London - September 2002

Continuing the nostalgia kick that I was on earlier in the summer, I've decided to transcribe the e-mails I sent to friends during my sophomore year studying in Pepperdine's London program (albeit somewhat edited). I feel like it'll be interesting to see just how young and green I was during my first time living in England right as I'm preparing to move back for another academic stint. Let's see, shall we?

Monday, September 9
London is fantastic. We left LAX at 9 PM last Wednesday and landed in London at 3 PM on Thursday, so jet lag was kinda weird. I sat next to this really cool British girl named Jules on the plane who had the perfect accent and I just listened to her talk for like 3 hours. :) When we got to the house, all 40 of us got acquainted with it and explored, and let me tell you the house is beautiful. It has 5 floors and a basement, and me and my roommates (Josh, Jason, EJ, K, and Travis) live on the 4th floor (which in England is actually called the 3rd because what we call the first floor they call the ground floor and what we call the second floor they call the first floor... a little confusing). But yeah, so Tina and Bree and Kari live in the basement, and I said I would leave my laptop in their room so they could use it and listen to music whenever they wanted, and between the basement and my floor there are 97 very steep steps!!! It's pretty crazy. I'm constantly winded from running up and down this huge building.



Anyway, the first night, me and the 3 girls went to Southside, which is a pub less than a block from our back door (which opens up to a beautiful little park, by the way). The problem was that we didn't get there till 10:45, and pubs close at 11!! Crazy, huh? So Tina asked these 4 British guys next to us if they knew of any pubs that stayed open late, and they took us to Kavanagh's, which is open till 1 AM three nights a week (ooh, those rebels! :) Sorry to say, I got absolutely wasted and made a complete and total ass out of myself and couldn't even remember half the evening, so I decided to be careful with British beer from now on.

The next day, Friday, we basically had orientation shit all day, which was incredibly boring, and then we took a brief walking tour of Kensington and Knightsbridge (the area that we live in) and ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Wagamama that I absolutely loved. The food was amazing. Friday night, me and the girls went out again, this time to Leicester Square and Soho. Leicester Square is SO cool, it's kind of like London's version of Times Square. We had to take the Tube there, which is London's subway system, and very useful. We went to a bar (which involves both drinking AND dancing, as opposed to a pub, which is mainly drinking and a club, which is mainly dancing) where they played alternative rock music (cuz London's popular music is all techno, and the girls don't like techno) and we had a BLAST. We all got somewhat drunk and danced in a little mosh pit and had a lot of fun. Then we took a night bus home cuz the Tube closes at midnight and the night buses only cost one pound, which is amazing! Trust me, London is SOOOOO expensive. It's anywhere between $1.40 and $1.70 to a pound and it's very difficult to find a dinner meal here less than 5 or 6 pounds. So you can figure out how much money we're really spending, it's quite a bit for everything.

Saturday we went on a bus tour of the entire city, and got to see, at least at a glance, most of London's landmarks: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, etc, etc. When I have more time, I am going to go back to each of them and actually visit. Saturday night, me and 6 people I didn't really know went to see a Reel Big Fish concert, but it was sold out, so instead we went to see a play called "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged" and it was HILARIOUS. The second act, I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. We had a great time and we all kinda bonded, which was cool, cuz already the house is becoming less cliquey and more a unified whole. (Well, except for this girl Summer, who I think is just a bitch and so does everyone I've ever talked to, but yeah, everyone else! :) [BAAAHAHAHA!!! How amazing that I wrote this in an e-mail to people. Ahh, Summer...] After the play, me and the group went back to Kavanagh's and I found my new favorite beer, Grolsch. I am never drinking anything but Grolsch ever again, I swear. It is just so good.

Then Sunday afternoon, the whole house went to the Regency Hotel to have high tea and that was really cool. We all got dressed up and felt really proper and it was definitely a specifically British experience. Sunday night, another small group of us went out, but this time I did not drink anything, bcuz I finally realized how much money I had actually spent (in American dollars) on alcohol since Thursday night, and let's just say it was a little scary. Oh well, at least I got my drinking binge out of the way before classes started. Which was today, actually! This morning, 10:45 to 12:45, I had my first class, which was Humanities. It's my only class today though, so now I'm done. Tomorrow I have Convocation, Religion, Great Books, and Humanities all in the same day. Crazy. Wednesday and Thursday are basically the same schedules as Monday and Tuesday, respectively. This upcoming weekend we are probably going to the Ministry of Sound, which is like the biggest club in London, and next weekend we are trying to round up a trip to Amsterdam. So far, I'm having a great time, and London is a GREAT city, and I will be sure to keep all of you updated on what's going on.

Monday, September 16
Well, let me just say that even though I have minor points of culture shock which irritate me (like the fact that NOTHING here is open late or on Sundays, grrr) London is still the best city. I absolutely love it more and more all the time. And I haven't even seen anything yet! I've only gone to one museum (the British Museum, which is huge and SO cool) and I've never even left zone 1 (the Tube is spread out all over London in six different zones; zone 1 is the center and all the other zones spread out from it in concentric circles), so obviously I have MUCH more to see and experience, but I still think this city is great. Let's see, since I wrote everyone last, what did I do? It's hard to remember everything a week later.

