Vive L'Ecosse, Vive La France

Since the carefree days of spectator parkour that created my last post, things have gotten pretty busy here in the London Program. Last week, the whole "having actual schoolwork" thing came back to bite us all collectively, as the 130-person program got a combined 50 hours of sleep for the entire week. Even when studying abroad, giant papers and fiendish exams do apparently exist. To reward ourselves for finishing the week still breathing, many of us travelled this weekend to Edinburgh, Scotland - and to top off these crazy ten days or so, I went last night to see Les Mis on the West End, from whence I have drawn my post title.

I guess you could say I have a couple things to blog about.

After I visited Edinburgh last summer on Folk ChoIreland Tour, my grandmother asked me, upon seeing my pictures, "Is Edinburgh a dirty?" "It looks like a dirty," she said. Now, if she means, "Is Edinburgh a dirty trickster for hiding all those stupid, calf-killing hills in the middle of all its pretty stuff??!?!!," then, yes - as this trip confirmed once again - Edinburgh is a dirty. A dirty, indeed. My time in Edinburgh this time began with a pre-sun arrival on the overnight Megabus. After wandering off the bus, semi-comatose and barely able to walk after our attempts to sleep on bus seats for 10 hours, my travel companions set off for our hostel. It was, after all, something like 6:30 in the morning, so where else could we have gone?

The problem with this, of course, is that we knew only that our hostel was, like, close enough to the castle that you can just walk up to the castle and you'll see it, so no no no, you don't need a map. The castle, after all, is easy to find! All you have to do to get there is walk up a hill made of tears, cobblestones, and the withered calf muscles of those too weak to finish climbing it!

At just before 7 AM, giant backpacks on our backs, glasses on our faces, and pain in every square inch of our bodies, we made it to the castle.

Worth it.

We watched the sun rise over Edinburgh from one of its most perfect vantage points, snapping hundreds of pictures and eventually discovering that, sure enough, our hostel literally was right there. The hostel, as it turns out, was pretty darn awesome itself. When we rolled up at 8 AM, though our rooms wouldn't be ready for several more hours, they let us spend as much time as we wanted lounging around on their common-space couches. I, in fact, made myself so at home - half-sleeping on the couch, lying down, with a coat thrown over my face to block out the blinding rising sun - that one of the hostel staff made fun of me for being hungover.

Actually, sir, I am not hungover. I am this pathetic while stone-cold sober, after walking up a hill.

After regrouping for a while, my subset of the giant London Program group in Edinburgh that weekend headed back to the castle for an official tour. This was informative, entertaining, and mostly a good excuse for us to take yet more pictures. Did I mention my travel group this weekend included two fancy DSLR owners? I'll mention it now, just in case you aren't jealous enough of my life.

In our natural habitat

The remainder of our first day was spent walking around the city, window shopping on the Royal Mile, pretending we were native students at the University of Edinburgh Library Bar, and eventually, making the decision to spend our second day on a bus tour of the Scottish Highlands. 

That last decision was a very, very good one. The Wee Red Bus on which we took our tour held 17 people, including our driver and guide, (O) Danny (Boy). The rest of the group was as follows: a lone Asian man from San Francisco (or possibly Texas...close enough); a couple from Kerry, Ireland, the husband of which smoked at least one cigarette at every single one of our 10 or so stops; a couple from some unknown Francophone nation who refused to speak to anyone but themselves (all in French) or to answer the question, "So, where's everyone from today?"; and 16 kids from the Notre Dame London Program. Normally, I am the complete antithesis of this custom of "Domerbombing." I find it incredibly obnoxious when kids from the London program go places in huge groups, mostly because it is incredibly obnoxious. On this occasion, though, it was, admittedly, pretty awesome. If you're ever given the chance to Domerbomb the Highlands, as bad and vaguely terrorism-y as that sounds, do it. 

Our tour consisted of stops at various gorgeous photo ops throughout the countryside of the Highlands,

Meh

free time to climb around on the ruins of ancient castles, 

The angle from which ancient Scottish princesses would have taken their MySpace pics

and, most notably, an hour of roaming time at Loch Ness.

The above photo is not a random product of Google Images and is not of a Lego statue at DisneyWorld.

We learned that yelling "HARDCORE PARKOUR" is a thing among not just ourselves but among Scottish tour guides, too, and that bagpipes and house music occasionally combine to really, really weird effect. We created a million and one inside jokes, took a million and two pictures, and had an unbelievable day. 

Sunday took us back to Edinburgh, to a mass complete with Steve Warner-esque acoustic guitar improvisations and, of all things, "Though the Mountains May Fall," and to lunch at the Elephant House, where JK Rowling wrote the books that are everything. In all, this weekend was absolutely bonkers, and all of the amazing experiences of the weekend are totally worth the 25,000 calories' worth of peanut products and Pringles we ate on the train ride home. 

