Happy October

Heres a bit of an update on what I have been up to this weekend

Yesterday cailin, mary, and I took the train down to brighton, which is located on the coast about an hour and a half south of London. And the guy at the train station hooked us up with cheap student and group discounts for our train rides to and from brighton which was great.

So yes, we arrived at 10:30 and walked down to the beach (which was full of pebbles, not sand) and walked along to the large pier. On the pier there are a lot of little kiosks, an arcade, lots of carnival games, and at the end there is a small theme park. The three of us stopped to get something to eat at a Belgian waffle stand which serves waffles on a stick covered in fudge, caramel, or chocolate (I got the chocolate). It was amazing.

After that we walked through town up to the royal pavilion which was “built by the flamboyant george iv.” It was so beautiful and so different. The pavilion is based off of Chinese architecture and it is surrounded by gardens. There is also a small museum there (free admission, yay) which we walked around in and enjoyed the kids room. We ate lunch just outside of the pavilion at a pub and restaurant called ha!ha! and it was super good. And after our somewhat late lunch we wandered around the lanes – an area of brighton hidden from the main streets where there are shops. The lanes are exciting because they are so small and narrow, so like a lane. We each bough masquerade masks there which are from italy and are hand painted, they are so cool! There were other ones there (worth a minimum of $90) which had feathers and more elaborate painting and rhinestones on them, but we’re cheap college student (but they were fun to play with for a bit). We then returned to our flats in new cross quite tired and hungry. But outside of our flats there was a flower stand so I bough some gerber daisies for my room which is quite nice. Yay fresh flowers! The rest of my evening wasn’t all that exciting (except for when mary and I tried to watch grey anatomy on the internet and it wasn’t streaming all that well)

This morning mary and I went to an all souls church off of oxford street. It had been recommended to her by one of her professors from back home or something so she wanted to check it out and I decided to tag along. It was a cool church that was pretty diverse in both age and ethnicity and it has a big focus on students here at uni (including international students). The sermon was alright, it just went on for daaaays. We then went to lunch a few blocks away from the church at a place called EAT: the real food company. As opposed to the fake food companies near it. Its like a prêt a manger, but better and a bit cheaper. It was really good, I even bought a few things to bring home for dinner.

It has rained a lot today. But it will rain, stop, rain, pour, drizzle, rain, stop, repeat. The weather here needs to take a chill pill. Or just go back to the sun and 70 degree weather we were having there for a while (its so obvious im from California)

So yes, im back at goldsmiths now. Its interesting being in an arts college (everyone here is either arty or a theatre nerd, or both) and its also interesting being in an urban setting. New cross isn’t the best part of London – there are sirens going off quite a lot, especially at night (don’t worry, I don’t go out by myself). And apparently there have been a shooting or two in the past few weeks around here in a club or something and the mini mart across the street was held up recently. But where else can you go to a kebab place and also get fries/chips, fried chicken (this country loves kfc and I don’t know why), a burger, and some weird british pie with liver in it. So yes, that’s new cross. im a thug. Right.

Ps I have my first day of class tomorrow (but I only have one class and its from 4-6, sweet)