Sunday the 24th was BORING, so I don't really have much to say. I worked all day on homework. Later that night, Shelby Riley and Sol and I went to this insane deep dish pizza place called Japes, which has probably been my favorite food place I've been to so far in London. London doesn’t have good traditional food at all in my opinion, it tastes like grease and remnants of the world war, but there are some holes in the wall where you can get exotic yet satisfying cuisine. And damn it was the most satisfying pizza I've ever eaten. It was the type where you had to spin the cheese around your fork like spaghetti because it was so cheesy. The rest of the night was a downfall-- it couldn’t get any better than that. I did homework until 2am after getting home.
Monday, we moved all our things out of St. Giles and into LSE Bankside around 9am. Since we couldn’t get into our rooms till like 2, we had to leave our luggage in this room where some man put a tag around it and check us in. And literally both times I interacted with him he was so rude. He yelled at me twice and I’m still butthurt. I think about it every night before I go to bed. While the brave knight was overwatching our valuable luggage, we went to the Natural History Museum which was cool. Paige and I explored together and freaked out over all the cool gems and crystals, but we didn’t even get to see Dippy because we were looking at everything else and taking our time. I feel like the worst museum buddy because I always miss things. But we finally got to our rooms later and man it reminds me of a mental hospital so bad. There are two small beds with white duvets and one pillow. One desk. One dresser. One giant window. It lets a lot of natural light in and it’s not as stuffy, so I like that better than St. Giles, but the bathroom is weird. There are red rails all over the bathroom that make me feel like I’m about to slide down a fire pole and go save lives, and an emergency string (which I pulled because I thought it was the light), and the nastiest part-- no separation between the shower and bathroom floor. Not only is the shower curtain absolutely disgusting on the bottom, but every time I take a shower it floods the whole floor. For a second I was worried that I was living in an illusion this whole time and finally coming back to reality and people had thrown me into this mental hospital and called it a hotel—like “surprise!! It’s a mental hospital and you’re insane.” Now that I’m done ranting, we went to Hard Rock Café after, and it was really really really good. I got to see Freddie Mercury’s microphone, Jimi Hendrix’s velvet pants, Amy Winehouse’s tank top, John Lennon’s glasses, and Ozzy Osbourne’s robe. It was so sick.
Tuesday, we shared our poster proposals, and at that point my theme was going to be something about the street art in London, but it was so broad that I wasn’t feeling confident in it. I thought it was going to be so edgy and grungy of me to pick street art, but after thinking about it for a while I had no direction and felt like I was going to be ripping off other people’s art for my own sake. So I had to sit with that all day. After class, we were going to go to Pentagram so I had to run to the nearest clothing store and find a business professional outfit. I succeeded. When we got to Pentagram, they talked to us about their previous works. I was struggling to keep my eyes open for a while and looking around I found that everybody else was too, but towards the end I was more engaged and interested. Pentagram is a talented workplace-- they specialize in a lot of animation and suggested we learn how to code. But that’s not really for me. After Pentagram, me, Sol, Madison, Syd, Haley, and Kyndall had reservations to this place called The Jam that has double-decker seating like bunkbeds. We were so excited to maybe sit on the top seating, but we had to sit on the bottom like the subs we are, and we were so disappointed because we wanted to be tops for once. Then we got gelato and it was immaculate. That night, as I was lying in bed, the idea popped into my head that I should change my poster theme to Pink Floyd. So for another two hours I researched how I could make that happen.
Wednesday morning was a day we could sleep in if we wanted to, but I shot out of bed at 8:30am because I needed to start working on my Pink Floyd proposal. I made a mood board and wrote some paragraphs about it and sketched out some ideas for it. I worked until about noon, got some lunch, then met some of the gals in the basement to keep working. When most everyone left later that night to go to The Book of Mormon, me, Sol, and Haley chilled in our room and did research on murder stories and sex offenders in our area. It was so lighthearted!
Thursday was the day we went to Tate Modern which was incredible—I love abstract art. There was a Picasso, a Piet Mondrian, and a tower made of all radios which I thought was so cool. That afternoon, we went to BrandOpus, an advertising agency that specializes in branding. They did an entire rebrand for Oscar Meyer which is funny and random, and they outlined each step they took, and I thought that was a lot more transparent and engaging than the way Pentagram presented themselves. The guy presenting was interesting and good at keeping me engaged, so I enjoyed their agency a lot. I would definitely consider working there if I ever moved to London. That night, everyone left to go to the ghost tour except a few of us, so Natalie and I went to a couple pubs while everyone was gone.
On Friday, we went to Tate Britain and saw some John Singer Sargent, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Bacon, and a David Hockney. It was surreal to see so many abstract painters I had learned about in art history. We went to Wing Stop after and then I left the group and went to Camden Street all by myself to get to experience some parts that I had missed last time. I was so proud of myself for branching off and doing my own thing and navigating London on my own. My confidence in figuring out the tube and the buses skyrocketed that day, and it was all giggles until my phone was on 10% and I had to figure out my way back to LSE, so I scrambled back to the train and was panicking for 40 minutes that I might get lost in London all by myself. But I made it. I met some of the gals down in the basement that night where we did homework, drank wine, and watched The Conjuring until we were out for the night.
Saturday was another boring kinda day. We didn’t do anything other than homework from 10am till 5pm in that damn stuffy basement but girl I got so much done! After that long day of work came to an end, Kara, Shelby, and Sol and I went to Portobello Street and shopped around and got some FIRE burgers at Patties & Buns. After that we rode the bus about 30 minutes to the Battersea Power Station, the place where Pink Floyd took their album cover for “Animals.” I had been wanting to go over there for a while, but I thought that it was abandoned so I didn’t particularly want to go by myself, but when we all decided to go there, we were in awe. It was so decorated with Christmas lights and breweries and restaurants. They were also having a movie night out in front of the power station with all these cute lawn chairs and they were watching House of Gucci. If I have time when I get back from Edinburgh, I want to go there again and explore more. There are so many things I want to do before I leave.
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