Green Man

The first thing i properly learned here was that the Green Man lies.

As a road-crossingly-challenged human, i have to go to great efforts to cross at designated crossings, & i figured in London this is especially important. Alas, i dutifully wait for the traffic lights to change, & two seconds later the Green Man, a fabulous escape artist, has been fleetingly replaced by its Red counterpart, and cars jump into action, returning to the ultimate goal of innocent-pedestrian homicide.

The second thing is that cars here will NOT stop for anything, & that the speed limit is an arbitary term, apparently.

Things have definately improved; on tuesday i did something i rarely do, & that was to mope around. I had a little cry & then decided i needed a distraction, so i phoned Al from school. We have never really been friends as such, but we chatted occaisionally if we bumped into each other at school. I had never been happier to see anybody in my life. It turned out, we were both having a pretty crap time at freshers, & that although we'd have fun, it would all boil down to crap again. Afterward i went to a photo session & in the que i managed to get to know a few people on my course. I think i really am going to enjoy lectures with them, which was confirmed by the course social later that evening. I'd had tickets for Egg that night, but boycotted it & followed my course people to a different club, the Roxy, for their indie night. It turned out to be an awesome night due to decent music & the company of people who are actually willing to dance. Before the event i'd taken a walk in the same area, which is basically my street, & by the end of the night it did feel a little like my own neighbourhood. The day had improved rapidly from when i left my room; the only thing to taint it was my growing frustration at how trendy the people on my street are, & how it's really obvious that my clothes are cheap & my style sucks in comparison, whereas back home i would have considered myself reasonably individual. The area is full of PR girls & rich indie kids & vintage junkies & suave businessmen & it really is a bit of a culture shock.

I came back home & i have a feeling i spent hours in the kitchen afterwards, but all of those sessions have merged into one, so who knows.

On wednesday we had more induction things, & again i can't be precisely sure of what i did for the rest of the day but the evening was definitely a lot of fun. I went to soho for dinner with Marie (my roommate) & i went on a hunt for cheap dinner in soho, which was really good. In that time i got a few phone calls from people to come out/ stay in with them (& stay in means kitchen party) but the last one i got was from Ophelia, the girl i walked back with from Koko. I figured freshers week was still negative fun for her, & as i still haven't forgotten just how much it can suck, i lied & told her i had no plans & met up with her instead. We went to the main uni quad, which looks a hell of a lot like Washington, & sat on the steps & talked for ages. I can see why she's not been having a whale of a time; she's on a totally different level from the average young person, & far more interesting.
We realised after a while that we'd got locked in, so having found security man, we returned to our separate halls, & thinking i'd just go get some water from the kitchen, i ended up doing an all-nighter talking to Alex from my floor when everyone else went to bed. It's amazing how after one night of deep conversation, the type that you can only achieve at that point in tiredness where your thoughts are shockingly bizarre, how much more you can get to know somebody.

I got to the morning lecture on time, in which i fell asleep, & then followed the people from my course to the biochem meeting- i LOVE our lecturer. I aspire to be like her, honestly.
Having trudged through freshers fayre (biggest in the country apparently), signed up to about 20 societies (all the political ones for the hell of it, all the art ones to refill the hole where i used to hold painting & photography so dear, & a few others) & bumped into the people i'd met on the first night (they apparently don't hate me & have really missed me), i returned to my room to finally unpack properly & eat. I had nothing to do & literally everybody had tickets for this parent-approved-style rave, so i rang up Katherine, who went to my school & is in second year here. She's been giving me loads of advice since i got my offer, but i hadn't seen her since the move, so it was great to go to her new apartment. I hadn't been in a home for ages & it was really quite awesome to just sit in her room talking with her housemates & her. We then went to the union, which isn't half bad actually, & finally brought her & Rebecca (the italian, awesome ousemate) back to my halls. We made hot chocolate, which is always win. What is even more win, & doubt much else could be more win than this, was breaking out of the 7th floor & climbing onto the roof. You can see all of London from there, it really is breathtaking.

Today i got a lot of much-needed sleep, followed by a tour of the library. On the way to the next lecture, i bumped into Harriet from the Slade art school in UCL & got her to come along to our lecture- "what sex really means". It was SO amazing; it reminded me why i love science & that, at least academically, university iswhat i've always wanted.
The gallery we went to afterwards with one of her friends from her foundation course was really, really cool collection by Ryan McGingley. We went for coffee afterwards & now i'm back doing this. I'm about to go food shopping because i realised as soon as i tried to cook, that i have a hell of a lot of good food in the cupboard, but absolutly no combination of ingredients i can make anything out of.

I'm not looking forward to this... XD

Orchid