Best coffee in London?
I did stand outside while hail poured from the sky for a tiny cup of their famous £2.30 filter coffee…
Almost ten hours later, and my hair is still bouncy and curly…
Even with a disgusting amount of hairspray, my hair usually won’t hold a curl for more than two hours (maybe three if I am lucky). There is a very, very light spritz of product in my hair right now, so I am in a state of complete shock.
The make-up/hair artists at Double Take Studio must be magical!
In the dressing room at Double Take Studios in London.
The photos from my shoot were incredible, but the prices were way too high. :(
Home.
- Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
- Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
- Andrew Largeman: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.
- It is really kind of amazing how a movie's meaning can change so much for you when you watch it again a few years later.
Why does my "Oriental" snack mix from Sainsbury's have two types of tortilla chips in it?
My friend and I walked into a boulangerie in Lyon one night with the clear intentions of buying one macaron each for dessert; we somehow walked out with six of them packed neatly in a pretty box. Regardless of whether we had two or six (!) of those little bites of heaven in hand, we decidedly followed through with the rest of our evening plans and devoured every last crumb together on the steps of the Opera House in front of the shop.
Then we pretended that didn’t just happen. (Though our happy stomachs and lighter wallets knew otherwise…)
That’s exactly why we are friends!
Phantom Planet - California
(Okay, I know this song is overplayed because it was The OC theme song, but to my defense, I have never watched a single episode of the show. And I have seen Phantom Planet perform live at a concert a few years ago, and I can honestly say that they were pretty good!)
Nearing the End
Over the last few weeks, my Google Calendar has been slowly filling up with finalized class schedules, internship schedules, and upcoming special events for Winter Quarter 2010, so life after London has begun to take on a definite shape in my mind. As sad as I am about my short semester in London coming to an end so soon, I am very excited about all that is ahead of me for the new year.
But before I get too far ahead of myself, there is still so much end-of-term work to complete to fulfill the “academic” part of my semester abroad that I can feel my heart beat a little faster and palms start to sweat à la anxiety attack whenever I think about how much there is left to do and how little time I have left to do it; I haven’t felt this way since I was 16 and an overcommitted junior in high school. For someone who has been programmed to function in accordance to three fast-paced 10-week academic quarters a year while holding two jobs concurrently, I am not coping very well at the present.
Even though I have two presentations, an essay outline, and an intimidating stack of case excerpts to read before my law seminar tomorrow, I haven’t been able to concentrate all week because I keep thinking about “home” - even though I am not entirely sure what “home” means to me anymore.
I dream about biting into a perfect corner (double the crust!) square Sicilian slice from L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst Brooklyn and walking past the smelly fish market toward the shady Stillwell Avenue subway station that will get me out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan while in New York. I cannot wait to walk around Central Park aimlessly (confession: I always look for the ducks) and feel my nose turn bright red from the cold air. I think about how my favorite Van Gogh painting is waiting for my next visit to The Met.
I imagine myself tossing a dollar bill and a few quarters into the hidden basket at Art of Espresso before quickly pouring myself a cup of hot coffee and running to my windowless corporate office to enjoy what’s left of it four mornings a week when I return to San Diego. I see myself redeeming my free latte from Muir Woods with the filled stamp card from last Spring that is still tucked safely in my wallet as my first act of business when I return to the UCSD campus. And I can almost feel the warm sunshine on my bare skin as I sit on the plastic patio furniture in front of The Daily Bagel, eating a perfectly toasted salt bagel with red pepper hummus, sipping a large iced soy latte, and enjoying their free wifi on a lazy weekend afternoon. (Quite possibly with the company my LSAT books in the new year.)
Just San Francisco. Everything about San Francisco. I want to say hi to the falafel man at Truly Med. I want to fight with the little kids for my turn to slide down the stone slides at Golden Gate Park. I want to cringe at the aggressive and rude ladies shouting at each other in Chinese as I navigate my way around Chinatown. I want to eat a Mission burrito. I want to make another panicked call to my friend as I stand on the BART platform to ask which train I needed to take to get to Berkeley for the millionth time. (I can never remember!) And I should probably stop contemplating whether I can still get away with paying the under 18 student fare on MUNI now that I am 20, but I know the thought will still inevitably cross my mind as I finger the change in my pockets with each approaching bus.
Most of all, I cannot wait to see all of the amazing people who have been so supportive of me even when I was eight time zones, thousands of miles, and an unfamiliar ocean away from them and give everyone a BIG HUG. I guess what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder is completely true after all.
So, this must be what real “homesickness” feels like.
Oh, and I really miss Trader Joe’s. Will Peppermint Joe Joe season be over by the time I get back? Because I think my heart will break if it is!
