Food

          Sorry about the long silence. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

          Meghan and Becky arrived one fine Saturday, and I met them at Heathrow in the wee hours of the morn. It was wonderful having them here, and also a little strange. London along with bits of home all at once.
          What did we do? There was such a lot packed into that week. Well, when I took them on their very first ride on the Tube, they thought the train was insulting them as it said, "This train is for Cockfosters."  We went to Abbey Road, museums (the Natural History Museum for the third time for me, and it was still just as exciting), shows, Primark, and just wandered around. They also saw the touristy stuff - Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London (where Becky got to see where lots of people were killed). They went on a Jack the Ripper tour, and we saw the Sherlock Holmes museum.

          And, of course, there was Thanksgiving. Which was ... a triumphant success!  We made a turkey. Well, actually, we couldn't find a whole turkey, so we bought turkey breast (still on the bones) and two turkey legs, and made that instead. It still looked like a whole turkey.
          The night before, we'd ripped up two loafs of bread (the real stuff, quality french bread with a golden crust) and dried it out. On Thanksgiving, we sauteed (according to Meghan's dad's instructions) an onion, some garlic, and some celery, mixed it up with the dry bread, sprinkled on some rosemary, and doused it in butter. We hid it under the turkey breast, as there wasn't really an inside into which to stuff it.
          Nicholas and I constructed a roasting pan out of ridiculous amounts of tin foil. The turkey bits were then marinated in oil, butter, salt, and pepper. We stuck it in the oven and drenched it with butter every fifteen minutes.
          Meghan made her famous truffles (and we had dark chocolate to spare ... never a bad thing), which we attacked.

          We had a magnificent spread. Two kinds of sparkling juice (including white grape with pomegranate and rose), crescent rolls (made by Brittany), sweet potato fries (made by Nicholas), steamed green beans, real mashed potatoes, a salad (made of not-iceberg lettuce), turkey and stuffing of course (which were ridiculously tasty and made us feel proud and capable), and even cranberry sauce.
          Luke (one of Brittany's English flatmates) joined us for dinner. It was his first Thanksgiving, and we had fun explaining the origin of the holiday. "The natives taught the colonists to grow corn and survive, and Thanksgiving marks the cooperation between the two cultures. And then there was the genocide and we gave them all syphilis. Happy Thanksgiving!" He managed three servings of everything, putting all of us seasoned Thanksgivingers to shame.

          On a slightly unrelated note, I figured out the topic for my senior thesis: food. Cooking, eating, meals with family, eating out, foreign food, vegetarianism, comfort food, grocery shopping, eating disorders, fad diets ... the possibilities are endless! And we're not talking some dry academic treatise. No, no, my friends. This will be creative non-fiction! Narrative prose recounting my personal experiences with food! Which ... actually ... is probably not going to be that exciting. But I was excited. I have a topic!
          This year's Thanksgiving will almost certainly be the basis for one of my essays. As will, perhaps, the next story I'll relate:

          Yesterday (this being after Becky and Meghan had departed for windy Chicago), Brittany, Brynn, and Gonzo decided to have a picnic. So we grabbed a blanket and all the Thanksgiving leftovers and proceeded to set up camp in the middle of the courtyard. People thought we were crazy. We yelled at Nick to join us. So we sat there in the cold weather, eating McVities with Nutella (a stroke of genius on the part of Brittany).
          And now, the long haul to the end of the grading period. Two academic essays to finish and a couple hundred more words for creative writing portfolios.

          Deep breath. Ready, set, go.

Things I've learned this week

1. The Natural History Museum is just as cool the second time around.
2. All art should be backed by rich old people so it can be viewed by the public for free.
3. People in the seventeen- and eighteen-hundreds had weird taste in home wall decor (personally, I'd rather not hang a 12'x20' oil painting of God's flooding of the earth over the fireplace if it's all the same to you, thanks).
4. You can use regular photographs as postcards.
5. Delays on the Tube are no fun.
6. When on the phone and spelling something for someone, choose serious words when clarifying a letter; N as in November, P as in Parliament, F as in Fahrenheit. Not, in any circumstance, L as in Lolly.
7. Even though laughter exacerbates a sore throat, it is still worth it.
8. Sainsbury's sells crusty delicious french bread for a pound nine.
9. Torrential downpours happen everywhere and, though you do get wetter by running than by walking in the rain, it is more fun to screech and holler as you dash for cover with friends through the thick, fast drops.
10. Apples to Apples, while undeniably a wonderful game, is made eight times funnier when you write the adjectives and nouns yourself.
    

Despite having no classes (it's Reading Week), it's been quite educational.

