Monday, July 4, 2011

Beloved London

Happy 4th of July!
God bless America.
God bless, America.
God, bless America.

I'm pretty bummed that I'm missing my favorite holiday today, but I made sure to look as cocky as possible walking up and down the streets of London today. You can have soccer and a stable currency; we're happy with having owned you when it mattered.

Beard update:
Sexy.

For those of you who aren't aware, I'm taking a picture of my bad self every morning to track the growth of my beard through the course of my wanderings. I take the picture as soon as I remember, which is usually right when I wake up now. It makes for some hilarious pics. Yesterday was my halfway mark, and when it's all over I'll post the whole series.

London. This place is home. I have missed it. I was a TA here with the greatest group of people in the world. I'm staying with my new Italian friend David. His apartment is in a nice spot not too far from Notting Hill. It's a five or ten minute walk from where I lived last time I was here. I love it, only this time there aren't 35 girls in my house. You win some, you lose some.

Anyways, among other things I made my way to the British Library and renewed my expired reading card. They really wanted a beard update as well, so this is how pretty I am in green:

 
You will all refer to me as Mr. C. Olsen from now on.
And there will be a test on the awesomeness of my beard.


I just noticed that I wore my green shirt to the library. Unintentional. Anyways, I got my hands on Alberto de Lacerda's book Lisboa. I really wanted to get a hold of Meio-dia, but apparently the archives I found in Lisbon lied when they said that the British Library had it. So technically I spent a good chunk of change for nothing. But that's ok. Lisboa was the second hardest to trace, and I was happy to come to London. (Where there's poop there's got to be a pony, right Dad?)

It just so happens that Amy Ollerton, my Boston friend Dema's sister who I showed around Lisbon for a day in early June, was in London taking a week-long painting class, so I got to hang out with her, which is always a good time. When I got here on Friday we went to a BBQ and talked to Australians (I want one) and then I took her to Big Ben and a few other must-sees. Saturday we hit up Borough Market (for my beloved ostrich burgers) and Camden Market, where I bought this shirt.

 So true.

I also caught up with a few friends and acquaintances from last year at church on Sunday. And today Austin, my Boston friend Dema's significant other, and his dad (no connection to Dema. Yet...) met me for breakfast today on their way to a week in Wales. Then I had dinner with an old mission friend, her fiance, and a few of their friends. London is a small world.

I also bought a box of Ben's Cookies (so good) and shopped at Primark (you don't live in London with 35 girls without picking up at least one habit, plus I had walked a hole into the crotch of my backup shorts and I feel safer with an extra pair in my backpack, if nothing else just in case I need to strangle a would-be assailant). Then I walked up and down the Thames and took way too many pictures of my favorite bridge in the world.

I will never get sick of this thing.

So tomorrow I'm off to Madrid for two or three days. Then to Pamplona for an undisclosed undertaking involving...beef. I'm off to my nightly pre-sleep routine: brushing my teeth to Irish drinking songs.

♫♪ Oh, we drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and fight, hey! ♫
Just kidding, Mom. I don't drink, or fight.

1 comments:

cate said...

I dream about Primark.
And Ben's Cookies.
And ostrich burgers.

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