Visitors!

I don't know if you know this, but some people have been visiting...Lainey left on Wednesday, but Grammy is still here with me and now I have photos from her camera! Up there at the top we've got Laine and me on the Millennium Bridge in front of St. Paul's on our way to the Tate Modern (Laine's favoritest museum) and the other picture is of the three of us in their hotel room right before Laine left. We managed to get the self timer working and set the camera on top of Laine's shoe box (You should ask her about the shoes, they are AMAZING. Really.)

We've been having a lovely time and today Grammy and I are on our way down to the Borough Market to go check it out. Yesterday we went to Dalston market and bought some vegetables and some African fabric. Dalston is amazing because as you're walking down the stalls it gets very confusing to figure out what country you're actually in. Even the shop signs are done in African styles. It's a lot of fun. We both decided that we wouldn't want to buy fish there though...too much sun.

because I'm vain

Henrikke and Meredith and I went to the Columbia Road Flower market today, and it was gorgeous. Full of amazing flowers and cool antiques and remarkably sparkley cupcakes. (Seriously, can you eat glitter?) Henrikke is a demon with her camera and took bunches of lovely shots of everyone and everything in the market. This is my favorite one of me (see title).

We later had our first dinner party in our new house which was a rousing success. The food took a while to prepare, but everyone was lovely about that and the whole kitchen was giggling pretty much the entire time people were over.

I'm so tired...

We did a bunch of shopping today, which is good because now I have some silverware and a couple of plates. I don't have a can opener yet, nor any hangers. But I'm getting closer to having an actually stocked kitchen.

What I do have (and this is really key) is an alarm clock! Which is orange and cost one pound and that my Mommy bought for me while I was having a bit of a nervous (sleepy) breakdown. Isn't she wonderful and amazing?

We started the shopping somewhere up by the Angel tube stop at a street market that was just beginning to open. It was fun to see all of the booths being set up and to realize that these are actually fully functional stores that just happen to be nomadic. I couldn't think of any sort of comporable thing that I've seen before. I'm used to street booths like that in NYC, but they don't sell anything decent there- just designer knockoffs, which is I think why I was so suprised to figure out that being in a market booth didn't mean that what you were selling was trash. (Isn't that so arrogant of me? To assume that? Oh well, I won't anymore.) We got a lot of kitchen stuff in the market and then stopped at Woolworths which was good because now I have a towel.

We dropped our purchases off at the hotel and then made our way to Spitalfields which was phenomenal. I want so many things that I can't afford! Mommy did an excellent job of haggling and ended up with three new pashmina scarves. (The seller was charming and towards the end of our haggling started giving Mommy the price written out on the screen of his cell phone rather than aloud. He was very good at his job.) We didn't have quite what he asked for in cash, so we handed him everything we had left and he didn't take it all (he gave us back two or three pounds) which, as Mommy says, was "the most charming part." She's holding one of the scarves up right now, and she's right; it is "glorious."

What did we do next? I have no memory...oh! We went to the Museum of London! I was suprised (again) to see so many human skulls. I guess the Britons used to throw skulls into the Thames for ceremonial reasons (they think) which means that archaeologists have found all sorts of skulls, but not many complete skeletons. They have interesting room reconstructions there, but what really got to me was the tribute book to the people who died in the tube bombing in 2005. Each of the 56 people who died got a five or six page section filled with pieces written by friends and family and filled with pictures. I kept trying not to cry (it was in the middle of a museum after all.) There was a very palpable sense of "this could have happened to any of us." Which feels like a good sentiment. Mommy pointed out that there was no information about who the attacks were carried out by, no advertising for them at all- just a very sweet, very personal memorial.

Then we came back to the hotel and I passed out for five hours. School starts tomorrow, I'm not really sure when, but I figure I'll wake up early and take it from there. I seriously doubt there is anything I need to do before 9am. (And by seriously doubt, I mean when I called all the time this summer I wouldn't get ahold of anyone before 9:30am and even then was usually their first call for the day "hold on a sec' while I get my computer on...")