Les Mis, too, was incredible. It is safe to say that this production ranks worlds above my last West End experience on the scale from mind-numbingly awful to mind-blowingly awesome. The Enjolras we saw was even almost as good as Aaron Tveit! (Sorry I'm not sorry, crazy fangirls who will never rank a movie performance over a West End one. Aaron Tveit, much like Harry Potter, is everything.) I'm staying in London this weekend, and after the ten days I've had, I'm going to need it. Following next weekend, dear readers, you can look forward to the tales of my early-March exploits in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Bruges, Belgium. A hint? They will involve chocolate. 

Parkuestions

While living on the ground floor of our building certainly has its advantages (*cough* stairs), the eye-level view of the street afforded to my roommates and I by our place on this floor most frequently provides us with one thing and one thing only: really weird encounters with people on the sidewalk. Directly outside our windows, you see, is a rather bustling stretch of pedestrian walkway. A few feet and some wrought-iron fencing separate us from the actual sidewalk, but the enormity of our windows ensure that we are always in close contact with the people walking by. This usually just entails some interesting people-watching. Thousands of British people walking past your window every day is bound to be entertaining, even when none of them do anything particularly out of the ordinary.

Occasionally, though, things happen on the sidewalk that are quite out of the ordinary - and it is these moments that make the extreme sketchiness and probable danger of having one's windows open to a busy metropolitan sidewalk all worth it. Arguably my favorite of these instances result from the varied reactions to the exterior of our building. The London Program dorm, as it happens, was once a hospital for women and children. And as far as you'd know from reading the signage on the outside of the building, it still is. Passersby have all sorts of interesting reactions to seeing the "Royal Hospital for Children and Women" sign for the first time, but the best of these came from the woman who saw both that sign and me and my roommate. As her gaze moved from the high-up sign back to the street in front of her, the woman naturally caught sight of my room. I don't know what the woman expected to see through the windows of a building marked "children's hospital," but, judging from her reaction, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a girl in pajamas Snapchatting someone from her loft bed at 3 PM while her roommate curled her hair at her window-ledge vanity. I kid you not when I say this woman jumped back a good four feet when she inadvertently made eye contact with me. Thinking, from the look of her disappointed and disgusted face, that this was some kind of sick joke of a hospital that gave its patients entirely too free of a rein concerning their leisure time, this woman continued to stare into our room for the entire rest of her way down the sidewalk. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

The most popular activity that the people of London engage in to unwittingly entertain a flat full of American college students, however, is parkour. For those of you who don't know, parkour is a sort of extreme urban sport in which strikingly athletic idiots fling themselves off of stuff so as to impress passersby and each other and to flirt daily with death. The half-wall-, concrete platform-, and railing-filled stairway entrance situated a few feet outside our building is, apparently, the perfect location for practicing parkour. Almost every day, a group of people, usually male and usually uncomfortably young, will gather on the sidewalk outside and spend hours doing flips, twists, jumps, and other stupid stuff onto and off of the various hard surfaces found there, and, almost every day, we watch them. I always find myself thinking of dozens of questions for these mysterious practitioners of parkour, and, after watching today's especially peculiar bunch, I decided that it's time to ask them. Ask the questions, that is. On my blog. Where the parkour guys will never see them. Okay. Let's begin, shall we?

1. Where are these guys' parents?

2. Seriously, all of their tennis shoes are, like, really nice. You did not buy those yourselves. Are your parents okay with this? Do they know you do this? Do they know the 150 pound Nikes they just bought you are not for after-school sports teams but for jumping off of stairwell railings? I don't understand.

3. It is 2:00 on a Friday, don't you people have school or something?

4. Literally, do you ever do homework

5. WAIT HOW DO YOU DO THAT FLIP WITHOUT DYING?

6. Do you learn this stuff somewhere? The Internet?

7. Why aren't you guys Olympic gymnasts?

8. Wait, are you Olympic gymnasts?

8B. If yes, have you met Tom Daley? Okay sorry.

9. Are you going to be Olympic gymnasts the next time the Olympics roll around and you're legally old enough to compete?

10. Seriously how old are you

11. Where did you get that Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirt? Do you even know what the Chicago Blackhawks are? I feel like you don't!

12. Why is one of you seven years old??!?!

13. Okay where are THAT kid's parents, for real

14. Little kid, how did you get mixed up in this rough and tumble world of suburban kids jumpin' off stuff on the mean streets?

15. Little kid, why are you climbing that - WHY DID YOU JUST JUMP TWENTY FEET FROM A TREE

16. Should I call Child Protective Services?

17. Does Great Britain have Child Protective Services?

18. Have these guys seen Les Mis and do they know the horrid end they are omen-ing by making this kid their parkour Gavroche?

