I'm slacking!!!

I haven't posted in, like, three days! No!!!

Whew. I'm back now. It will all be okay.

I have arrived safely back in London, and it was kind of a relief to be back. I like Hampsted, and really just London in general. (Yesterday I explored Chiswick, pretty gardens there. Lots of lilacs.) Also, I have finally met Aneta and Philip and Elena! So that is very exciting. Elena is destructive, but charming; and Philip is learning to read and has an entire drawer full of bionicles, which I think is just about as hip as you can get as a six year old boy. They are all still on Singapore time and so have been waking up around 6- at which point Philip comes into the room where I am sleeping and brightly says "hello!" to which I moan in reply before eventually getting out of bed four hours later. It's a good system.

I went English Country Dancing again on Thursday. It was lovely. Lara came and joined me, and afterwards we went to the flat of a friend of Laura's and hung out for a while. I have now become a big fan of Australians, they're great fun.

It was interesting going back to the dance for the second time (it was free this time since we came last week! Nice, huh?) the regulars are all quite friendly- and while it is a "beginners" dance, if you don't catch on quickly- they tend to start getting impatient. There is a whole crew of older women named Ruth (Grammy: was the name 'Ruth' to your generation what the name 'Sarah' is to mine? I know over 50 Sarahs that are within two years of my age.) my favorite of whom couldn't help but give tips-especially on "swing your partner" which is harder than you might think. Unless Ruth has given you a couple of tips in which case it is great fun and you go too fast and get dizzy. Two of the regulars had their first time calling a dance that night too, which was very exciting. They did a good job and we all applauded wildly.

On Friday I went over to Laura's apartment and began to learn to play the fiddle with Lara. It was really nice to get my hands on an instrument again. I need to play with bands- in Chicago I would go to Old Town School, but where in Seattle? Dusty Strings? Lara played me some Cajun tunes too, which is what the picture is of. We also played some frisbee, which isn't an instrument. (Except that I wanted to participate with Lara's Irish tunes, so I got a small pencil and tried to play the frisbee like a bodhran. But it really didn't work. I think it could have had it been a much bigger frisbee...) Eventually Lara had to go to an appointment, so Laura and I chatted a bunch and she tried to teach me to play chess. I got better at it, but still lost both times we played.

We walked through Camden where I got on the tube to go return my key and get my deposit back from the building manager in Turnham green. I decided that it was so pretty there that I would wander around and proceeded to get ridiculously lost in Chiswick. I had a snack and read Freakonomics in a cafe that specialised in organic local food. (I had carrot, apple, ginger, lemon juice (tasty) and "asparagus in a mug" which then showed up in a mug and surprised me because for some reason I wasn't expecting it in a mug- not that I know what "mug" would have meant if it hadn't referred to, you know, a mug.) I was getting really in to the footnotes of my book, and was ensconced in a very comfy couch, so I decided to get dinner there too. Now, a handy tip for all of you restaurant goers: should you find yourself in an organic local free-range whatever food cafe, maybe don't order fish and chips? It goes against the spirit of the thing, and they are unlikely to be as generous with the frying as they might otherwise be. What they were very generous about with their portions: the fish was all in one piece and was as long as my elbow to the tips of my fingers. It was stacked on a wall of french fries and on the side there was what seemed to be a very thick split pea soup/mash thing that tasted like lentils. I ate about a third of it and then felt a little bit sick for the rest of the night. Oh well. Next time I'll stick to fancy vegetables in mugs.

Now I have some explaining to do:
Wasting her life in Paris- refers to a family story involving my dad's cousin who was living in Paris and having a grand old time instead of doing something "productive" back in America. As my father has pointed out, the phrase generally means: "doing something that may not have immediate application, but is never the less rewarding. " I would tend to agree. However, in the case of the hostel I was staying at in Amsterdam- I found a number of people who came to Amsterdam for weeks at a time to get stoned and drunk for their entire vacation. This seems like a silly way to spend that much time to me, so that was where the "It's possible I think (to waste your life in Paris). But only if you take a very active stance against mingling with anything other than what you already know" was coming from. If you're an American student and you go to a foreign country to go and get wasted with other American students- isn't that a really expensive way of doing something you could have done in your own backyard? That's all I'm saying.

That being said, I am now off to the bookstore again to locate authors for my mom. Because I am a dutiful and loving daughter. Plus, this way I get to read them first.