It was mentioned to me recently by a friend that although I've told them funny stories about my escapades in London & my travels around Europe, no one really knows what goes on weekly in this new little life I've made. Apparently, everyone is under the impression that all I do is walk around shopping and eating my way around the city, and while I desperately wish that was the case, I've come to set the record straight with a little better look at what I do with my time.
Monday
By some cruel twist of fate, Mondays are my long haul for the week. While I appreciate getting half of my classes knocked out on the first day of the week, the 6:30 AM wake-up call is always rough, especially now that 6:30 looks like the middle of the night as winter approaches. After I stop lazing around the internet and caffeinating myself, I get ready and head out to start my day around 8:30.
First stop is my 9:15 Psychology lecture that goes until 11, and then I have an hour break to grab a snack & get myself over to another one of my university's campuses before the seminar that goes with my Psych class starts. Usually my uni friends and I will just go sit in the cafe at school and chat & drink coffee (a lot of the time it's harmless gossip, or them trying to get me to say "aluminum"). After my seminar, I have 3 hours to play with before my next class, and what I do with them changes from week to week. Sometimes a whole group of us will go grab lunch, or we'll go eat a cheap full English somewhere. Other times it's less fun, and I have group projects to work on in the library or a book I need to finish reading for my Reading Gender seminar.
My friends have to head to class an hour earlier than I do, so when I'm by myself I head over to yet another campus and get a juice (I'm eyerolling at myself. I've recently gotten addicted to an overpriced juice bar on Regent Street, which was maybe the last thing I needed to do) and listen to music or read until my class at 4. The seminar ends at 6, and nowadays when I walk out of the building Regent Street I get rewarded with the Christmas lights that have recently turned up. I've yet to capture a picture that shows just how beautiful it looks, but I've made it a goal of mine to get one. I go on my usual walk home after gawking for a minute or two, and sometime stop on my way to stock up on groceries depending on how lazy I'm feeling. Then I'll change and cook dinner and either chill out with my flatmates and our friends downstairs or panic about some large scale paper that I probably haven't started yet.
Mondays actually make me happy (I know): I only see this group of friends once a week, so I really love having a bunch of time over the course of the day to talk and hang out with them.
Tuesday & Wednesday
My Tuesdays & Wednesdays are pretty similar: on both of these days I don't start class until 2, but I still like to get up around 8:30-9 because apparently I've skipped past being a lazy teenager, and I'm not in the business of wasting my time. What I do depends on my mood...and the weather. If it's raining I'm much more inclined to stay in reading blogs over breakfast in my yoga pants. When the weather was a bit warmer, I used to go hang out and have a little breakfast snack at the park cafe down the street from my flat, but recently I've taken to shooting my photography projects and doing some wandering and getting a mid-afternoon coffee (or juice again. sigh.) before a Sociology lecture/seminar double feature that ends at 5.
Wednesdays (which I refer to as Friday #1 now) I like to make my lazy day during the week: I let myself sleep in and then hang out in bed for a while, either bumming around the internet or posting my Photography in London blog for that afternoon. Then I get ready, and usually leave a little earlier than necessary to walk to class with my friend Jess. Before our class we like to either grab lunch at our favorite cafe on the street next to our uni building or some coffee and catch each other up on our weekly lives, which usually includes a fair amount of boy talk & us making fun of each other. We have a lecture for an hour, then a seminar where we have to show and explain our photo assignments for that week, and then we usually make a trip out to a museum to see a photo gallery. Last week we went to the Barbican to look at the Constructing Worlds exhibit, where I fell head over heels in love with Luigi Ghirri's work. And then I'm done for the week! Lucky little brat, I know.
Since everyone except Colleen and I have classes on Thursday, we usually take it easy on Wednesday and hang out in our flat snuggled up on our couches or get dinner. This week, we went to see Gone Girl & got to experience the joy that is the cinema's pick and mix stand. Fun British fact: say "concession stand" and they'll look at you like you have 8 heads, but introduce you to the promise-land that is a wall full of candy for you to dump in a striped paper bag. I may have gotten too into the Pick and Mix wall, much to the entertainment of the British guy who was filling his bag next to me, and had a jolly good laugh when I genuinely exclaimed "I AM SO OVERWHELMED!" about being introduced to Jelly Babies (ew) and Wine Gums (yum).
Thursday-Sunday
Ah, my beautiful, beautiful 4 day weekend. What I do with them is kind of a toss up. If I'm not travelling, my favorite thing to do on Thursdays is explore bits of London that I haven't seen before or do something culture-y like going to a new museum. This week, Colleen & I got brunch at The Breakfast Club in Soho (I've been obsessed with getting to try it before even crossing the ocean) and then made our way over to Shoreditch & Brick Lane to look at the teeny shops filled with clothes we can't afford and the street art that covers the east end. At one point, we walked by a store that just had two hanging racks filled with all black clothing, and I determined I had never seen anything more pretentious in my life.
And that brings us to Friday, where I'm sitting on my couch with a cup of coffee and some 1 PM breakfast recovering from how loudly and passionately I performed Taylor Swift's Blank Space last night with my friends. I have some work I need to get done (or, er, start) & am thinking about getting my fringe trimmed before I go to Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland tonight with my flatmates AND before I set off on a 6-day Eurotour of Brussels, Bruges & the Netherlands on Tuesday. Like, I realize, that means my entire outline of what my weeks are usually like looks like a total lie now but...ever-changing and growing is good for the soul, yes?