19. Why does this kid also remind me of Somebodys from West Side Story?

20. Why do all of my cultural references come from musical theatre?

21. Speaking of West Side Story, is there such a thing as parkour turf?

22. Are there parkour turf wars?

23. If there is parkour turf, why have I never seen the same group of guys parkouring in this spot twice?

23b. Is parkouring a word?

24. If rival parkour gangs have to fight each other in a turf war, are their battles more fistfight or dance-off?

25. Why do I feel like it's dance-off?

26. How come none of you guys have Beats precariously slung around your neck while you're jumping off stuff like the guys did who were here last week?

27. Exactly what kind of music makes for a parkour soundtrack anyway?

28. Does it involve West Side Story?

29. Why do none of you guys have girlfriends hanging around?

30. Do you people date? Are you old enough for that, even?

31. Do your girlfriends, assuming they exist, like that you do this? Do they date you because they think parkour is really sexy? Or are they more like protective girlfriends, like somebody Channing Tatum would date in a movie about drugs, who are like, "Baby I wish you'd walk away from the life of the street"

32. YOUR GIRLFRIEND WOULDN'T LIKE THAT MOVE, HOW ARE YOU ALIVE

33. Would you please stop doing that? You are going to give me a heart attack and this is not actually a hospital, that sign is false advertising

34. Have you noticed that I'm watching you?

35. Am I considered creepy for watching you and your friends just, like, bro'ing out for an hour? Or is it creepier if you notice me watching, since that means you were looking into my bedroom?

36. Do people do this in America?

37. Correction: do people do this in America other than when they're walking around college campuses in the middle of the night ironically yelling "HARDCORE PARKOUR" while they kick fire hydrants and jump over benches and stuff?

38. How do your pants stay on when they are so baggy and you are moving so fast?

39. How would your parents feel about your pants falling off in the middle of the street like this?

40. Oh yeah, we don't know, because no one has answered what remains the most important question, where are your parents?

41. Your mom was the woman who thought I was a hospital patient, wasn't she? This explains so much.

So, those are my questions for you, young parkourers of London. What, what, what are you doing. Look at your life. Look at your choices. Don't look in my windows. K thanx.

And Then I Went to the Spice Girls Musical

Last night, following days of excitement and anticipation, I headed out with my roommate to see my second West End show of the semester: the Spice Girls musical. This show, called Viva Forever on the posters but "the Spice Girls musical" by everyone else, follows essentially the same premise as Mamma Mia. It takes a soundtrack's worth of songs from the collected works of the band and tries to form them into some sort of follow-able plot. Obviously, no one goes to this show because they are expecting a high-quality, culturally enriching piece of musical theater. They go because it's a musical made out of "Spice Up Your Life." They go because LOOK AT THE PREMISE! Won't this be so much FUN?!

This, my friends, was not fun.

As I said, I was very clear on the fact that I was not going to this show because it was going to be good. I went to this show because it was going to be awesome, in ways completely unrelated to what would undoubtedly be massive amounts of camp and probably weird choices in set dressing and instrumentation. In the first five minutes or so, I thought that what I was seeing was merely a confirmation of what I had expected. "This is, like, so bad but so, so good, right?," I told myself on an endless loop throughout the opening number. As anyone who has ever heard of the Spice Girls can guess, the show's opener was "Wannabe." In this number, all of the under-40 members of the cast, bearing audition numbers on their chests, attempted to out-perform each other for the unseen judges. One by one, they put on disappointed faces and walked offstage until only four spunky-looking young ladies remained. "Ohhh," I and presumably everyone else thought at this point, "so this show is going to be a fictionalized account of the making of the Spice Girls!" As it turns out, they had been auditioning for an X Factor-like show called "Starmaker," whose production staff included one young red-headed girl who, thought everyone in the audience, was clearly going to become Ginger Spice, right?

Wrong.

The girls, in fact, were just some other girl group totally unrelated to but also startlingly similar-looking to the Spice Girls. The Spice Girls, to make it clear right here and right now, are never actually mentioned in this musical at all. Based on the tradition of musicals based on one artist's canon of work, this makes sense. Based on the show's premise, namely, the story of a dancing, pop-music singing, one-petite-blonde-and-one-Mel-B-lookalike-including, British girl group, this dearth of mentions of the Spice Girls themselves makes almost no sense.

