THIS BLOG IS DONE

hey folks who no longer read this blog b/c it's been inactive for so long, i'm starting a new blog at www.spiritdittes.wordpress.com. why? well, it seems i've entered a new stage in my life that's requiring a different set of priorities, vocabularies, reasons for documenting, etc. and so to reflect this change, i've moved on to another blog. the rest of my stay in london was eventful, memorable. it was only upon returning to nyc that i realized how the place was beginning to become my frame of reference. i've had the joy of seeing three friends from london visit nyc in this last month, so i don't feel that i've lost that life completely, yet. for the sake of closure, i'm going to say that the travels and adventures of this blog have ended for now. here comes adulthood.

EVERY WAKING MOMENT

the last three days i've been staring at this computer. this paper's been my most challenging one at queen mary and my corneas can't take it. i'm going blind y'all. after this baby's done by 5, i'm off to see stuart hall speak on a panel on cultural identity and the photographic archive at autograph abp (the nonprofit i desperately wanted to work at if i could stay in london). one. week. left.

MUST DO TO DO'S

been counting down the days and i have ten to do the following!

1. finish paper on tourism as a form of neocolonialism
2. have an english roast
3. explore brixton/south london
4. visit sir john sloane's
5. have high tea
6. walk around hampstead heath/crouch end
7. check out goldsmiths' centre for cultural studies
7. say my goodbyes to everyone

i'll leave happy if it all happens.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN

spent a massive library sesh today and adrian joined me after i migrated to soas. when i was at senate hill, i was accosted by this huge black man who wanted to know where i was from, where i was from originally, whether i thought america would survive the recession despite being colonized by england and its foreign policy with iraq (WEIRD), whether i had heard about the earthquakes in southwest china, whether i thought london was better than nyc, whether i thought america was ready for a black president, blahlbhablhahh dayam he just would not stop interrogating me as i was looking for a book on jamaica kincaid! maybe he'd been deprived of human interaction from being in the library for too long, but get these crazies awayy from me plzz

OHGAWD THE END IS NEAR

i handed in my second to last essay last wednesday and spent the rest of the week slacking. spain was amazing, i almost cried during the 200th dos de mayo celebration in madrid even though the language was completely lost to me. the performances were really spectacular, i have a video of napoleon rapping. i'll definitely go back with some spanish under my belt, i'm ashamed really of how little i know ESPECIALLY since i have so many spanish-speaking friends that i love dearly!

anyway, have mostly been making lists for various things (things to do in london before leaving, people to see before leaving, things to prepare for job, things to do during the summer, they go on...) and hanging out with dana! we saw a cindy sherman film, officer killers, yesterday at the tate modern. it was good fun, but i was expecting more gore. the talk before it was disappointing and made me miss swarthmore. i miss swarthmore!

SO MUCH that i'll be going to graduation on june 1st. i changed my return date to nyc for may 28th, in time to celebrate my birthday with people who appreciate my existence. may 31st i'll be visiting swarthmore for graduation, returning to nyc day of, which gives me about a week to settle and remind myself of how much i loved newyork/thestates/myformerlife.

but i will miss london dearly. queen mary has been ridiculous, but it's grown on me. mile end too. ahhnoththinkngaboutitnothigaboutittt.

THE EVENTUAL RETURN

so i've been back in london for about a week now. returned from paris last friday and found myself panicking over two papers due next monday (when i leave for spain), i've finished one! and given myself a brief rest for this massive entry on paris that will probably be the first to take over this entire blog's webpage. the weather there was a bit temperamental, but this visit probably ranks highest on my list of the most pleasant vacations i've had in my (short) life, thanks to the delightful company of magali duzant and michelle lee! it was very convenient to just walk around the entire city, it's such a pretty one with its slate blue rooftops! i mostly explored by walking, observed french society, sat in cafes, gorged on tasty pastries, saw beautiful art, visited cemeteries, went to markets, watched the L word with the girls, and listened to stories about snooty french art students.

first day in paris!


