Why is everything in German?!

Actually- not everything is in German, just the little notes that more specifically explain certain buttons on Blogger. To be fair, it isn't like I have bothered yet to check on my language settings that may have inadvertantly been changed. (Though you'd think that if they had tabs such as "Settings" and "View Blog" would also be in German...)

Whatever, the point of this entry is that my father tells me that I am not writing enough. Okay then. In that case I will tell him all about my night.

The bed squeaks in an alarming way when you toss and turn, which I was because the "Oh my god I'm living in London" bit has started to hit me. I completely missed the move in day party at the basement pub because it took so long for us to get a taxi (oops, Saturday night- didn't think about that part.) and so by the time we had dropped my luggage off at Sundial Court it was around 9:30. Keeping in mind that The City is basically the financial district there was *nothing* open to eat at. So we walked towards the Old Street stop on the Northern line and and eventually ate at the first place we found: a fancy Indian resaurant that had seven servers standing around and absolutely no customers. We ate there anyway because beggars can't be choosers and proceeded to have the best biryani ever. (Seafood Sofyani Biryani to be specific, Mommy picked up the menu.) However, I found it very unnerving having all these people standing around watching us eat. No one else even stopped by while we were there. I hope they do a booming lunch trade during the week or else this is a serious case of failing to follow the "location, location, location" adage.

Getting back to the sleeping story. Remember how yesterday we slept until noon? Well today I was supposed meet Mommy at the hotel by 10:30 so that we could go to Spitalfields. I woke up at five, I think. (I don't have a clock.) It was definitely still dark out and was for a couple of hours after I finally got out of bed as well. I finished unpacking everything, read a portion of "Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui" by Karen Kingston (Or, in German "Heilige Orte erschaffen mit Feng Shui. Ein Anleitungsbuch") I highly reccomend this book, even if you have a really low tolerance for New Age-y things. She has a lot of helpful and good suggestions and advice and you can easily ignore the stuff that doesn't sit well with you. So I read that, played with my sink (Everything is so short! The top of the sink hits *maybe* my mid-thigh. Short!), fiddled with my furniture, and eventually gave up when it got light out and decided that if I was up probably so was Mommy so I hopped on the tube and now am at the hotel.

I feel a little bit bad that I haven't already spent more time bonding with my flat mates and meeting other people, but it is only the second day and I will be living with these people for at least three months, so it is probably all okay, right? In anycase- it is. Mommy and I are now going to scout for breakfast even though it is Sunday and nothing opens until at least 11:00am. (The hotel restaurant is open, but their prices are ridiculous. The english breakfast costs 10 pounds, we got a better sounding one yesterday for 3.50, including the tea.)

Sundial Court

Hello and Welcome everyone. I am now awake. (You will be pleased to learn, I'm sure, that it is possible for me to sleep until noon regardless of where I am. Though in my defense I would like to point out that I was making up for somewhere between two and three nights of sleep.)

But on to more important things! I have a room! And flat mates! and little pots of parsley, basil, and coriander (see how well I am adapting already? I didn't write "cilantro" and Basil is being pronounced Baaaz-ill, but not really, because I think Baaaz-ill sounds silly.)

My room is quite spacious and directly across from the kitchen. Time will tell if this is actually handy, or awful. I have four flat mates and they are as follows (I may get the spelling of their names horrendously wrong, for which I apologize in advance.)

Latana: age 25- early music singer from Paris. She has cool purple and green glasses and spent her undergraduate in Berlin. I feel embarrassingly monolingual. (She was telling us to correct her English, but aside from a slight accent she is fine.) She was the first one I met and when we were introducing ourselves she said "Oh! You're from so far away!" and I was about to respond that so was she until I remembered that just because they are impressively foreign in Seattle doesn't mean they are in London. Paris is like 2 hours away by train.

Patrick: age 21- actor from London. He was feeling embarrassingly local compared to the rest of us. I'm glad that we have an actor because I was afraid that they would be completely segregated. There are apparently only 16 people in the drama section of the school (that can't include the techies, can it?) which is impressively tiny. Though that does explain how they can manage to produce such stellar alumni. Like Ewan McGregor and Clive Owen. I should tell Patrick that I expect him to become incredibly famous so that I can then brag about knowing him...

Moises: age 23- trombonist from London. He has more trouble with English than Latana does, but is very nice. He is so tall that he doesn't actually fit on the bed. I suggested that he use the footstool at the base of the bed, but suspect that that would still be wildly uncomfortable. We'll see what he ends up doing.

Meredith: age 22- French horn player from Connecticut. She was the last one I met, and when she started talking I whipped my head around because "Hey! I know that accent!" She is also very tall, I wonder if she fits on the beds. She has been here for a week already and apparently they have been doing a lot of last minute refurbishment. When she moved in none of the rooms were set up except for hers and there has been steady progress throughout the whole week. It still isn't done yet- in the stairwells there are a lot of places that have been sanded down to be painted, but obviously haven't been painted yet.

We haven't moved my luggage yet, so I'm not sure where I'll be staying the night, but Mommy did go grocery shopping and so now has lots of chutneys and chocolate.

Oh! The northern line has been under repair today- so there are huge delays and remarkably little air on the tube. Fortunately there are only two stops between the dormitory and the hotel- but ohmygosh that was awful. Also, considering how cool it is, I have been sweating a ton the last two days (Aren't you pleased I'm informing you of this?) So many places have been so crowded and/or overheated and therefore muggy. It's been gross.

We did also find a little cafe. (Called "Market Cafe." A creative leap ahead of Laine's cafe named, simply, "Cafe") Mommy got jacket potatoes with beans and cheese and I had a vegetarian English breakfast. It was remarkably good actually. We watched them slice the mushrooms (so they were very fresh) and the tomatoes were also very fresh. When we ordered the waitress called out for "weak tea" but the tea wasn't terribly weak- so we wondered what she was talking about...