Teapots, goodbyes, and tulips

        It was sad to see my parents go home. It was fun having them around. I'm glad they decided to come. We ate at a lot of pubs. I mean, a lot of pubs. It was delicious. We walked around a lot; I saw some more of London. On Friday, we managed to get the wrong theatre (we went to the Lyric Apollo, instead of the Apollo Victoria), but it was all right, because we had two hours to spare. So they got to see the main theatre district, which we otherwise would have missed. On Saturday we wandered around Greenwich, which was fun. It was a beautiful day out. All in all, a really nice week.
        But, I did come down with some sort of sinus infection. Last night I was convinced it was meningitis, because my neck was rather sore, and I gave myself a panic attack and spent the evening trying not to throw up. Fun stuff. So today I stocked up on chicken noodle soup, veggie broth, and barley soup. I also finally bought a teapot. I bought some tea a while ago, but they weren't single serving bags like I thought, and make an entire potful of tea. So now I can actually make it.
        Hence, right now I'm drinking tea with sugar and milk in, and eating gingerbread cookies, and a white tulip in a green bottle sitting on my windowsill with sunlight and a light breeze coming in. It's very picturesque.

        The tulip is my favorite part. There's a guy who sells flowers out of an alley next to the pub near my school. It's not a scary alley, not one of those dark and drippy ones where you get mugged. It's cheerful and strange, this little space of green and blooms and little terracotta pots, right next to a streetful of angry car horns and urgent police sirens. There was a big crate full of white tulips, and a hand-lettered sign that read "A bunch for One Pound."
        I asked the man how much for only one. When he looked askance at me, I explained that my vase only had room for one flower, and said I'd pay the one pound for only one bloom.
        "Just one tulip?" he asked. I nodded. He walked over to the crate and selected one. When he handed it to me, I tried to give him the money, but he waved it away. I thanked him and he smiled. It made my day.

        This week is reading week, so there are no classes (except my evening writing classes, which I'm okay with). I'm going to catch up on readings, start my essays, sleep, recover, and watch a lot of movies. And, of course, drink absurd amounts of tea.



p.s. Jenna - I saw a lot of secondhand, beat up Penguin classics, and I was tempted to buy one to carry around in my back pocket. But I didn't. Mostly because the ones I saw didn't pique my interest. But ... the next time I find an interesting one, I may just have to succumb. Goodbye mellow England louvin'.

Mis padres and garbage bag bats

        My parents are visiting this week! They arrived on Saturday last, and I, like a dutiful daughter, met them at Heathrow at 8am - and the Tube ride there takes about two hours. That's what I call responsibility.
        Tomorrow night, we're going to go see a show. This past week, we've gone to Covent Garden, taken a boat ride on the Thames, browsed Oxford Street, and eaten at a lot of pubs.

        It's been a pretty full week.

        Strangely enough, I've been thinking about things I'll be doing once I get home. It's not that I don't want to be here. I'll be quite loathe to leave the city. But ... at home, there's the holiday season waiting. There's Caroling for Cans 2007 and the annual New Year's party (this year's theme is a masquerade ball). There's my friends, and my sewing machine, and my piano (!), and mom-cooked meals.
        You don't really realize how easy a fully-equipped kitchen makes things until you've got a frying pan and one bowl to work with. No cupcake or loaf pans, no blender, no ice (except in ice cube trays ... inadequate), no toaster oven, no crock pot! It's debilitating. I'm going to cook a lot over Christmas.

        I'm getting hugely excited for Becky and Meghan to visit. I think once my parents take their leave back to the US of A, I'll miss home a little bit more. You know. It's like when you're hungry, and nibbling on something only makes you hungrier? So it'll be good to have Becky and Meg here so soon. I miss everyone something dreadful!

        I realize that this entry isn't up to my usual writing par. I think I'm trying to get into the bland, brief, postcard-writing mindset. I've been extremely lax in my off-line communication; apologies. Hopefully I will write some letters and postcards this weekend ... ? Hopefully.

        Here's an interesting fact: Apparently in London, people don't dress up and go out to party it up on Halloween. They do it the day before, on the 30th. Which would make sense if the 30th were a Saturday. But this year it was on Tuesday. So I'm not quite certain as to the logic behind this. However, they do also dress up on the 31st, and, apparently, the 1st. I think the Halloween thing acts as an excuse to be as festive as possible, for as long as possible. It's like the way we Americans are with Christmas. You know. Holly and tinsel up in stores in mid-October.
        My American friends and I didn't join in the Tuesday night festivities, to the mild consternation of our flatmates. We did, however, dress up last night.
        Brittany was a witch, Gonzo a pirate, Nick as a low-key version of Larry the Monster, and myself as a bat, with wings and ears hastily cut out of black garbage bags.
        Pretty much, we hung out in Brittany's room with our costumes and listened to her "Dance Party Goodness" mix and danced around a little bit. Then we watched The Wicker Man, which is a very strangely and quietly disturbing movie. Also, Christopher Lee's voice was about five octaves higher back then.

        Tomorrow: Class, going to Sainsbury's for to buy the post-Halloween bargain candy, hanging out with mis padres, and then seeing a musical. Should be a good start to the weekend.