London was amazing. I may have accidentally procrastinated my journal entries because I wanted to write each one really well and I never had the time to sit down and write one really well. . . well, Madison of the past, now you have a bunch of cobbled together half-memories very poorly written. Well done.
Things I'll miss most: Bookstore cafes the Gower Gang food markets walking everywhere tubing everywhere else not literature class late night cards late night McDonalds being walking distance from a lot of cool places and never going to any of them
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Swingers has to be the fanciest mini golf place I've ever been. I spent twenty five American dollars on two drinks there. It was cool though, there were two stories, two sets of nine holes--it was probably my first indoor mini golf too-- a full bar, and a couple food establishments. We had to break into groups of three and four so they could keep everyone moving through the game quickly, which wasn't necessarily ideal, but it made sense since the place was packed. I had fun until the expensive cocktails got to me.
It was a lot. There were a lot of tears. We sang and danced and drank. Professors danced on the coffee tables. People said their parting words to one another. I went to bed at 1:30 the next morning. Shoutout to Georgia Bobo for putting the whole thing together!
I got that exact reaction from my parents, my therapist, and Chopan. Yes I want to be a bartender, I think it will be super cool. It's a great job to go with writing since I'll be meeting people and it's in the evenings, so I have all morning to write. I applied for dozens of bartending gigs while I was in the Gower house, and thanks to continued support from the aforementioned people and the Gower Gang, I landed one at Medieval Times. Me. A bartender.
I talked about the origin of cards in my review of 35 Gower Street. But cards became a staple in the house. Poker came and went, beer pong was always fun but not ever night, but cards always happened. There was an awkward period of time after 4:30 Billy dinner that was pretty much universally spent waiting for cards to start. You could play a game and dip, come home from the bar and get in on the next game, play once the whole trip, or play every night. The trip wouldn't have been the same without Oh Shit.
I didn't go there nearly as often as a lot of my classmates, but I did go a lot. On the last Friday night, when nearly half the house had left, most of us remaining decided to go to College Arms for one last drink. We joked, we laughed, and I drank half of Kate's cider because she couldn't finish it. We went home and played our final games of cards after, then ended with an Adam Sandler movie. It was painfully delightful.
I only had one day of Excursion Weekend where I didn't see any Eckerd people. I'd planned on staying in my hotel room and getting work done, but the hotel sucked. So I got up early and went to Starbucks. Then I went to Foyles to write when they opened at nine. I didn't last there long by myself. I decided to go the National Gallery. I more people watched than art-watched. After half an hour I was done but I thought I already did one museum, why not do the big one? So I went to The British Museum and was assaulted with field trips of screaming children. I didn't last twenty minutes. I went back to the hotel. (After getting lost of course.)
I wanted to get myself an iced almond milk latte in a bottle from the grocery store right around the corner. I had no idea how to get there, and I didn't feel like asking anyone to come with. So I put it in my map and ended up on the other side of the city at a smaller version of the same grocery store. It took me forty minutes to get back, foreshadowing for my comical lack of navigational prowess throughout the trip. . .
Quarantine looked like it was gonna be fun. I was in a triple with Anna and Briana on the top floor. Anna was the only one that usually lived there. She showed us the window. We opened it and sat on the ledge outside. It was fun. Later, we did it again while Chopan was in the garden and we were scolded. Anna and I were so distraught we sent him this email the next day:
Chopan, Anna and I are very sorry about last night. It was stupid to go on the ledge. And the suicide joke was in poor taste. We're very sorry. He told us he wasn't mad. I don't know how it happened. I faced my fears early and just stretched in the common room. People thought it was funny. It was my thing. I kept making progress well into February. But I fizzled out. It's a lot easier to keep it up at home because there's not as much to do I guess. Then I got too nervous to start again. I didn't want to elicit commentary or draw attention to myself. I established it early in the trip so it didn't take long for people to accept it as normal, but stopping ruined that. I'll get back to it this summer.
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