their flat was chilly because the french don't believe in double-paned windows, avec an outdoor dining table


aforementioned anti-climatic passing of torch


passed japan town/street, i've heard japanese cuisine in paris is suspect b/c they're mostly run by vietnamese and the fish is not fresh...i miss sushi


street of the bad boys (or something like that) in the marais, avec gun-totting panda


maison europeenne de la photographie


lunch with mags at a cute restaurant/bookshop


sacre coeur


jardins du luxembourg, magali and michelle add a bit of humanity


paris at sunset near the apartment


one of the stalls at an antiques market


some were like movie sets


there were often protests with frightful policemen patrolling with guns and bulletproof vests


debuffet piece at the pompidou


proust at the cemeterie du montparnasse, had trouble finding him so i just followed these two women, one of whom, upon arriving, proceeded to look at me and say "proust." indeed.


truffaut, one of the more touching graves with rocks placed upon ticket stubs


yummy pastries from patisserie sadaharu aoki


the louvre, i went to see winged victory but quickly ran away after seeing all the tourists


musee de l'orangerie to see monet's lillies


my last few days were filled with photography-related events, modeled with michelle for magali's jean project


and met alec soth! future famed photographer who was showing at the jeu de paume and kindly gave magali's photo class a tour of his work.


this was my last day. i was sad to leave. it's a bit lonesome living on one's own, i forgot how nice it is to have someone to start the day with! anyway, i'm back to normalcy till next monday when i go to barcelona, valencia, and madrid!

XENA IN FRENCH

HEY GUYZ REMEMBER ZENA WARRIOR PRINCESS, SHE'S STILL ON TELEVISION IN FRANCE


i didn't think the show could get any more ridiculous but yes. yes it can. a decapitated head is speaking in french right now. too funnyy.

DANS PARIS

ahh been superbusy these past few days. last wednesday morning, joey returned to london from spain and texted me if he could come by my place. he stayed for two nights, the first night we went to this cuban restaurant called cafe cubano that had guns and flags as decor all over the place and the second night we saw el orfanato, spanish horror film produced by guillermo de toro that absolutely terrified me. it was fun times. friday night, i went over portia way 133 to see rachel and phil, the plan was to go out to a bar and then club, but we stayed at the flat too long and showed up at the club as it was ceasing to be a STRIP club. we were expecting sixties music, not naked women. anyway, the night was kinda fun/awkward because phil had to pretend we were all his girlfriends and tell pervy men around us that he was not a pimp. also rachel stole toilet paper to make it worth the five pounds we each paid.

i arrived in paris last saturday night and have been enjoying my time here thus far! magali and michelle have been kind enough to let me stay here until the 16th. their flat is quite nice and near the marais, right by the pompidou and other art institutions. they've been telling me about french art schools and parisians through an assortment of anecdotes and tirades, entering french society has been difficult for them to say the least! sunday we walked around the neighborhood and the bastille market to pick up fresh veggies and fruit.

today/monday, magali had class in the afternoon and we started the 45 minute walk to her school after lunch. the olympics torch relay was happening and there were protests about tibet and policemen all along the river! i had no idea what was happening until the torch passed me. there were people with signs just sitting, but they looked like the most apathetic protesters i have ever seen. photographers were snapping away, but i was too put off by the scene to stay around. yes china is oppressive and hegemonic, but sitting around and holding something is not going to help. i was also annoyed that these photogs were just shooting away and that those images would later take on more meaning than there actually was, where is the truth?

then i went to tour montparnasse to get a panoramic view of paris. would post fotos if i had brought my card reader sorrrry. but even if i did, you wouldn't be able to see how breathtaking the city is. i realized how in all my traveling i've projected my own feelings onto places expecting reflections with the hope that the process would bring me closer to some understanding of the world. i stayed there longer than i expected so i couldn't make it to the cimeterie du montparnasse in time. i wanted to visit l'entrepot, a film institute/center, as well, but it started to rain and i was lost. i asked an old man for the subway station that it was near to, but he thought i was looking for the metro. he took quite some time to get a metro map out and was speaking french the entire time, but he was so kind! he insisted that i keep the metro map. i kept replying to him in mandarin, possibly because his french put me in foreign language mode and that's the first "foreign" language to me. but having took some french in high school, i can understand un peut. anyway, he pointed to the metro so i decided to come back to the flat. since the weather cleared up, michelle and i made a quick visit to a thrift store in the marais before cooking dinner.

tomorrow i get a haircut! i hear there are a few japanese places (restaurants, stores) around the opera so i am crossing my fingers for a salon. it's nice to be staying with friends who actually live here and have the time to not be a tourist. more walking adventures to come.

