasted, throw British candy bars on the ground, and kick some random person’s football into the street.

1. Still have yet to TALK to a british person one on one, minus commercial transactions

2. Need to do laundry and/or buy more clothes

3. I would like to charge my ipod soon

4. Want to memorize the poster of Greek monsters in our flat before we leave

5. Check out a British concert ASAP

6. Stop my friend Christy from kicking pidgeons