As the girls' journey unfolds, the show's first big drama arises: the judges of the show decide to send only one of the group members on to the next round. With each new round of competition for this fledgling star - whose name, inexplicably but unavoidably, is Viva - the producers and judges try, with ever-increasing effort, to create a dramatic backstory for her or to make it seem to the audiences that she is, in some way, a victim of horrific emotional damage. Over and over again, Viva and those who love her are proven to be incorruptible. When the judges suggest to Viva's sexy Spanish vocal coach (of course he exists) that he start a relationship with her to increase ratings, he shuns their suggestions on the grounds of being a good person...but starts a relationship with Viva anyway, off-camera and in an endearing (?) way. When the judges try to surprise the adopted Viva with a dramatic meeting with her never-before-seen biological mother, Viva's loving adopted mom steps in to remind everyone that she does have a family after all. At the same time that all of this is happening, Viva's celebrity judge/coach (think a version of The Voice where Christina Aguilera is replaced by Marie Osmond) is forever flip-flopping between being a terrible person (think Miranda Priestly) and lamenting the sacrifices she has made in exchange for her fame and fortune, and Viva's mom is falling in love with some context-less old dude. [Note: Turns out there are a lot of spoilers in this. Whoops! Luckily, if you care even remotely about having the plot of the Spice Girls musical spoiled for you, you and I are not friends.] The ending is happy, filled with a "Wannabe" reprise, and leaves about 7 different story lines entirely unresolved.

All of this, however, is not what made the Spice Girls musical, without a doubt, the strangest experience of my almost twenty-one years of life. "What was it, then?," you ask. Was it the rendition of "Spice Up Your Life" that had the costumes of "Spooky Mormon Hell Dream," the set of Once on This Island, and the giant pinata-esque human head puppets of a Brazilian Carnaval and/or your worst nightmares? Nope, wasn't that! Was it the actors' awkward reactions to prolonged audience laughter that you've seen high school students handle better? No, sirree, wasn't that either. Surely, then, it was the very existence of a middle-aged love scene to the tune of "2 Become 1," right? No, friends, the weirdest part wasn't even that.

The weirdest part of the Spice Girls musical experience, with no question whatsoever, was the audience interaction. Now, before you jump to rational conclusions, understand that Viva Forever is not concocted as some weird singalong show. It is not a children's musical where the actors occasionally gesture to the audience that it's their turn to sing with them. No, Viva Forever is simply a place where hundreds of incredibly drunk British women in an age range just north of "way too effing old for this," sing and dance in their seats for three hours to the music that clearly had far too large of an impact on their childhoods and their lives. As the curtain rose and the show began, the house was filled with the screaming and clapping one would expect from the midnight premiere of a Twilight movie. This was unexpected, but it is the Spice Girls, so I half-heartedly went along with it for the first few moments. Then the music started, and, from all corners of the theatre, there was singing. Whenever the score came to one of the true "greatest hits," the singing was unceasing and deafening. During "Stop," a safe estimate of the percentage of the audience dancing in unison is probably 80%. As my roommate and I agreed after the show, we would've been mad that the audience so thoroughly drowned out the cast in these moments, were it not for the cast that the cast members were rarely better singers than the audience at large. The post-curtain call actual singalong of the three or four most enormous Spice Girls mega-hits made sense, but from the entire rest of the evening, nothing else did. I am not sad that I spent 20 pounds on my ticket for this show, because it was so strange that telling people about it has quickly become my new favorite pastime. So thanks for the memories, the audience-provided entertainment, and the new hobby, Viva Forever, but I beg you: stop right now. Thank you very much.  

Bambinatum Est Magitum

This Thursday, I added an all-new experience to my theatre-going repertoire: going to a musical whose soundtrack I didn't already have memorized frontwards and backwards. On a whim and a promise of £5 tickets, I went with some friends to see Matilda. Having never seen the movie (insert your comments about the inferiority of my childhood here), I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this show. To my delight, I loved every second of it - the incredible set , the fabulous, still-stuck-in-my-head-three-days-later music, and, of course, the fact that I only paid £5 to get in. Most importantly, though, this show provided me with an excellent topic with which to break my hiatus from near-daily blogging: British children.

If you've spent any significant time with me, you are doubtlessly aware of the fact that I do not like children. I cringe when I see children sharing airplanes with me; I intend to have a rule against children attending my wedding; I am not a fan. The pseudo-Latin motto of the school in Matilda is, as this post's title suggests, "Bambinatum Est Magitum" - children are maggots. While I don't actually advocate such a motto, I did stare longingly at the "children are maggots" coffee mugs they were selling at the merch stand for quite some time before remembering that I don't drink coffee and that I had less than a pound in cash on me at the time.