FULL RECOVERY

i managed to see waldean and pinky a few times this week since waldean was visiting from denmark on break. friday night we walked around city to look at the financial buildings since waldean's doing engineering and has an eye for architectural things. we went for dinner around covent garden and spotted the father from home alone at the table behind us! waldean and pinky were ecstatic and could hardly sustain conversation for all their excitement, and i just sat back laughing at them because they were so giddy. at the end of dinner, they approached him to confirm whether it was actually him (it was) and asked to take a photo with him. he seemed a bit disgruntled, but his wife was kind and smiled about it. our dinner went a bit past midnight so i had to 25 it back.

saturday night, waldean and pinky were going to come with me and adrian to fabric, but waldean decided against it. i stopped by pinky's room in lse's dorms and we had tequila shots in honor of his visit. i quickly dashed to fabric afterwards and met up with adrian. though i had some idea of what to expect, i don't think i was quite prepared for it, but having been, i don't think anyone could prepare themselves for the experience that is fabric. we had gone in earlier so we didn't have to wait too long, there was adequate time for adrian and i to get inebriated for the dj we wanted to see, akiko kiyama. she's from berlin and spins minimal techno (which is the most techno i can take at best). the place was fully packed and i was groped at more times than i can count. this middle aged man started saying lei ho ma to me, which i was surprised by because i usually get ni hao ma, so we gave him a glance that showed we were impressed. adrian started talking to this couple from russia and the woman was hilarious when she asked my name and i told her cheryl, and then she asked for my chinese name. ahh how quickly those four hours went! kiyama's set was really good and we took a few photos to remember the night. it was daylight savings so we had lost an hour without knowing it. got back at six in the morning and woke up with a massive hangover. it's never been this bad!

but now i've recovered and must get on with all the work i have. oi oi oi.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

classes end this week, which is a bit disappointing because i've only just begun to feel somewhat integrated into the classes. i still don't care much for the british film and culture classes (the kids are particularly cliquish in those), but i will miss my postcolonial film and lit classes. despite that the quality of discussion is not as high as it would be at swarthmore, outside of those classes, these discussions would not happen at all. getting feedback from my images of otherness instructor has made me quite confused as to what i want to do professionally. we had a conversation about my work, my experience at queen mary, my future. she seemed genuinely encouraging that i go on to get a masters in the field, as she felt my performance in the class was at that level. sophomore year i had considered going into academia when prof. ezawa helped me write a research grant proposal for my summer in hong kong, but i had dispelled the notion thinking i wasn't passionate enough for it. studying at queen mary has made me realize that there still remains a need for socially conscious educators, so once again i've beginning to imagine a different future for myself.

also, i'm fairly certain that i will be returning to NYC a week earlier, possibly may 28th, since uncle will be in the states, i will be turning 21 on may 30th, graduation is on june 1st, m.i.a. is playing june 6th, and i start work june 9th. i'll have time to properly get over jetlag and enjoy some freedom in the city. this return is slightly nerve-wrecking for me as i haven't really been at home for two years. to go from complete independence to family bondage just might make my head explode.

(the ukrainian/russian girls are shrieking right now, i am afraid to leave my room)

EIGHT DAYS TILL PARIS

in the last two days i've had to watch five films in preparation for class, sequence analyses, and final essays. my thoughts have been totally consumed by these films, a testament to the staying power of the image (for me at the least). i really enjoyed watching haneke's code inconnu/code unknown again, since it fairly encapsulates multicultural paris in all its complexity. as of now though, i'm not really enjoying having to write this essay on antonioni's blowup in the framework of swinging london during the sixties. i certainly like the film enough for examining constructions of reality, but he didn't choose a sequence that addresses this, noo he had to choose one that asks for us to rehash all the cliches of the era, cliches that i'm sure attracted all those blonde girls from cali to london. i'm so tired of this pedantic regurgitation that i might actually regurgitate. it's midnight and i haven't worked on it since this afternoon, kill me nowwww.

