The word ‘lovely’ and its counterpart ‘quite’ are beginning to pervade my vocabulary almost undetected. English people use these words so frequently that we can’t help but say them ourselves. At the risk of being banal, however, I will say that they most aptly describe the events of the past few days. Immediately after class this morning, our LSU group (“le tigre” as the boys call us) took the tube to Camden, a hippie village in central London. Camden is essentially a market place with every tiddlywink and useless treasure you can imagine surrounding vendors of Thai, Polish, and Korean food as well as pina coladas—quite an eclectic mix. From outside of the open air market, we took what is called a long boat—a narrow, hundred year old boat—down through the canals of central London that were used until midcentury for travel and to carry goods throughout the UK. Along the canals were houseboats, famous graffiti, and floating Chinese restaurants…the usual.
When we wandered back into the part of London with which we are more familiar, we decided to go see Mamma Mia. It was so much fun because the audience was extremely engaged in the show—clapping, singing, and dancing throughout its entirety. It was nothing like last night’s show, The Woman in Black. That show was one we attended as a group and happened to be SUPER creepy. Everyone was jumpy when we made it to the pub after the performance. One of our teachers was there hanging out with us and we were having a great time when the last call rang at 11 (this town SHUTS DOWN at 11). As my roommate turned to grab her purse, however, she realized that it wasn’t where it had been just ten minutes ago. All this time, we have heard about thieves in the big city but never really heeded the warning. How could someone slip in the middle of the 15 of us as we sat together talking and laughing and completely (apparently not) aware of our surroundings? However, this was the case! Two of the boys said they had looked over at Morgan, Mark (our teacher), Matt and me as we were talking at our table and that there had been two guys across the room looking at us, but the boys thought nothing of it. We figure that they must have snatched the purse and exited from the back. After this extremely discouraging event, we took the tube and headed home. On the tube ride, Morgan was cheered up by a friendly character wearing nothing but a leather vest and jean shorts who gave us the “rock on sign” and simultaneously repeated “4th of July” over and over (it was July 5th…).
On Sunday, we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral for Mass. The church was gorgeous and the entire mass was sung, but the best part was that I heard my name being called from across the church and looked over to see Kyndel Edens! It was so great to see a familiar face so far away from home! Later that day, we had a 4th of July celebration at our dorm. We ate pizza and had birthday cake with the other American students and later got in trouble with the mounted police for shooting off fireworks. I had another welcome encounter from home just moments ago as I rode the tube station home from Mamma Mia. I had just finished talking to one of my friends when the guy next to me asked if I was from Mobile! He and his fiancée just graduated from Alabama and were on vacation to England before heading to grad school. They had noticed my Alabama license and he said that they could tell by my accent that I was a Mobilian! All the LSU people got a kick out of that, and I was so excited to meet them. We finally hopped off the tube and headed back to the dorms in full agreement that the day had been truly quite lovely.
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