Take 2!

And cut! :D
Yes, it got even shorter!
The first one was a tad too sophisticated for me, so I got my housemate Jill to mess with it, and voila! I'm loving it: so light, so posh, so easy to wash! (Yay poetry!) Gosh y'all, why didn't you convince me to cut off all my hair years ago? ;)

Don't faint now...

What do you think? :D

Paying the rent

Since I wrote last, I've found a job and started working! All of a sudden things like cooking, hanging out with my housemates, and, well, having free time are completely gone from my schedule. I guess it make sense that if you add 30 hours of class time a week to 20 hours of job a week (plus 10 hours of commuting), there aren't that many hours left for anything else. But it is quite nice to have a source of income, especially in this pricey town. And what is the job, I hear you ask? Well, you know those people who call you in the middle of dinner to ask you annoying questions about the number of TV's in your house and your favorite method of purchasing music and what you had for breakfast every day for the past month? Well, I'm now one of them! The company is called Synovate, and it does market research for companies like Sky (TV etc.), O2 (phones etc.), and Capital One. The job consists of sitting in front of a computer and bothering people at home, and then asking them waaaaaay too many questions if they agree to talk to you. Fun! One funny thing I've learned this week: you know when sometimes the phone rings and no-one is there? Well, I now know why that happens: it's a telemarketer or someone whose headset is off by mistake or who hung up on you because they wanted to take a break or something.
Feel free to go ahead if you like and start making bets about how long I'll last, but surprisingly, it's not that bad. The atmosphere at Synovate is really chill: everyone is really laid back and nice, and just about everyone is a design student or artist or other awesome profession. I think it helps a lot to be able to tell people that you're not trying to sell them anything, makes the job much less stressful. And they give you free coffee! :D
And so my life has settled into place! Home, job, school: that's life right now. And quite a nice life it is! :)

The inevitable food post

I'm really proud of what I made for dinner tonight, which inspired me to write a bit about food in London. I'm managing to live on one 20-pound shopping trip a week, which is kind of fun, as it allows for all sorts of creative permutations using a limited number of ingredients. I've definitely created some keep-able recipes (like chicken and broccoli in garlic cheese sauce and my currently digesting mixture of awesomeness, which I will tell, I promise, just saving it for the end ;).
Part of the reason for my strict budget is that it's really possible to spend way too much money on food: for instance, in bars (which are inevitable destinations), entrees are anywhere from 6 to 10 pounds on average, which is approximately 10-18 dollars. It's funny, though: bar food here is pretty classy. There are of course the expected bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes), meat pie, and other British delicacies, but there's also stuff like balsamic glazed free range chicken with organic braised parsnips and arugala salad with walnuts and goat cheese. And this is at every pub I've been to so far! Craziness.
I've also had some culinary fun living with people from different backgrounds: I guess this is also the time to talk about my lovely housemates, who seem to have remained undescribed so far (probably through sheer laziness on my part, sorry folks!). Jill is from the Boston area, but she grew up on the north shore, so she's had more exciting typical New England experiences than me (like skinning animals and making cider). She's been the one in charge of popcorn-making, when we've done that. Frank is from California, obsessed with Halloween and the washer/dryer (which is one machine: you put your clothes in dirty and take them out clean and dry... amazing!), and makes amazing things like root vegetable bakes and really delicious raisin soda bread (the recipe is really simple, but I don't remember it now: I can post it later if people are interested). Ana is from Puerto Rico, has the most infectious laugh I've ever heard, and is always making amazing concoctions involving rice, chicken, carrots, plantains, and things like that. And Gaidig, from Bretagne (France), my commuting buddy in the morning and the only smoker in the house (go figure), makes amazing things with sausages and cabbage and other vegetables, which she claims aren't really French but simply "Gaidig-style." We don't share food in my house (except for the odd trade of chocolate for tea bags, and mooching off other people's butter, etc.), so I don't get to taste any of this, but man does it look and smell good!
And now for the long-awaited amazing dinner of tonight:
Ingredients: cooked brown rice, pinto beans, chicken, and sweet potato; onions, garlic, cheese, salt and pepper. Preparation: Saute onions and garlic in oil. Add everything else. Devour (if you like, from the pot, in true grad school fashion). :)

Things that blow my mind in London

-Thomas, the head pedagogue of LISPA. Every word from the man's mouth is a pearl of wisdom. Example: "So we see that the larger we make a movement, the smaller is the space it takes up. And the smallest movement of all is respiration, the breath. All theater takes place on the line between these two extremes." Whoa.

-The bureaucracy, which I've already lamented about, but really is kind of astounding. Example: Today I went with Gaidig and Jill (housemates) to register for the National Health Service (hooray for universal healthcare!). We all brought bank statements from our home countries, passports, our housing contract, and the utilities bill. Unfortunately, I was the only one able to register because the utilities bill was in my name only and they don't accept anything except a utilities bill in your name or a bank statement from a UK bank, which can take months to get: they wouldn't even accept the signed housing contract. Oy gevalt!

-Chips and buttey: I haven't had this, but apparently it's a sandwich made of buttered white toast with french fries inside it. *gag*

-Tea and biscuits. It really is all it's cracked up to be.

At the end of the day...

... I'm always tired. Which is good, of course, but makes it hard to write good blog entries. But I'll try anyway...
Today we had acrobatics! Gaidig (one of my housemates, with whom I have class) and I took the bus, which took us from Stratford to Hackney seemingly by was of China, so we were a little late. But not late enough to miss the conditioning, which was awesome/painful! The other classes were good as well: it's really hard to describe what we do, since it's such a "journey" (that's the favorite word of our teachers). I hope you all don't mind that I don't go into detail about what we actually do: it would probably bore most of you to tears. :) But suffice it to say that it's stimulating, exhausting, exhilarating, and wonderful.
After class I got a desk from Argos, which is this awesome store where you look through a catalog and find what you want (anything from engagement rings to dishwashers), write its catalog number on a little slip, pay for it, and then wait for it to appear from the recesses of some vast storage room in the back of the store. So I got my desk, put it down to put the receipt in my bag, then realized I couldn't pick it up again. So I called my lovely housemates Frank and Anna and they helped me carry it home. So now in addition to being sore from acrobatics, my fingers and forearms are sore from carrying a heavy box. Yay!
And that was my day! Tomorrow's another one, and then on Friday I find out whether I have a job! I'll be sure to update when that pans out, can't wait...

Better and worse

Better: I've officially started LISPA! Today was orientation, so I finally got to meet everyone, and it was so amazing! There were people who'd been working up to attending for 7 years, and one guy who found out about the school yesterday and was somehow here today in our class. And most excitingly, there were people from all over the globe! Countries represented: England, Ireland, United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Bermuda, Australia, Japan, Zambia, Italy, and probably others that I'm forgetting. Such an amazing collection of accents and people, I truly cannot wait to start working with all of these exciting people!
Worse: British bureaucracy is driving me crazy. I've succeeded in getting a house, a phone, possibly a job (interview tomorrow at a movie theater, wish me luck! :), and working on a bank account, which is pretty good. But until that bank account comes through, I can't get a phone contract or internet at home, which kind of sucks. But it's all good, everything will work out in the end. :)