adrian called tonight! which got me motivated or just somewhat anxious about my last year of study at swarthmore. ahh i'll have to get myself intellectually up to speed over the summer since i'm taking women in literature (honors seminar). nat anderson's already emailed the few of us about having class at her house, asking about cat allergies. there'll probably be about five of us in the course so i'll have to prepare like mad if we're going to discuss for hours at length. i should also give literature and film a rest if i'm going to stay engaged...still haven't taken an economics or political science class, so i'll give those two a go.

ahhh my mind feels too saturated to write this essay, it's thinking of paris instead. last tuesday at the british film institute, i saw a delightful film by taiwanese director hsiao-hsien hou, le voyage du ballon rouge/the voyage of the red balloon. it got me romanticizing my visit there. this is the last shot of the film!

OMGOMGOMGOMGZOZZZZ

i've been in conversation with the executive director of Center for International Art in Community that links community art to international social justice and he's given me a conditional ok until our skype meeting early april!!!!!!!!!!!! he wants me to meet the managing director who will actually be in london for a bit to discuss their programs over the summer. they also have a few international programs and will be out of office so i might be traveling over the summer as well! i've had my heart set on this organization for awhile now because of its global and local approaches as a platform for art to create social change. also i can't remember being this excited for any position and connecting so strongly with the org's mission. ahhhh i'm crying with joy!

ST PADDY'S IN DUBLIN

so justine had the crazy notion of going to ireland for st. paddy's. we went last monday expecting a world class parade celebrating irishness and people blacking out left and right. i'm pretty sure half our flight was other americans expecting the same. instead we got this parade celebrating energy and diversity with animal balloons and sikh dancing and mythical creatures. the drinking was relatively moderate, but we found ourselves chatting about ireland with these drunken fourteen year olds on the bathroom line.


kiss my butt


the weather was bizarre, but the sun was out most of the time.


we mostly attended the festivities happening around town that day since most places were closed. all the touristy things we packed into the second day. below is the spire, a monument in the center of town. it looks so streamlined and elegant, it's definitely one of my favs.


we passed the courts on our way to jameson's whiskey distillery.


justine the alchie was the first to volunteer for the whiskey tasting.


we went to the irish museum of modern art that used to be a hospital, there was an amusing exhibit on cyanotypes.


we also went to the guinness storehouse which was...quite the experience. brilliant idea really, charging customers to be indoctrinated for consumption of guinness. fascinating for those interested in branding, i certain found it to be so! we had guinnesses at their "gravity bar," the highest point in dublin. here's justine looking like she's up to no good.


me double-fisting.


we got about three hours of sleep our last night since we had to leave superearly for our flight in the morning. the traveling was exhausting but being with justine made it betta. i already miss her!

NOTHING SEZ EASTER LIKE SNOW

i decided against the sunrise easter service at st. paul's because i didn't want to take the bus at such an early hour with crazies on the streets of mile end. woke up to find snow falling upon the city! it would've been a terrible day to rise from the dead, but i managed to get to st. paul's. for now, i've properly sequestered myself in my room, there'll be no leaving this flat until i see the sun again.

anyway, not to disrupt the linearity of this blog's narrative, but i'll take this moment to recount last sunday with justine. the weather was similarly wet and cold, so we went to harrod's for lunch and general consumption. we bought a mix of delectable items, salmon tartare with a layer of asparagus paste on top, meat pies with berries, quiche, etcetc. since we weren't allowed to eat at harrod's, we went across to a starbucks.


we later went for korean bbq around holborn for dinner. i'd been craving korean for awhile but eating korean bbq alone is hardly fun. i've been thinking a lot about food lately, prompted by rath's flatmate phil who mentioned a class he was taking on food in performance art and encouraged by justine, once founder/prez of les gourmands at stuy high. perhaps my thoughts are an extension of discourse i've heard around identity as performative and how identity is so inextricably related to consumption, how may consumption be performative? as i've been increasingly exposed to more ethnic cuisines (nepalese anyone?), i wonder what the implications are of sampling all these global flavors produced by diasporic communities. suppose i'll have to wait until swarthmore to continue this conversation!

