Corkingly

I am in a lovely lovely mood. Life is going just corkingly.

After English class today, Laura and I took the tube to Knightsbridge and went to Harrods. It was magnificent. Truly the most out of control department store I have ever been within--and I'm a Jersey girl. We like malls and department stores. There's this whole Egyptian escalator section, where they have sphinxes and hieroglyphics and headdresses and such all the way around on your way up these little escalators. Actually, there's a lot of Egyptian stuff in Britain--saw Cleopatra's Needle on Satuday, which is just plopped down on the Strand along the Thames. It was not quite as thrilling as I had expected, and certainly not as awesome as Harrods was today!

Laura and I spent about an hour and a half in the children's book section of Harrods alone. It was lovely and wonderful. We saw more Horrid Henry (I mistakenly called him Harry last time--oops), which apparently is a favourite children's book series here. British people just adore horrid things. I love it. And we got oh-so-excited about the "Horrible History" books on display that the saleslady started talking to us for a while. She had this odd British accent with very full and rounded vowels, and she seemed to love what she does, and she brought us to the Winnie the Pooh section and told us that the idea for the series actually originated in Harrods, when A.A. Milne bought a bear for his son, Christopher Robin, and then made up stories to go along with it. How sweet! I love original pooh bear; the cover of one of the books quotes:

"Hallo, Piglet," he said. "I thought you were out."
"No," said Piglet, "it's you who were out, Pooh."
"So it was," said Pooh. "I knew one of us was."

How pure and adorable is a friendship in which you get confused as to which of you was gone when you are alone? I adore British sensibilities. In every way they are more direct than Americans: they come up with the simplicity of Pooh Bear--and then on the other end, they have ads for competitions that are like, "Come to Quiz Night! Trump all the people stupider than you!" I feel like we'd get sued in the US for insinuating that some people might be "stupider" than others, or that, sometimes, we're not all winners. Anyway. Yay England.

I did in fact buy a few of the "Horrid History" books, featuring such topics as the "Terrible Tudors" and the "Stinky Stuarts." I plan to read these in place of my history book, which is dry and boring and gives all the same information minus much of the loo humour.

And then we saw the shoe area, which is all black and each shoe has its own black platform. Very dramatic. AND I played around with a beaded Cleopatra dress that was worth over 1600 pounds--that's 3200 US dollars, for those who are counting. Craziness. And the Food Halls were fucking incredible: gelato in enormous goblets with museum-quality presentation; an entire wall of jelly beans; and a chocolate area with more truffles than I have ever seen in my life. And the lady behind the counter felt bad for Laura and me, so she gave us free Turkish Delight candies (which I am told feature heavily in the Chronicles of Narnia, though I realize now that I have never read those books).

In conclusion: I love Harrods. One day perhaps I will be able to afford one bead on one of their dresses.

Then we located Hyde Park, but it looked pretty sketchy at night--kind of like a less populated Central Park-- so we decided to leave that for another day.

Educating Courtney, or Things I Can Do Now That I Could Not Do Two Weeks Ago:
I can semi- use a map!
I can also use the tube.
I can also use the bus! (Much more difficult than the London Underground, let me assure you.)
I can cook stir-fry vegetables and noodles and chicken, and (must give credit to Laura here) can get creative with leftover rice and add yogurt, cinammon, mango, grapes to make a dessert-like salad.
I can get a drink at a pub and not get carded. (I could not do this two days ago, lol.)
I can clean and organize my life into a single closet, half a dresser, and no desk. It's true. Jen, you would love me better now.

So yesterday was a wasted day completely, except for my history class, which I loved loved. That little British man who is my professor makes history a story, and then we break for tea and coffee (these people take their tea damn seriously), and then we look at primary sources and somehow this is not dry. I think perhaps because I have a secret crush on my 70-year-old professor.

But then our internet went bonkers, so we went bonkers, so we tried everything to set up a modem but failed miserably--I missed all my wonderful techies at Yale--so we tried to continue to steal from the internet cafe across the street as we had been doing but were thwarted, so we chatted with the internet guy as he tried to help us for 3 hours. So in the end nothing was accomplished and we went to bed unwired. And I realized that never never could I have done this trip sans internet. Communication with my homies (hah- pun) is key.

And on Saturday, we walked around London a bit. Passed Chinatown and Soho and Leicester (pronounced Lester) Square, which I particularly liked--lots of Italian restaurants and movie theaters and a nice little statue square area thingy in the middle. And I saw posters for British Rent and Wicked, which pleased me immensely and which I studied enough to give a detailed analysis of the differences in US-UK advertising, but will not do here. This is the day on which we figured out the buses. This is also the day on which Laura and I ate dinner on the Queen Mary--yes, a ship on the Thames. We just kind of walked over a plank and sat at some wavy table and ordered chips and then were like...hm! We're eating on the Thames. That's kind of fun.

And that's London Life. I'm off to Moroccan Night at the International Student House now, to crib some free dinner. And tomorrow I'm seeing a play called the Vertical Hour, directed by the guy whose master class I saw last week and set at Yale. It will make me miss my wonderful Yalies, I'm sure.

Word of the day:
take a piss at / take a mickey at = make fun of

Thought of the day:
London rain is mean to curly hair. Talk about frizz.