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It's never a dramaless day here in London. Not necessarily in the sense of gossip-drama, but something's always freaking happening. Take yesterday, for example. My big project of the day was going to the grocery store with a couple of friends. Simple, right? But of course it wasn't for whatever reason ASDA was particularly overstimulating yesterday, and I just was not in a headspace to handle it. I was driving the cart because I love driving shopping carts (or trolleys, as I believe they call them here---which brings to mind Judy Garland singing "clang clang clang went the trolley" about a shopping cart with a bum wheel) but then I was trying to do that, and get what I needed, and stay in my budget (which was arbitrary---I didn't actually set myself a budget before going), and keep track of my two friends, and then on top of it all I wanted to make tacos this week.

You may ask: "What's so overwhelming about tacos?" Well, I wanted to add some pico de gaillo, or just any kind of salsa, to my tacos, with some cheese and avocado, to switch it up at least a little bit. (I come from a family where tacos are beef, salsa, cheese and that's it. You can feel your arteries clogging up as you eat.) The only salsa in the place, however, was spicy, and this poor white girl can't handle that. One of my friends is Mexican-American and was telling me how to make pico, and so I tried to find the ingredients, but I couldn't just get one onion---everything came in packs of multiple that I'm not going to use afterward. Unless I make stirfry that's mostly onions, which doesn't appeal to me for some reason. Ditto tomatoes, and I had no clue where cilantro and limes at all. And then I looked at a recipe and it just seemed so overwhelming. I don't know why (yes I do, it's my ADHD) but cooking stuff from scratch seems like this impossible, herculean task to me---hence why I always buy pre-cooked, pre-cut chicken and the kind of rice where you just pop it in the microwave.

So that led to me almost having a breakdown in the middle of ASDA. But who know, maybe I'll go to the neighbourhood grocery store and try and find the ingredients and make it tonight. The neighbourhood grocery store is much less overstimulating than ASDA. And I ended up staying within a reasonable budget! :D

In other news: I went to the mall with those same friends the other day, and also managed to not spend too much money! My big purchase of the day was a blue iPod nano for £32. It functions almost perfectly! Keyword: almost, because the headphone jack is screwed up and will only play in the right headphone unless you hold it just right. I think I'm going to send it in to this mail repair service I found on-line and see how it goes.

And then Friday, I tried to go to a free library in London to get some writing done, both for personal and school projects. (The British Library requires a bunch of ID to get into the reading room, apparently, and I was trying to avoid being deadnamed and also having to wrangle all that.) I got in after class Friday, and it smelled like BO and was overcrowded. So I gave up and went to the British Library. I arrived, used the bathroom and sat down when I heard an announcement that "the library is now closing and I should make my way to the front". Because of course it closes early on Fridays.

Then, Grey tried to call me for about 30 minutes and I couldn't talk because my cell service was so bad. I made my way back to where the other library was (Leicester Square) and had some tteokbokki for dinner. Which i couldn't even finish because it was too spicy. Thanks, white genes!

So that's my very eventful last few days. I was knocked out Monday through Thursday last week because of my cramps, so nothing at all happened those days. I suppose this is my makeup. Now off to go make lunch and watch a lecture for my class! And hope I'll finally get in bed early tonight. (I keep failing, but not at all for lack of trying.) WIsh me luck. But hey, at least i get to see Legally Blonde: The Musical this week!
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It's been about a week and I've barely had time and energy to blog—my apologies! So far this still feels a bit unreal. I'm sitting in the lecture for my second class right now. Classes here are only once a week, but last four hours! Which is, some might say, a lot. But with a good professor it goes by rather quickly. At least until 5:00 or so. I had my first class yesterday—Genre Fiction—and it was pretty delightful! My classmates were chill, as was the professor—but he was also funny and just a personable fellow. The workload is the only thing that scares me—we have to read a book a week plus read an article and watch an hour video lecture. I meant to get a lot of the reading done this morning, but—cooking interfered!

That's been the biggest challenge so far! My parents never really taught me how to cook and I'm used to relying on the dining halls in America, so it's been a literal learning process, and quite a stressful one at that! I feel like everybody my age knows how to cook—even friends like Eggshell who live in dorms. I know Blue and Green both know how, and Grey does as well. So it all makes me feel like I'm way behind, and a bit pathetic, to be honest. I'm 19 years old and don't know how to do much beyond cooking ramen on the stovetop. It's made cooking this intimidating, impenetrable fog of an activity. I've managed to fry eggs without much incident, but trying to make fried rice last night resulted in a bit of a breakdown 

It's the next day now! I've been very busy of late. And not busy at all. I meant to get a good deal of homework done today and only got about half the reading done that I wanted to get done. But I suppose I have all of tomorrow to do it, as well, and some leftover time on Friday. Blue's coming to visit from his university on Saturday! And then Sunday after church I was thinking of hanging out on-line with Grey and playing some Minecraft. We meant to do that the other day but I had a stress-induced stomachache after my nightmare fried rice episode. Although the rice actually turned out better than I thought!

I just think the stoves here are screwed up, because this morning I spend Heaven only knows how long waiting for the last bit of egg to cook when I was frying two eggs for breakfast, and by the time everything was done the rest was cold. They don't get hot---just warm at best, as my flatmate put it---and they're so unevenly heated!

My second class---Ancient History---is pretty unremarkable. There are a lot more guys in that class compared to Genre Fiction, and I got a true British lad experience yesterday:

Professor: Why is it so hard to validate these ancient artifacts?
Lad (without missing a beat): Because it's really old innit?

I've been watching a lot of YouTube the past week (I've been here a week!!!) because I don't really know what else to do to fill my time outside of class. I'm not really close enough with people to ask them to come over yet, and I don't have any hangout ideas, plus I'm normally tired enough that I just want to chill alone. It's very odd so far but it's only the start of the semester! I still have a lot of time to get used to everything and get into the swing of it.

But that's about it for now. I think I might start getting ready for bed or something---I really am very tired! Toodles!
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I do not want to go back to school. Thankfully spring break is only a couple weeks away! But yeah, I'm really tired of school at this point. Also, I want to bake some French bread and some oven-roasted potato wedges, both of those are so delicious!

 

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