ENTRY LONG DUE

the past two weeks have gone by like a whirlwind. i finally met old friends that i had expected to meet months ago. two sundays ago, rachel rath and i went for coffee to get reacquainted and deliberated for a bit on how it was possible that our lives were so tangentially related (u.s. history class, mutual friends, two younger siblings who are friends at stuy, similar obsessions with jarvis, mile end). we soon left for a pub that had cats with ruffle collars where her flatmate joined us. the cat was sans ruffle collar but we were just as amused by the portraits of cats found on the walls. i was going to meet dana that night at 93 feet east so when night arrived, we headed over. we hadn't eaten and made a quick stop at that 24 hr bagel place that i've been hearing about foreverrr, the bagel was disappointing but food is food especially in a stomach that's swelled with ale.

seeing dana was comforting in a way that i had forgotten could be felt. as much as i'd like to disown the notion of needing some sense of shared past or obvious connection to relate to another person, i really do miss having that sense of history and familiarity with others. so there was catching up with dana (whose birthday was fast approaching!) during which i got to hear about her life in london as well as more horror stories about mile end. we relocated to old blue last where her bfriend and his producer joined us. i do believe that night marked my longest drinking record, seven hours of feeling properly buzzed.

the next night joey came over since his moms was coming the next day to london. we went out with adrian to the end for durrr's monday night party. i'd been talking about them meeting for ages so i was glad it finally happened! there was a considerable amount of people there on a monday night, we ended it with fish and chips from dionysus in a phone booth where we had to stare at ads for post-op trannies.

thennn justine arrived in the morning from nyc! air canada lost her luggage so she arrived much later than i thought she would. we went for curry around bricklane and walked up to old street so she could see east london. it'd been raining (still is), so there was little motivation to explore. there was some sun the next day so we went around central london (british museum, lunch on charlotte st, trafalgar square, covent garden, leicester square). we also got tickets to see wicked which was good fun.



we didn't sleep that night since our flight for amsterdam was at six in the morning. we headed out at three but missed our flight by five minutes! we couldn't find a bus to gatwick and by the time we caught the train we were cutting it too close. there was another flight in three hours but we had to pay fees.

we finally got to amsterdam after a few hours, we hit the supermarket nearby and they had kitty crackers! cats are all over amsterdam, we found one in our hostel, one outside a museum, one in our restaurant. the city is definitely a haven for felines. they actually have a cat museum called the katten kabinet, but we didn't go.


the rijksmuseum where rembrandt's the night watch is exhibited


some square


up-and-coming de pijp


cute side street in jordaan


it was the weekend so everyone was sitting in cafes around the canals, i couldn't stop taking fotos of the canals and narrow houses!


though we walked around the red light district for a bit and went in a few coffeeshops, we didn't really go for the wild experience that the city can be known for. justine kept getting hit on and there was even a man who grabbed her hand as we were walking! so creepy. by the third day, we had our fair share of the place. but we did leave missing how things were spelled in dutch.

we got back last saturday night, spent sunday in london, and went for two days to dublin for st. paddy's. another post will come!

SO BEGINS MONTH THREE

i only have four more weeks of classes left! two months have passed, yet i feel like i've done very little. had to stay up till five thirty in the morning for my essay last friday, so i spent the weekend recovering by walking around camden for the first time and watching hours of miami vice. i think i have a newfound appreciation for cop shows. or just really smart eyewear, the sound of synthesizers, and terribly overdone dialogue. camden market was aight, it reminded me a lot of bangkok's weekend market. people were selling many different sorts of goods (vintage clothing, records, jewelry), but i didn't see anything that you couldn't find at a street fair. walking along the canal and eating yummy food from the stalls were the most fun for me. i ate so much toffee because i couldn't resist all the flavors and had some takoyaki (dough balls that are a local specialty in osaka). i stole a picture from someone else's blog for you to imagine the scrumptiousness.


