monumental

I climbed to the top of the Monument today.  It was designed by Christopher Wren to commemorate the Great Fire of London "and to celebrate the rebuilding of the City," according to the official-looking certificate I was handed on my way out.  Three hundred and eleven steps up a narrow, spiral staircase.  The view is worth it, even though you are surrounded by chain-link fence.  It offered a different perspective of the city, since it's placed more toward the financial district, all those tall shiny buildings glinting in the sun, and hurried business people darting around. 

St. Paul's Cathedral

Tower Bridge

The Shard

The Gherkin

The Monument

  Afterward, I sat on a stone step thing surrounding a tree outside Monument station.  I saw a young woman leaning against a closed store front, having a cigarette.  She was wearing a leather jacket.  Her hair was dyed black, and she was slightly overweight, shifting herself from foot to foot.  As I watched her, she was approached twice by two different men, each asking her for a lighter.  Each time, she smiled and was polite, handing her lighter over.  The first guy was elderly; the second guy was young and handsome: grey trousers, shiny black shoes, a businessman on his lunch break.  She smiled at him differently than she had at the older man, and the smile remained as she watched him look down to use the lighter.  I was hoping he'd stay and chat with her, but he only thanked her and strolled away, leaving her with the remnants of a smile on her face, a cigarette in her hand. 

Congratulations, Jason Cody!

Today my boyfriend is graduating from the University of Utah with a degree in Mechanical Engineering!  He has put in so much hard work and I'm proud of him.  I'm missing lots of  important events while I'm away, and this graduation is definitely one of the big ones...wish I could be there. 

the poetry cafe

Just got back from a poetry reading in Covent Garden, put on by a small London-based publishing company called the tall-lighthouse.  It was in a small cafe, aptly named The Poetry Cafe.  Went in and sat down at a table; the room was full of grey-haired, balding men drinking bottles of beer and glasses of wine and popping outside for smokes.  Eventually everyone filed downstairs and the reading began.  There was a university student, a girl, who had a sultry voice.  She read a poem in an American accent about a porn star.  All her poems were super sensual, and it made me laugh a little to realize the predominate age-range and gender of her audience in relation to her subject matter.  There was a man with wild curly hair from Wales who read a poem involving a bicycle in a narrow hallway, and a man in a cheesy checkered shirt who was over-the-top theatrical, not very poetical, who read a poem which was a riddle and the answer was The Oldest Man in the World.  My favorite was the man who went last.  He seemed so young, maybe a couple years older than me, and he had a distinctive accent--I'm going to try to replicate it for my flatmates so they can tell me where it's from.  His poems were very personal.  One of his poems, I think he said, was "written" by his young son: he simply shaped his son's words into a poem.  I liked it--the words were full of the unintentional wisdom of a young child. 

I ended up buying a poetry chapbook instead of a glass of wine, and striking up a conversation with someone on the tube ride back, which is a rare occurrence, in London.

muffins, English ones

Scene:  Anne, Michael, and James are chilling in the kitchen.  Anne has just finished devouring scrambled eggs with cheese and red and green peppers and green onion, left over from her Chinese chicken salad.  Basically, she has become quite the cook.  James begins slicing an English muffin.

Anne:  Hey, do you call those "English muffins" here?

James:  No, we call them "muffins."

Anne's cooking skills become overshadowed by her inability to think before speaking.

all's well

The Globe Theatre

british english: I still need a translator.

Lucy (looking up recipes online):  This one uses bazzle.

Me: What's bazzle?

Michael: Basil.



It's like when Anthony kept talking about an "eye-on" and it took me forever to realize he was talking about an iron.

the wedding

Yesterday I woke up and randomly decided to go to Hyde Park to watch the Royal Wedding on the big screens.  Honestly, I hadn't been in to all the hype over this wedding, but I figured I should take advantage of being in London during such a grand occasion!  I feel like there's two distinct outlooks on this wedding: there's the people who scoff and roll their eyes and say How Boring and What a Waste of Money, and there's the people who are so in to it, who waited with bated breath to see The Dress, who kissed their significant other as they listened to William and Kate's marriage vows.  The hopeless romantics.  Then there was me, probably more on the hopeless romantic side than anything else (The Dress was stunning!), but I'd like to think I was more of a neutral observer.  The park was so full of good vibes.  Everyone was waving British flags, and cheering and singing and showing their support to the so-symbolic couple.  Yes, they are symbolic, but when it all comes down to it, they are two young people who decided to get married because they want to spend their lives together.  (Um, yuck...maybe I should just swear my allegiance to the Hopeless Romantics?)

Anyway, the ceremony was beautiful, the choir boys were diverse, there were TREES in Westminster Abbey, and some of the most fantastic hats I've ever seen.  Behold.

(Photos from fashionista.com)