But in the past few days, I have been repeatedly brought face-to-face with the reality that British kids are basically the best thing ever. It all started with my night at Matilda. For those of you who are somehow completely uninformed about this Roald Dahl novel/cult classic 90s film/wildly successful West End musical, it revolves around a young British girl named Matilda and her days at a school filled, logically, with other young British children. [Note: Apparently they're not British in the movie. Whatever.] The cast of this musical, then, is filled to bursting with ridiculously talented British kids. I can't tell you any of their names, since programs were £3 and I obviously did not buy one, but these kids were incredible. All night, I watched these 7-year-olds, starring in a hit West End musical and being perfect, and thought to myself, "Yeah, that's cool I guess, but like, I played peripheral villain roles in three or four different musicals at my high school, so I think we know who the winner is here." For those of you requiring more evidence of how great these kids were, I would encourage you to try to find video recordings of "Miracle," "Revolting Children," and "When I Grow Up." After watching them, you can go and cry over the fact that these kids are a quarter of your age and still infinitely more talented than you. As we walked home from the theatre, we discovered that off-stage British children are perfect, too, as we somehow found ourselves quite literally in the middle of a huge group of schoolchildren being herded back onto their bus after a night at Mamma Mia. Finding us to be very tall and important-looking in comparison to their inexplicably-still-uniform-wearing selves, the kids were all "sorry"s and "'scuse me"s as they tried to get around us - and the teachers, finding us to be college kids and not creepy old men, probably grossly underestimated the likelihood that we would steal one of their students.

On Friday, the latest session of Inside London brought another dose of adorable (and rich) British children as it took us to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. After a largely child-free morning touring London's legal district, the afternoon session met in Chelsea at the National Army Museum. The museum was nice, but the highlight of the afternoon for all involved was seeing the swanky neighborhood in which the museum is located. As we walked through the blocks of mind-numbingly expensive townhouses surrounding the museum, we saw a lot of things you just don't see every day. Perhaps most notably, I saw a Maserati casually parked on the street. Have you ever actually seen a Maserati? I hadn't. I mean, Taylor Swift sings about them, so I knew they must exist. But I figured I'd never see one anywhere but on Cribs, right? Wrong. There is at least one just hangin' out in Chelsea. Also in Chelsea are approximately 90% of the cutest children in the whole of Britain. If there's one child-related thing that typically earns my love instead of my unabashed disdain, it's needlessly expensive baby clothes. And in this neighborhood, there has quite clearly been a lot of needless expense on baby clothes. One child that I saw was wearing a beret, sparkly kitten heels, and a knee-length peacoat that looked to cost more than my dress for senior prom. Suri Cruise would be proud of this child.

Yesterday, then, I completed my Tour d'Adorable British Children with a visit to the Tower of London.  Touring around the Tower was great in and of itself. We walked around the areas where crazy numbers of very important people were brutally murdered, we took dozens of wonderful tourist pictures, and moving-walkway'ed our way past the world's most priceless gemstones, spoons (?), and cathedral-shaped salt cellars (???) in the Crown Jewels display. It will probably be one of the few times in my life where I pay £17 to get into a place and actually feel like I got my money's worth. Beyond its historical and tourist value, though, the Tower also brought us yet more adorable British children. There was the hopelessly short one who pushed past me in her desperate attempt to gain any kind of visibility on our short-lived Yeoman Warder (Beefeater) tour. There were the multiple kids on our walk back whose mode of transportation was three-wheeled, tiny neon razor scooters with unicorns on the handlebars. And most importantly, there was this:

Has there ever been a thing cuter than that? I don't think there has. In the past few days, I have done some really cool stuff. I saw a great new musical, I explored the Tower of London, I saw a Maserati (have I mentioned that?). Above all these things, though, I was taught that British children are perfect. I dread the day when I return to Ireland, because if there's anything cuter than British kids, it's red-headed Irish kids. 

Oh, and, for good measure, here's a reminder of what I looked like as a child. 

This. I looked like this. 

Chocolate is My Whole Life, or Sarah Does Harrods and Oxford

The past couple of days here in Londontown have been pretty packed with interesting, exciting things. We had the first official session of our "Inside London" class yesterday, taking us to the (extremely cold) East End. To celebrate surviving class without temperature-induced necrosis of our hands and feet, a few of us headed over to Harrods after the East End tour for some window shopping and obnoxious intrusions into children's toy boutiques. And today, most of the program trekked out to Oxford for a day of sightseeing at one of Europe's oldest and most mind-numbingly difficult universities. All of these excursions were cool, I thought to myself while planning this blog post, but how can I bring them all together?

Well, dear readers, I found a way. And that way is chocolate.

This mantra is posted on the walls of the homes of every 40+, single, female multiple-cat owner in the United States, 

and also on my blog. So make of that what you will.

Now, I'll start by saying this connecting thread is a bit of a stretch in relation to the Inside London trips. I did, however buy myself a chocolate cookie at the slavery museum we visited in the morning to keep from passing out from cold- and slavery-pondering-induced fatigue! So we'll call that the connection.