i had brought along my film camera with telephoto lens so i could photograph people. i was going to photograph these shoes hanging from the ceiling of a stall when i was yelled at by a black woman who told me i should've been thankful that she didn't punch me. how kind.

i've recently been getting into astrology. and by that, i only mean that i've been googling zodiac signs and reading up on the respective personality traits, etcetc. i've never given them much thought, as my feeling has been that people will believe anything they read, but perhaps i've been a bit presumptuous as i find myself very nearly fitting the gemini descriptions! these oversimplifications have been comforting in a way because i suppose they somewhat affirm what i already think of myself and make me feel less alone in my neuroses.

went to church today and was reminded that it's mother's day! yesterday i was walking to the mile end station when i overheard a girl saying "mum, it's only twenty to two in the afternoon and you're already drunk!" ahh to motherhood!

QUAKE AWAKENING

the night before i felt my room shaking a bit and it just so happened that there was an earthquake! the biggest in the uk for nearly 25 years. when i called my grandma, she had heard about it and was worried for me (mostly because it's her default state). it was so good to call home! she yelled at me in cantonese when i told her i didn't expect to have taken so long to adjust, it went something along the lines of me being ridiculous to think that i could forget about family and home so easily. i've definitely been forgetting, only because remembering can be so painful. i also made a few other calls and got to chat with linda, meagan, and tobes. i feel so fortunate to have good friends who can tell me exactly what i need to hear!

LEISURE/PLEASURE

the past few days and nights have been more or less exciting. friday night was guleraana's 25th birthday/quarter of a century celebration. cut copy was playing at fabric, but they had sold out and we didn't feel like waiting on standby when the line had no end in sight. i met her other friends, some of whom she stayed for a year in rio with about two years ago, so they knew carrie as well! determined to have a good night out, we went to brick lane and ended up spending most of our time at a bar called exit. we discovered that the bouncer was from staten island! and he even promised to just let us by the next time we visited.

on saturday afternoon, i hung out with eweh, whom i had met at ccil. she's from sweden and on her gap year to take classes in london and work. she came last september with a few of her friends to do a short photo program and then decided to stay when it was over after three months. her friends have left though, so she's sort of alone like i am. we met up at the photographer's gallery by leicester square for a curator's tour of four prizewinners. i especially liked the work of Fazal Sheikh, his images were starkly soft and quite beautiful. there was also a finnish hunter who photographed animals in color, he insisted that the frames be connected to each other.



rosie had invited me to a show that night hosted by platforms, an online magazine founded by one of her friends from high school. i took a look at the magazine and they had interviewed akron/family, guillemots, etc. so i had high hopes but it was a terrible show. the first band was from california and the female lead sang a song about bakersfield, california called "slow death." she even tap danced during the last song wtf. i wanted to kill her except her parents were at the table next to us and that wouldn't have been too nice. before i wanted to cut my ears off, i enjoyed some time spent with rosie's boyfriend andy and her friend emma. on the tube ride back to east london though, andy mistakened me for rosie when he reached back to hold her hand as we were walking down the platform. this is the second time that a friend's boyfriend has mistakened me for that friend. i am especially pained when this occurs due to my singlehood. most people i know here are in relationships! that most of them are younger than me only makes me feel like i will die alone.

on sunday, i went to two film screenings. one in the afternoon at cine lumiere of the french institute in south ken called silence of the palace, a tunisian film. the director was there for a question and answer, so our professor of "images of otherness in french and francophone cinema" organized the trip. the second film screening i went to was of still life, jia zhangke's latest work, at british film institute. i went alone, but managed to chat with a man next to me by the end of it. i didn't get back until eleven thirty or so, and didn't begin writing the 1,500 word essay i had due the next day at 4:00pm until about 1:00am. i do believe this is the first time i've felt comfortable slacking off. this would never ever happen at swarthmore as the sheer thought of handing in something i didn't feel was my best could be enough to make me vomit. i got it done to my satisfaction by around 3, though I only had about five hours of sleep.

anyway! these are my tentative traveling plans until i leave for new york, which i am now 80% sure i want to do (such mental calculations will be explained at a later post).

