Next Wednesday I will get on a plane, float blissfully over the Atlantic, and land softly at London Heathrow like a dove. There may have been some not-ready-for-school nightmares and a few episodes of sheer panic, but I am so so excited to finally be moving to the city of my dreams. I've got a new camera and a fancy new North Face coat with a perfect breast pocket just the right size for your Oyster card. The second week of school we're going on a field trip (!!!) to northern England and we were warned to bring warm, waterproof clothes so as not to be completely miserable. This means I'm gonna roll up to RCA looking more ready for adventure than they will be able to handle.
I've already gotten calendars of all the welcome events from RCA and my residence hall and there are not one but two boat trips on the river, tours of museums/galleries, walks in Hyde Park, and pub crawls. Why didn't I find out about this school sooner?! Everything sounds more than amazing. I'm glad that I'll finally have a really good excuse to use my Instax mini camera (and the horde of film I've been saving for a few years now) and my enormous England guide. It's really heavy so I'd rather not bring it if I could, but it's easily the best travel guide I've ever had so I might have to shift a few things around in my suitcase. I also have a tiny version of the London book (that I bought in the National Gallery gift shop because I was desperate for a map) that fits in your pocket. That way you can very covertly peek at it on the tube inside your bag if you are obnoxiously dedicated to not looking like a tourist like someone we all know.
Reading the guides makes me even more excited to eat in London again. Every person I have told about my school has begged me not to eat British food, but that won't be a problem because a) I don't really eat meat anymore, and b) there are so many cultures represented in London that you can eat around the world without leaving Zone 1. I am going to feast on Indian, Spanish, and Japanese food while I'm there. Luckily for me there is a huge Japanese grocery store in Picadilly Circus which I somehow missed the past three times I went to London. I love Japanese food SO MUCH, you guys. There's no culture whose food I haven't liked so far, but I am especially fond of rice-centric ones since I grew up eating etouffeé and steak rice and gravy. There is a restaurant in London called Abeno that serves okonomi-yaki (Japanese savory pancake) and it's the most ridiculously delicious thing you'll ever eat. In addition to mixing up meat and vegetable into your little cake, they can even add fried soba noodles right in there. Fried. Noodles. Abeno has a second location in Chinatown, and I saw these two girls order some kind of house special okonomi-yaki, and the chef just kept making layers upon layers of this thing, until there were about three layers of meat-filled pancake, grilled vegetables in between, and a fried egg on top. I have a new goal in life.
OBSERVE:
A potato pancake with fried noodles and pork/beef on top. Actually, it's in the middle. There's more!
A second pancake on top! THIS IS A NOODLE-FILLED PANCAKE.
Ta-da! Finished okonomi-yaki with mayo, nori seasoning and bonito flakes. Eat this...slowly.
Ohhh, London. My whole life I've read about how amazing London is (especially for a museum/history nerd like me) and I have salivated over the idea of living there since I was five. When I went to Europe for the first time in 2010 with LSU, we went to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Vienna, Budapest, Split, Hvar, and finally London. Even though the trip was amazing, at the end of a month zigzaging across Europe I was tired and cranky. And I thought to myself, you know, if London isn't the greatest freaking place I ever visited when I get there, I will be absolutely murderous. BUT IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE. You know how you just get a vibe from a city when you're on the streets or talking to people? And you just think, yeah. London was not just yeah, it was awww hell yeah. It was just so clean and happy looking everywhere, even the dirty parts! And there were huge (and small) parks everywhere, and tons of buses and non-sketchy cabs and thousands of people squooshed into Picadilly Circus and I just thought yes yes YES. This was especially the case when I went in May; there were bachelorette (hen) parties crammed into the tube cars, a double-decker party bus tearing up Regent Street, and just LOTS OF PEOPLE. It's been too long since I've been around lots of people and I am ready.
There's really no question that I will love my new life, but I'm sure I'll miss home pretty quick. Even though most of the time I don't feel like I fit in in Louisiana, I will definitely miss how friendly people are here. You make best friends at the grocery store looking at lettuce, and if you buy something interesting everyone in the checkout lane will ask what you're planning to make with that. I love that (most) Cajun people have a great sense of humor, love to party, and have a really positive outlook on life. It's easy to be that happy when good boudin rains from the skies and you can buy liquor at the grocery store at 3 AM on a Sunday. On the other hand, sometimes when you are running errands all over a big city you just do not want to chat with an over-sharing cashier.
But to be honest I'll be too busy crying tears of joy to be crying about anything else. I'll be living, living, LIVING, in London. ❤
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