Monday
By some cruel twist of fate, Mondays are my long haul for the week. While I appreciate getting half of my classes knocked out on the first day of the week, the 6:30 AM wake-up call is always rough, especially now that 6:30 looks like the middle of the night as winter approaches. After I stop lazing around the internet and caffeinating myself, I get ready and head out to start my day around 8:30.
First stop is my 9:15 Psychology lecture that goes until 11, and then I have an hour break to grab a snack & get myself over to another one of my university's campuses before the seminar that goes with my Psych class starts. Usually my uni friends and I will just go sit in the cafe at school and chat & drink coffee (a lot of the time it's harmless gossip, or them trying to get me to say "aluminum"). After my seminar, I have 3 hours to play with before my next class, and what I do with them changes from week to week. Sometimes a whole group of us will go grab lunch, or we'll go eat a cheap full English somewhere. Other times it's less fun, and I have group projects to work on in the library or a book I need to finish reading for my Reading Gender seminar.
My friends have to head to class an hour earlier than I do, so when I'm by myself I head over to yet another campus and get a juice (I'm eyerolling at myself. I've recently gotten addicted to an overpriced juice bar on Regent Street, which was maybe the last thing I needed to do) and listen to music or read until my class at 4. The seminar ends at 6, and nowadays when I walk out of the building Regent Street I get rewarded with the Christmas lights that have recently turned up. I've yet to capture a picture that shows just how beautiful it looks, but I've made it a goal of mine to get one. I go on my usual walk home after gawking for a minute or two, and sometime stop on my way to stock up on groceries depending on how lazy I'm feeling. Then I'll change and cook dinner and either chill out with my flatmates and our friends downstairs or panic about some large scale paper that I probably haven't started yet.
Mondays actually make me happy (I know): I only see this group of friends once a week, so I really love having a bunch of time over the course of the day to talk and hang out with them.
Tuesday & Wednesday
My Tuesdays & Wednesdays are pretty similar: on both of these days I don't start class until 2, but I still like to get up around 8:30-9 because apparently I've skipped past being a lazy teenager, and I'm not in the business of wasting my time. What I do depends on my mood...and the weather. If it's raining I'm much more inclined to stay in reading blogs over breakfast in my yoga pants. When the weather was a bit warmer, I used to go hang out and have a little breakfast snack at the park cafe down the street from my flat, but recently I've taken to shooting my photography projects and doing some wandering and getting a mid-afternoon coffee (or juice again. sigh.) before a Sociology lecture/seminar double feature that ends at 5.
Wednesdays (which I refer to as Friday #1 now) I like to make my lazy day during the week: I let myself sleep in and then hang out in bed for a while, either bumming around the internet or posting my Photography in London blog for that afternoon. Then I get ready, and usually leave a little earlier than necessary to walk to class with my friend Jess. Before our class we like to either grab lunch at our favorite cafe on the street next to our uni building or some coffee and catch each other up on our weekly lives, which usually includes a fair amount of boy talk & us making fun of each other. We have a lecture for an hour, then a seminar where we have to show and explain our photo assignments for that week, and then we usually make a trip out to a museum to see a photo gallery. Last week we went to the Barbican to look at the Constructing Worlds exhibit, where I fell head over heels in love with Luigi Ghirri's work. And then I'm done for the week! Lucky little brat, I know.
Since everyone except Colleen and I have classes on Thursday, we usually take it easy on Wednesday and hang out in our flat snuggled up on our couches or get dinner. This week, we went to see Gone Girl & got to experience the joy that is the cinema's pick and mix stand. Fun British fact: say "concession stand" and they'll look at you like you have 8 heads, but introduce you to the promise-land that is a wall full of candy for you to dump in a striped paper bag. I may have gotten too into the Pick and Mix wall, much to the entertainment of the British guy who was filling his bag next to me, and had a jolly good laugh when I genuinely exclaimed "I AM SO OVERWHELMED!" about being introduced to Jelly Babies (ew) and Wine Gums (yum).
Thursday-Sunday
Ah, my beautiful, beautiful 4 day weekend. What I do with them is kind of a toss up. If I'm not travelling, my favorite thing to do on Thursdays is explore bits of London that I haven't seen before or do something culture-y like going to a new museum. This week, Colleen & I got brunch at The Breakfast Club in Soho (I've been obsessed with getting to try it before even crossing the ocean) and then made our way over to Shoreditch & Brick Lane to look at the teeny shops filled with clothes we can't afford and the street art that covers the east end. At one point, we walked by a store that just had two hanging racks filled with all black clothing, and I determined I had never seen anything more pretentious in my life.
And that brings us to Friday, where I'm sitting on my couch with a cup of coffee and some 1 PM breakfast recovering from how loudly and passionately I performed Taylor Swift's Blank Space last night with my friends. I have some work I need to get done (or, er, start) & am thinking about getting my fringe trimmed before I go to Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland tonight with my flatmates AND before I set off on a 6-day Eurotour of Brussels, Bruges & the Netherlands on Tuesday. Like, I realize, that means my entire outline of what my weeks are usually like looks like a total lie now but...ever-changing and growing is good for the soul, yes?