march: amsterdam and dublin for st. patty's when justine visits
april: paris for a week and a half to visit magali and michelle
early may: barcelona, valencia, madrid, and other stops for ten days alone because everyone i know who's going to spain is doing so with their boyfriends or meeting future boyfriends ughhhh
late may: berlin, prague, budapest, and vienna for ten days if magali joins me (but i might be desperate enough to see these places and go alone even though it would be dangerous, damnit why am i female)

WANDERING LONDON

with a spare afternoon here and there, i'll go wandering around london to explore neighborhoods. before my trip to bath and bristol, i walked for about two hours from tower bridge to southwark because it was a sunny day and i wanted to cross the thames. i mostly came across tourists, which was comforting in a way, maybe because they made me feel less foreign or reminded me that i'd be leaving too. i think i've only just begun to feel a part of london and london a part of me. i am certain that this is because i've made enough pleasant memories with people here and because i have gotten to know the city better. for me, it seems a place can only be made real through the personal relationships formed. given any amount of time anywhere, i suppose i could make those relationships, but there are still many people from my past that i miss dearly! these are the thoughts that come to mind during my walks.


under a bridge in southwark

i've also done a bit of walking around south kensington which is where the victoria and albert museum as well as the royal albert hall are located. the neighborhood is ridiculously wealthy- as i was walking through the residential areas, i turned a corner, and found a chanel store! it was like oh hullo. london is certainly a pretty city, with structures and monuments that have lasted for ages and have incredible grandeur. i suppose you can't expect any less from an empire, is that what imperialism looks like? below are just some snapshots of south ken.

WHERE THE ROMANS BATHED

since it's reading week, i took last monday and tuesday to do some traveling to bath and bristol, two cities about three hours west of london. i went with hannah, an associate student majoring in film from johns hopkins who is in two of my film classes. bath was quite pretty, small town with roman architecture and cute old people. there's a university there, but the parts we went to were mostly frequented by tourists. we left early monday morning and arrived about noon. we had lunch in the oldest house of bath at sally lunn's (known for her buns), took a free tour, went to the fashion museum, checked into our hostel, wandered a bit, and had dinner at the raven, best pub i've been to yet (i really liked their house brew and our bartender was really friendly and had lived in the states).


the one on the right was our tour guide, he wasn't the most informative of tour guides, but he certainly was the sweetest old man. whenever we had to cross the street, he would give detailed instructions on how to do so! and he would talk at length about the shutters of the houses we passed by.


we walked past many narrow streets


leather and lace alexander mcqueen dress at the fashion museum


in our wandering, we came across the riverside

we stayed in bath until tuesday morning, during which we visited bath's main attraction, the roman baths, and the abbey next to it.


as we were having our breakfast, there was a cute old woman looking at meat of the butcher shop across the hostel


steam from the springs


abbey

we went to nearby bristol for the rest of the day, had lunch at a pub by the harbour, and then visited arnolfini, their contemporary art center. it had two exhibitions ongoing, one was photography on '70s american culture with quotes accompanying the images. i liked their education center and bookshop, which stocked a typography magazine that i wanted to buy but was too expensive (18 pounds). there are still many churches that remain despite bombing from WWII, we passed a few just wandering. there wasn't too much else to do, so we left soon after.


i suppose the weather was warm enough for ice cream! taken from the second floor of arnolfini.

during the last two days, i've been mostly resting and reading. last night, i cried in my sleep for the first time! my uncle had died in my dream, but i think i was more saddened by the idea of his dying than his actual death. in my semi-conscious state, i felt tears falling on my face and pain in my chest. perhaps it was caused by the metatonin i took that night...the experience has made me wary of sleep for the time being.

i heard back from the lang center and got a S2A2 grant to work at a nonprofit this summer!!!!! i can't decide whether to look for organizations in london or new york city. at this point, it really depends on whether i'd be able to start working at a nonprofit early spring and how closely their summer programs would coincide with the project idea i proposed in my grant application. i don't know how hard i want to look for an organization here, knowing that there's a new summer photography program with young women of color that's happening in new york city. if i stayed in london, i would have to find housing and would have hardly enough money to enjoy citylife. WHAT TO DO.