Well, Tuesday I had class all day and then at night me, Bree, Kari, and Tina tried to go to this one club, that ended up not existing anymore, so instead we went to a bar across the street from where the club was supposed to be. Whoa, psycho night. We were all pretty unhappy, cuz we had fun at the bar but all got way wasted and joined up with this group of guys as we were leaving. The guys ended up being really weird and we were all just generally uncomfortable so we wanted to go home, and we got dropped off in the middle of who-knows-where at 5 AM. Turns out we were in fuckin Greenwich, which is way on the outskirts of London. (OK, so I lied, I guess I've been out of zone 1 once.) It took us 25 quid (pounds) to get back to the house in a cab, it was insane. But we were all fine, Greenwich isn't a bad area or anything, so it was cool. Soho, where we met the guys, we now know is like the red light district, and kinda ghetto, so we're definitely not going back there at night again.

Anyway, then Wednesday, we all slept all day cuz we were so tired and Thursday night a bunch of us went to Southside (the nearby pub) just to chill out. That was nice. No one was getting drunk or anything bcuz we were so annoyed with Tuesday night, so me and the girls and 4 other people from the house just had a nice night. Friday night we went to a place called Sports Cafe which is one of the nicest club/bars in London, I'd say. It was really fun, and we'll probably go back again sometime on a Tuesday night, when students can get a pint a pound. REALLY good deal! Then Saturday night was a fucking BLAST. Me, Bree, Kari, Josh, Jason, and K went to Ministry of Sound, which is the biggest club in London I think, and if not, certainly the one with the most renowned reputation. It was quite expensive, but we had the best time. K and Jason left early, but the other 4 of us were there from like 11:30 PM till 7 AM. We just danced and danced for 7 hours or so and had the best time. Bree and Kari almost didn't go cuz they kept insisting how much they hated trance and any kind of techno really, and now they're like, "Dude, I would dance to that sober! That was so awesome!" Kari was hilarious, she never ever stopped moving. So we walked in the house at 8 on Sunday morning, and luckily all the church kids weren't up and ready yet, so I went to sleep and slept till 5:20 in the afternoon!

That night, we went to the bankside of the river Thames to watch a fireworks show they were doing for like some tribute to the mayor or something. Holy shit! It was literally the best fireworks show I have EVER seen. Absolutely incredible. They were just constantly, continually shooting off firework after firework, there was one point where so many had gone off that the ENTIRE SKY was a sheet of gold. I had goosebumps, just standing there in a state of awe. I was only awake for 6 hours that day, and then at 1 AM I went to sleep again. And had no problem doing it, might I add.

Today all I did was take the Tube to London Bridge (by myself for the first time) and go to the dental hospital there to get my frickin retainer fixed, after I was eating an apple my first day in London and broke one side of it. And whoa, let me just say that hospitals and stuff are a little bit different here. Did you know health care is free??? How cool is that? [It's incredible I never knew this earlier. Such youthful naivete...] Orthodontics aren't necessary, I guess, so it's only free till the age of 18, so I still had to pay, but it was just really cool that most medical things are free here. Also, the dentist who did my retainer didn't have a room for me to go into or anything, there was just this monstrous hallway that had rows and rows of little cubicles with dentist chairs in each one, so it was literally like 50 dentist chairs all in one humongous room. Kinda tripped me out. Very efficient though, they were done super-quick, especially considering I just walked in there. Can I just say again... I LOVE LONDON!

Monday, September 23
This past week was pretty fun. Tuesday night we saw "The Complete History of America Abridged." Not as funny as the Shakespeare one, but good nonetheless. After that, we went to Sports Cafe again, and it was Student Night, so you could buy beer for a pound a pint. VERY good deal, and it was fun, cuz we got a lot of people in the house to go. Everyone in the house is starting to bond, it's cool. They finally distributed all the in-house jobs too, so me and Tina and this girl Rudabeh who has got to be one of the most gorgeous girls I've ever met [still so true!] are all in charge of creating a house newsletter. Tomorrow is gonna be our first meeting, and we have to have the first issue done by next week, so hopefully it'll all work out. Thursday night, Bree and Kari left for Oktoberfest (!) so me and Tina were really bored, and we just went to Southside and got really drunk. Fun times, especially the crazy dance party going on in the student lounge when we got back! I swear, the girl who started it, our friend Wednesday, is SO cute. After we saw that amazing fireworks show last week, she was just in awe, and she says, "That's what it's gonna be like to fall in love... every day." It broke my heart. :-P [Jeez, was I already such a cynic at the age of 19?! No wonder I'm a bitter old man, LOL!]


Then Saturday morning, at like 7 AM, we took a train to Brighton, which is on the south coast of England, right against the English Channel. Talk about crystal clear, beautiful water. We stayed in a (kinda sketch) youth hostel, and had a blast the whole day. We went to Brighton Pier, where we rode all these cool rides, like: the Crazy Mouse, which was like a combination of a roller coaster and the teacups at Disneyland, that was practically hanging over the water, and a trampoline attached to bungee cords that made you able to jump like 15 feet in the air and do flips and shit, and then a slide that wrapped around a wooden lighthouse called the Helter Skelter, which just happens to be "the inspiration for the infamous Beatles song." Kinda cool. Also, I got to gamble in a casino for my first time, since you only have to be 18. Wow, gambling sucks. I spent £1.50 and said screw it after that.

That night, we saw the MOST HORRIBLE MUSICAL EVER, called "Boogie Nights," but trust me, NOTHING like the movie. Instead of porn, it was about the 70's, and all the songs were old disco songs. Good god, I've never wanted to leave a play so badly in my whole life. The acting and sets and dancing and singing and fucking PLOT all just sucked hardcore. Don't ever see it, EVER. Trust me on this. :) Next weekend, Amsterdam!!!