Our Day in Tottenham! (3/23-3/24)

…was pretty brilliant, if you ask me.

It was full of intrigue and adventure and wit and maneuvering and general action movie-level parcour-ing wonderment.

But before all that let’s do a recap. A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

So Atlanta, Georgia.

Our flight from Atlanta was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that Delta straight up refused to let us watch Doctor Who. Our screen shorted out like, I don’t know, five minutes into using it. Cue the world before technology. It was like we had just plummeted into a black hole of thumb-twidling and our only entertainment was to creep on the flight attendants as they walked past to see if they were bringing our breakfast of bananas and egg substitutes. Except that I totally had an iPod and watched Doctor Who anyway. But that’s not the point. I learned a valuable lesson about the evils of boredom that I will not soon forget, so that was character-building.

From Gatwick, we quite handily maneuvered our way to Victoria Station where we arrived an hour and a half early to be picked up by our (wonderful) homestay family. There, we entertained ourselves by naming, dating and criticizing passerbys for their general appearance. And eavesdropping on people with British accents. Which is like everyone, so we were quite busy.
Mathew (our homestay ‘dad’ you might say) came and fetched us at the station and we had a lovely ride through town to Muswell Hill. There was much imagined death-defying because every time I saw a bus turning left, I thought we were going to be totally dead. (“As opposed to like, mostly dead.” Is Katie’s commentary on this post. Cheeky.) But then, by some Knight Bus maneuvering (and, you know, because they just weren’t even close to hitting us) the buses avoided us and I realized, alas, this driving on the other side of the road thing might actually work when one knows what side to drive on. It was quite the revelation.

Anyway, we took some epic naps, had some epic dinner, had some epic talks with Shelagh (our homestay ‘mom’) and had some epic movie watching with Patrick (our homestay ‘bro’), who’s 14. EPIC. Shelagh and I even had a two hour convo this morning about everything from politics to musicals while Katie ‘rested her eyes for a minute’, which was pretty much epic as well. Basically, this family is epic, and it’s beyond brilliant that we are able to stay with them for the whole of the quarter. Simply fantastic.

And now…

TOTTENHAM!

Yeah, we were only there for like three seconds as we transferred to the next Tube station. But that didn’t stop Catherine Tate’s sketch about Posh People to play on repeat in my British TV-addled mind. But it did, just now, kind of put a damper on all that epic lead up to this story.
Anyway. We decided to get an early start (after Katie’s “oh, yes, we’ll go as soon as you’re out of the shower, I’ll just close my eyes for a mo” nap. Wow. Katie was awful British right there…curious.) at 1 pm and headed out, getting lost within four minutes. But, of course, I refused to get a map. Eventually, we found our way to East Finchley Tube station and pretty much pwned public transportation. And I discovered a new Cillian Murphy movie while doing it. I am seriously doing this right. We found our meeting place for orientation and then decided to wander around until we found something cool. That something cool was BBC headquarters, but it was all “I’m a security guard, look at my imposing badge and funny hat” so we left. Cool story. Then I found ten pounds.

Not really. But then we went to King’s College on the Strand and I got a prospective grad student packet and discovered that John Keats was a surgeon and the prices of goods in vending machines in the US is tragic. We then gallivanted to Trafalgar Square, which is quite a long way, mind, and went into a bookstore and made friends with a cashier who had a Firefly shirt on and resisted buying out the store’s copies of Doctor Who books.

We then found Big Ben and walked past and were completely oblivious to some large event that was being covered by a French news caster and giggled at by some blonde tourists who, despite their efforts to appear otherwise, were also oblivious. But with considerably less self-awareness. And awesome. We were totally being awesome.

Finally, we got lost again in an attempt to find a shorter way back to Muswell Hill from the Tube (Murphy’s Law in action!) and then went to Sainsbury’s, the local grocery store, found a John Barrowman CD (I mean, seriously, even the grocery stores here make me guh inside) and Jelly Babies.

That’s right. Jelly Babies.

Spectacular. And if that isn’t enough, Mathew told us that in Crouch’s End, which is apparently just down the road, he’s seen John Simm. Like in person. As in, getting his haircut. I was pretty much fan girling for like 10 minutes. No, that’s a lie. I’m still fan girling. JOHN SIMM. OMG.
And if that wasn’t enough, we had a wonderful dinner cooked by Shelagh, another epic talk (this time with a non-dazed Katie’s participation) and watched David Tennant’s Hamlet which is, by far, the best rendition of Hamlet known to anykind. That’s right. Anykind. And no, it’s not just because I have a literary crush on Hamlet. And a crush on David Tennant. And a crush on Shakespeare.

Hm.

I’m glad I worked two jobs now. I’m coming home with enough DVDs to feed a small whale. Assuming they ate DVDs regularly and had a particular fondness for Region 2 ones. Stay away, you DVD-mongering whales. These pieces of cultural wonder are mine.

The internet has been a bit on the fritz here as of late, and Yorick Donalbain is no Mac, so this will probably be posted later than anticipated. But now, alas, it is time for me to sign off. Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream.

In the meantime, rest well and dream of large women.

(4/1: Just got wifi at the homestay, so these posts will be more regular once I catch up...I'll literally keep you posted ;))