The afternoon session of Inside London - a tour of London's East End to learn about the history of immigration in the area - was, while bitterly, freezing cold and distressingly chocolate-free, really pretty cool. We saw the neighborhood where Jack the Ripper used to hang out (read: kill people in terrible ways); some of London's most high-end and most rundown real estate sharing city blocks; and dozens of the narrow, cobblestone streets you associate with Dickensian London and dirty singing orphans. We also went into the bell foundry where they cast the Liberty Bell ('MURICA), the bell inside Big Ben, and all of the bells for last year's Olympics and Jubilee. A cool afternoon - literally; have I mentioned it was cold? I don't think I have - but, again, pretty free of chocolate.

Blessedly not chocolate-free was our next stop: Harrods. For those of you who don't know, Harrods is a magical department store where, in just over one literal million square feet of shopping space, astronomically expensive designer clothing and jewelry, toys of every imaginable kind, dozens of food shops, and every tourist in the city of London all coexist in perfect consumer harmony. As the only important SNL character of the past 10 years would say, this. Place. Has. Everything. In most of the store, buying even the cheapest of items would have far exceeded my budget for the day. [Note: That's not to say that everything in Harrods is incredibly pricey; that is simply to say that my budget yesterday was "SARAH DON'T SPEND MONEY UNLESS YOU'RE DYING."] The exception to this budget-exceeding rule, however, could be found in one glorious place: the Chocolate & Confectionery Room. One of the many rooms comprising the Harrods Food Halls, the Chocolate & Confectionery Room specializes in candies, chocolates, cupcakes, and all of those other foods off of which your dentist makes his money. Here, you can purchase even the most exotic of bite-sized chocolates for well under a pound. My friends and I spent a good third of our time at Harrods wandering around the Chocolate & Confectionery Room, but, left to my own devices, I would have left the room only to go buy a tent from the home goods section, bring it back to the Chocolate & Confectionery Room, and set it up somewhere in the middle of the room to live in indefinitely. After examining my hundreds of options, I eventually decided to spend my 70 pence on a chocolate called "black Spanish sea salt." It was incredible. I wore earrings today bigger than this chocolate, but this tiny food pretty much changed my life. I'll undoubtedly be making plenty of return visits to Harrods this semester, and I am wholly excited to think what new chocolate discoveries await me the next time. (I'm particularly excited for my return visit to Harrods while my parents are here, so I can buy more than one 70p chocolate at a time because I'm not paying for it. Thanks in advance, parentals.)

My life

Low-quality but necessary photo of Life-Changing Chocolate

Today, then, I headed out on the London Program day trip to Oxford. This, too, was full of both literally and figuratively cool things to do. The rector of our dorm, who - surprise - went to Oxford, gave us a walking tour around the city and university, giving us all sorts of insider trivia about life at Oxford. My personal favorite story was that of All Souls, Oxford's most elite, invitation-only graduate school. If you are one of the top two graduating students at Oxford in any given major, All Souls may invite you to apply to study with them. Upon invitation, your application consists of three three-hour exams, two written and one in the form of a dinner where the admissions people basically judge how good you are at simultaneously eating, mingling, and being an unparalleled super-genius.  To give us some context on just how difficult these exams are, our rector shared with us one of the exam prompts from the All Souls application for his year: "Water." That's it. Three hours. One prompt. "Water." And finally, to give us some context on what kind of incomprehensible genius freaks actually get in to this school, he informed us of the answer strategy one successful applicant had in recent memory. When asked to translate a practically incomprehensible passage of some Greek or Latin philosophical text, not only did this applicant translate it; oh, no. He translated it into Serbo-Croatian. 

I didn't even know Serbo-Croatian was a language. 

Even at the standard undergraduate level, though, this school is pretty unreal. The stories our rector told of the academic program at Oxford thoroughly convinced me that my schooling at ND - one of America's top universities, if we'll recall - is akin to that of a kindergarten classroom. When not busy being super-geniuses, the students of Oxford inhabit colleges where they live like the kings that many of them probably actually are. The university's most prestigious college, Christ Church, provided the site for the filming of several scenes in the Harry Potter franchise. The cathedral on-site at Christ Church - in other words, the (very) rough equivalent to the Christ Church dorm chapel - looks like this: 

So, I mean...whatever. In exploring the area surrounding the main campus of Oxford today, one could hardly help but run into the little shop that brought me to this blog title: a fudgery. This fudgery is run by three enthusiastic, awesome hipsters. It is full of deliciousness and joy. And it has the most brilliant business strategy of all the fudgeries in the world. At this little fudgery, you see, they believe whole-heartedly in free samples. Really wholeheartedly. For most of the day, one of the owners stands outside the shop holding a sign that says "Free Samples" and yelling at people to come in and eat free chocolate. When she's not outside, the sign stands prominently on its own outside the door. After walking past the shop a couple of times throughout the day (obviously we were in a hurry on those occasions), my friends and I eventually stopped in, because free chocolate. We took samples of the sea-salt caramel fudge the hipster owner was dishing out, agreed it was quite lovely, and prepared to leave. But, then, the hipster owner says, "Want another?" 