Be on the lookout for a guest blog entry from Mommy- she has been taking pictures for that purpose. Also- for some reason blogger has decided that I would like all of the commands to be in German. Isn't that sweet? In a really non-helpful way? For instance: what does "Tastaturkurzel" mean?

We're in London

I would write more, but I'm not going to right now. Suffice to say that my mother and I have made it to London (and to our hotel!) and are both struggling to stay awake until some reasonable (or even only vaguely reasonable) hour to go to sleep. As it is now nearly 2pm, we're going to have to struggle vainly forward for the next four hours or so.

See, I shouldn't write when I haven't really slept in three days. (or whatever.) I write things like "struggle vainly forward" and all I'm talking about is sleep! That is hardly that dramatic. Oi.

Also, I made friends with a street cleaner.

I'm not homeless!

I get to stay in the Sundial Court for at least the first term, which is fantastic! So, um, yeah. I'm leaving Thursday morning! And Mommy and I have a hotel! (Well, "we" for the first night and then "she" for the rest of it because I'm not homeless!)

Also, I have a snazzy new computer that I have been stealing my parents' music with and am currently typing this entry on. You can't see it, but it is lovely.

I should go get some sleep because I have just a ridiculous amount of stuff to do tomrrow. Like actually shove all of my stuff into bags.

My hearing aid works!

Wheee!!!

It's only been, like, nine months or something like that since I've worn it... So thank you Lori and Larci: you guys are awesome.


ps. including today I've got seven days till London (well, six since I'm leaving on the seventh.) (Or 5.5 since today is already half over?) (You get the point.)

Whew...

I got my student visa.

Today is a blogging sort of day

And by blogging sort of day, what I mean is that today felt like a London sort of day. I did scary things, played with music, and met random people on the street. Here is the story:

Andrew Klimowich is a fellow I met at Wedgwood. He is a mandolin player and has a bluegrass band/jam session downtown on Wednesdays. He invited me to play a few weeks ago but I hadn't got around to it. Then this Sunday he invited me again, gave me an address, and told me to show up at noon with my bass. The address was the Columbia tower- so I got brave and decided that the worst that could happen was that I would walk around downtown looking kind of silly with my bass, and all things considered that wasn't that bad.

The first obstacle of course was finding a parking spot. But since I am amazing I found a spot on the street. I cut across three lanes of traffic (okay, not "traffic" per se since there weren't any other cars, but I was on the right side of the street and had to get to the left) and then expertly parallel parked the car. The garage attendant across the street gave me a thumbs up. Unfortunately I parked on 3rd and Cherry and had to get up to 5th and Cherry- so there was a lot of vertical walking with bassey-bye. (She has a name, it's a little cheesy, but it's hers. Try not to mock.) So I was sweaty and out of breath by the time I got to Columbia tower, but I found the elevator and then wandered around the 3rd floor trying to find the art gallery and the band.

It turns out that today was a little different from usual, because the gallery they play in was having a reception/art opening for the current bunch of artists (It is something like the Washington women painters' collective or something. Washington, women, and painters are all definitely words that are involved in the name.) So there were a lot of people around and they applauded after things (which was nice) and there was carrot cake on a table with flowers (which was also nice.)

Right, so the musicians there today were Andrew-mandolin, Tom-guitar, and Morgan-banjo. And I played a lot of roots of chords. I was faking like mad, but it was super fun and I'm now in the email loop for playing again next week. Hopefully soon I'll be able to be comfortable enough to try a bit more of a bass line then G, G, G, G, D, D, G, G. (At one point I had my left elbow resting on the neck of the bass with my head resting in my hand because all the notes I needed were open strings and I only needed my right hand. I could maybe try a little harder.)

So that was great, and then when we were done I lost my keys- so I enlisted the women painters to help me look and then we had a fun chat about gender equality and being in a male dominated profession and ignoring people who said you couldn't do something because you were a woman. One of the painters told a story about how when she was in art school her professors had told her that there were no famous female painters (famous, or good? I don't remember. Maybe successful was the term. Whatever, you get the point) so she felt really betrayed when she eventually learned that there had been successful female painters in pretty much every era. I told them thank you for fighting because I felt like I could do anything and they said you're welcome. My keys turned up on the floor behind a movable wall.

*Then* while carrying my bass down Cherry to get back to my car this fellow asks me if I play in the symphony. I said no, that I had just come from playing with a bluegrass band, but that I do play classical music. So he gave me his card because he is working on an album right now of what he calls Chicano Soul Blues and had really been wanting a low soulful sound and had been thinking about a cello. I said that sounded really cool so he told me some more about it as we walked to the car, and by that point we had figured out that neither of us were doing anything right then, so we stuck some more quarters in the meter and went and futzed around at his apartment.

His name is Dominique and he is a preschool teacher but it taking a month and half off to work on this album. We worked on one of his songs called "pepper corn" and I think we did alright. I'm going back on Friday morning to see what we can do with some of his other songs. Neat, huh?

(Okay, and I do get the sketchy aspect of meeting a random guy on the street and then going back to his apartment, but I figured if anything got weird I had my cell phone and he seemed nice and knew enough about music that he couldn't be just making up a story- so I took a chance and now I get to work on his album which is supercool. So it all worked out fine)

So now it is food time (I kinda forgot to eat. So far today I have had 3 cups of water and a slice of carrot cake) (but I do love carrot cake) and then I drive back down town to pick up Sarah in order to get to Caitlin and Robbie's apartment where we will play some of the Bach 2 part inventions that we have been working on for their wedding this weekend. So bassey-bye all over the place.