Life here in London has been pretty routine, in a good way. School during the week with scatters of rambling, sun, showers, museums, shows exhibits. My friend Lauren and I went to see Wicked on Halloween which I loved. Mr. Ben Schuman-Stoler also came to town for about a week. He was a great visitor because he loves to sit around in cafe's as much as I do. We also ventured out to Bricklane where there is some great vintage. To be honest the quantity overwhelmed me and when that happens, I have an easier time just buying nothing. Anyway, it's a bit far (relatively of course) from South Kensington but I took advantage and we ate at an Israeli owned felafel place I read about called Pilpel. It was really good but no Beer-Sheva bus stop felafel...made me miss Israel mostly.
Fellas playing chess at one of my favorite cafes...best place for fresh mint tea
The museums have great exhibits now and I didn't want to be rushing to see them all at the end of my trip...proper time management. One of my favorites was the National Portrait Gallery, right next to the National Gallery. They have a Gay Icons Exhibit (did you know Walt Whitman was gay?) as well as a 60's Beatles to Bowie exhibit. The gallery is quite large and has lots of different rooms with both older, painted portraits of old important british royalty, scientists, politicians, and philosophers (not as boring as I'm making it sound, they're actually quite beautiful), and contemporary portraits ranging from photography to painting to other mixed media). As far as field trips go, we haven't has as many since after the break. We did go to cute old cambridge for a day and took a Charles Darwin tour. I've also started a new elective entitles Challenges and Change in British Education. Next Monday we're going to VERY prestigious, medieval type preparatory school called Eton to...gain a little perspective. Should be interesting.
Making mischief as usual...this is a young Darwin sculpture in Cambridge
London Blokes
Some Guerilla performers outside the Portrait Gallery
Here are some photos from a night-time walk in London-town:
I've also been watching a lot of movies lately and making more time for leisure reading and learning, which is nice. My latest film recommendations are Monty Python's Life of Brian, My Fair Lady, and Inglorious Bastards (not out for rent yet in the states, I saw it in the theatre because films are belated here). It's turned autumn here in london and soon it will be winter. You can tell by the increasing greyness in my photos. It's already started getting dark at 5:00. The weather isn't bothering me, at least not yet, and reading Hyde Park is showing another, very beautiful side of itself. I was there the other daying and the city employees were doing leaf maintenance. A very tedious but strategically done task, I was quite impressed with their methods.
DLR train racing by