Um.....is Oxford All Souls graduate school hard to get into?

At this fudgery, you see, you can literally take as many free samples as you want. Free samples of any flavor you want. Free samples of practically any size you want. Free samples of everything. Obviously, you would have to be completely crazy to turn these hipsters down. As much free fudge as you can get your hands on? Come on! After the sea-salt caramel, then, I tried a sample of the sea-salt dark chocolate, finding it, too, to be delicious. As the tight-vested, long-haired hipster making a new slab of maple syrup and walnut fudge on the marble counter in the corner handed me a huge, free glob of fudge quite literally right off the chopping block, I found myself thinking, "Silly cool fudge hipsters. You are giving me so much free food right now, but I'm totally going to walk out of here empty-handed in, like, three seconds. I have defeated you, silly cool fudge hipsters." But then I had free sample #4, and suddenly, the silly cool fudge hipsters were giving me pricing info. And suddenly, standing in the cool hipster fudgery, I found myself thinking, "Four pounds fifty is SO reasonable for a slab of Double Trouble Chocolate fudge that I will take out of here and inhale in under thirty seconds!" Before I knew it, I was leaving Oxford with not just the rugby shirt I'd been planning on buying but with a slab of fudge the size of my face. Silly cool fudge hipsters, you are geniuses. Somewhere in the middle of my first slice of this fudge earlier this evening, I decided: if my kindergarten-level top 20 university degree can't get me any other jobs, I am entirely on board with opening a college-town hipster fudgery. I could wear an ear cuff. I could give away free chocolate (read: I could eat a lot of free chocolate myself). As I said each time we passed the fudgery today, I could be about that life. Oh, yes. Oh, yes I could. 

So that has been the past couple of days in my glamorous study abroad life: chocolate. Tomorrow, as I am out of almost every single foodstuff I've ever purchased, I am going to finally go grocery shopping again. Luckily, I've finally found some recipes to get me through the semester, thanks to this magical list. Am I kidding when I say that list will provide most of my sustenance for the next four months? Maybe because I doubt Funfetti exists in Britain...but maybe not. Until next time, kiddos. Keep on chocolatin' on.   

  

Adventures in Sophistication

Note: This was written last night, Jan 16. See "Addendum" for more.

Tonight, my friends, was a big night in the progression of my study abroad experience. After days of eating peanut butter, random fruits, and cheap cold cuts at every meal, tonight, I made my very first hot meal of the semester. All of you stupid makeshift chefs studying in Rome are probably laughing reading this - yes, I've seen the pictures of your gourmet nonsense and yes, I hate you - but so far, I have far from mastered the concept of a nice, warm dinner. Deli meats and my trusty frozen loaf of bread have been my steadfast companions in my elementary attempts at culinary self-sufficiency; the warmest food I've made for myself before this evening was toast. Tonight, though, I ventured into all-new cooking territory: the microwave. I mastered our microwave's largely incomprehensible system of Auto modes and compulsory weight measures (which, yes, were in grams) and created, in a mere 90 seconds, the most perfect bowl of Uncle Ben's Express Rice you ever did see.

Yes, readers, my idea of a high-complexity, high-class hot meal in the UK is minute rice named for a fictional freeman of the turn-of-the-century United States South.

As the semester goes on, I intend to make more complicated forays into the world of Cooking for One, but after a week of making myself nothing but sandwiches and Nutella wraps, this minute rice was a pretty big deal. I even spiced it up a little from the pre-made original by adding some cheese to my artificially chicken-flavored yet "Suitable for Vegetarians!" rice. CRAZY; I know. I put my bowl on a larger plate with two selections from my random fruit collection and poured the last of my "Innocent" brand apple juice (which I'm pretty sure is marketed largely for five-year-olds), and let me tell you, I was feelin' like one classy lady. For dessert, I followed my hot meal with more hot food, in the form of Nutella on somewhat-burnt toast. In the words of the insufferable Rachael Ray, "Yum-O AND delish!"

Meanwhile, when not concocting my latest gourmet meal, I have been preoccupied with the London Program students' other attempts at sophistication: sophistication through fashion. In the pre-departure meetings we had throughout fall semester, our program leaders frequently reminded us that the standard for dress in a chic European city like London is higher than it is on campus at ND. From what I've observed of most Londoners, this warning has rung fairly true. On the whole, people here are typically well dressed. The sweatpants and T-shirts that are acceptable on campus would, as our program directors warned us, be laughably inappropriate to wear out in public around Central London. None of this is false. Their advice was not bad.

The gentlemen of our program, however, have taken these tips on snappy dressing a bit too far. Any of you boys reading this, don't be offended or anything, but, like...seriously pay attention. When our program directors say that Londoners dress up more on a daily basis than we typically do, they're right. In the UK, I have finally found a society where it's not weird that I'm practically allergic to wearing sweatpants outside of my home. But what they primarily mean by "dress up" is "dress better." The people of London do not have a higher standard of dress because they wear formalwear to class every day. They simply wear more fashionable casual clothes. And boys of the London Program, you have not exactly mastered this distinction. Don't get me wrong, gentlemen; you look nice. Really!  Khakis and sweaters, though, are not what they meant when they told you to dress up. You all look great for church, or for a day of work at your job as a middle school English teacher. Ready to blend in for a day of class as a student in Europe, however, you are not. It's really very admirable that you're trying so hard, but take a look around you on your next walk to class. Do some shopping anywhere in London. Match your European competition, not your own standards of "dressing up."

Oh, and props to the few guys who have decided adamantly to ignore all suggestions on dress and continue to wear BrO'Neill hoodies and Nikes every day. You are some bold gentlemen. Have fun having all your stuff stolen by pickpockets who've found their easy American targets.

---

ADDENDUM: Last night, when writing this post, I abandoned it mid-paragraph when I first started to hear of the Manti news. Shortly thereafter, in what I first thought was an extreme physio-emotional (made that word up, go with it) reaction to the news, I began to feel very ill. I eventually was forced into the realization that my fancy-schmancy hot rice dinner had given me food poisoning. I am not even kidding. The odds of me getting food poisoning the first time I make myself hot food are about the same as the odds of me getting a face-to-face meeting with the Queen tomorrow afternoon, so naturally, it happened. I blame Lennay "I'm Not Real" Kekua for this. Back to deli meats and peanut butter I go. Let's all forget yesterday happened.

Getting to Know You

Today, the students of the Notre Dame London Program were brought back to the reality that our time here is, after all, for study abroad. After our opening weekend of lounging, pubbing, and jet-lagging our way around London, this morning, we had to actually go to class. While this was a rude awakening for some/all of us - people who went out on a Sunday last night, I'm looking at you - it was really a great step in our journey out of tourist mode.

For me, the biggest perk of the first day of class was the accompanying advent of Sarah Doin' Stuff By Herself in the Big Cit-ay. Most of my time in London so far has consisted of following along blindly and cluelessly through the city in (conspicuously, non-native-ly) large groups, snapping the occasional picture and remembering exactly nothing about how to get from point A to point B. While this break from my usual routine of doing everything by my slow-walking self has been great for my calves, it's been completely worthless in my attempts to familiarize myself with anything. Today, then, I decided it was time to venture out on my own**. A good 45 minutes before my first class started (I have, after all, gotten lost in Logansport, Indiana, on multiple occasions), I set out on the trek from our dorm building, which is here:

 ,

to our classroom building, which is here: 

 . 

And I made it there without dying, having my belongings forcibly stolen from me, or even having to turn around because I'd gone the wrong way!...at least not more than like, three times. So, yay me! Doin' stuff by myself in the big cit-ay! I even came back a different way and still didn't die. 

This is how I represent excitement, because my life is a never-ending stream of pop culture references

Upon arriving successfully at the ND classroom building (which, by the way, is across the street from the Canadian Embassy and which, if rumor is to believed, we bought after out-bidding on it against the French government, casually), it was time for class. In my first class of the day, Philosophy of Religion, I was perplexed to discover that the only philo class I will ever take in England is taught by a cargo-shorts-wearing, Wilford-Brimley-mustache-having American, whereas the only philo class I have ever taken and will ever take in the United States was taught by a bow-tie-wearing, Queen's-English-accent-brandishing Englishman. Philosophize that, people. Shortly after this class, in the middle of a lecture on the London-y-est thing possible, Sherlock Holmes, the fire alarm went off. This would normally be little more than a funny little anecdote for the first day of school, but we, the students of the London Program, have already spent a good three hours of our lives since arriving here just learning about fire safety. I mean, honestly, the frequency and depth of these fire safety meetings reached the point of comedy about two burn-time-demo videos ago. And yet today, as if to spite us for laughing at the meetings, off goes the fire alarm. I sincerely hope this does not become an everyday thing, primarily because (as I learned the hard way today walking home) it rains a lot in London. 

Not what I looked like 

More like what I looked like

Overall, though, I must say today was a pretty good first day of class. I'm finally starting to get to know London, and the frequency with which I narrowly avoid being hit by buses is decreasing with each passing hour. Keep coming back to check out the new blog - I still hope to soon have something more exciting to write about than peanut butter and fire drills!

**: And oh yeah. "How many songs from musicals with the words 'On My Own' in their titles does this girl know?", you may ask yourself. Is it two, the number of songs from musicals with the words "On My Own" in their titles that I've already linked my blog to? Maybe. Is it secretly many more than that, and you'll just have to wait and see to find out? Also maybe. (Hint: it's 2.) Stay tuned.