Days 80-83: A Week of Food-Driven Activities

Outdoor gym? 

Monday: I slept in again. Seriously, I love it. I think I just was ridiculously sleep deprived and I’m finally getting sleep, so all I do IS sleep. But it’s kind of amazing, so I’m not complaining at all. Anyhow, once I got my lazy  bum out of bed, I proceeded to get some studying and work done, then went out to grab a sandwich at a café with Jessica, before returning home and eating said sandwiches in the park. We searched for a bench with a moderate amount of sunlight streaming down on it, but unfortunately Sunday’s beauty kind of started fading into a more typical London gloom. After lunch came the inevitable studying, which I procrastinated on by hitting up the gym, and then kind of studying. Well, first I watched a movie while doing situps and then I studied and realized that I basically had the information memorized. Such an amazing revelation. So? Well, I went downstairs and socialized for a bit before coming back up to do one more run through of the info, shower, and crash out. Early bed? Win. 

Tuesday: Regardless of not setting an alarm, I actually woke up at 8:45 today. This was a big deal. Seriously. I mean, I actually made breakfast. Since when does that happen anymore? Never. Honestly. Anyhow, after enjoying a most delicious breakfast (haha… right) of cornflakes and wheat toast, I headed upstairs, got my situps out of the way, then prepared myself for a gym visit before my 2pm final. I hate afternoon finals. They are useless. But seriously. I’m much rather have the morning one, get it out of the way, and then have the rest of the afternoon to do whatever I want. Oh well. At least I got my exercise out of the way early. Post final – I felt as though I did well. I finished the thing in about an hour and now I am DONE with sophomore year… in March. What the heck? So weird. But, now I don’t have any stress. All I have to do is enjoy myself as we go to Turkey and then come back home. I can’t explain how excited I am to see Socal again. I love this place… but oh man… home. The word sounds so sweet! We finished up the night with a small group hitting up one of the local pubs, which was a nice, quiet evening out, while everyone else was being lame and staying in a writing their music papers. Psh, procrastination. 

Wednesday: So, I decided to ignore our awful gym hours today and sleep in (for some reason we only get a couple hours in the morning on Wednesdays to go to the gym… stupid). Whatever. Sleeping in was lovely, regardless of the ridiculously loud noises going on in my room, between drawers banging, backpacks zipping, and the like. My roomie doesn’t know the word “quiet”. Oh well. I fell back asleep. So, after getting up and moving slowly, I got myself ready, found some people in the house, and we headed out on a rather long tube trip to “Borough” stop for some delicious Chilean food for lunch. But seriously. We’ve been meaning to go to this place for weeks now, so I was SO excited to finally get out there. And, it didn’t fail us. It was delicious.  Seriously, look at my Chilean sandwich. Amazing. 

Anyhow, after lunch we headed back to the house, got some work done on our final music papers, relaxed, ran around London a bit- just a plethora of awesome last minute things. Later that evening, after group dinner, we got dressed up and FINALLY hit up the piano bar. Seriously, I’ve been meaning to go to this place for ages, and I got about 7 other people to join me. And it was so much fun! I’m bummed that we didn’t check it out earlier, but at least now I know how cool it is and I can try and grab some people this summer to hit it up a couple of times. It was a little pricey, but completely worth it as the pianist played a bunch of popular music and classic rock and got everyone singing along and the like. I cant wait to go back on a weekend evening and see how much more is going on… 

Thursday: I slept in today, preparing for what will be a heinous day of travel tomorrow. Seriously, I’m all messed up right now. My mind thinks that I’m going home, and I’m ridiculously excited, except we still have a week until home. It’s a very weird concept and something that my mind cannot seem to wrap itself around. I know Turkey will be amazing, but most of us in the house are just ready to pack up and see some California sun. Of course, we’ll probably be happy once we get to Istanbul, it’s just the whole “getting there” aspect. I spent most of today cleaning up a bit, packing for Istanbul, hitting up the gym, and finally went out to a quick dinner with Jessica and Andrew at our ever-loved Oriental Canteen. … that place is delicious. We probably go there far too much, but when you have wonton soup that is ridiculously incredible, it’s just inevitable- we keep returning and returning. After dinner, we met up with the rest of the house, managed to get the ping pong table off the deck, and set up a beer pong table out in the park.

Yes, we really did. And, I’m not sure if I should be ashamed or proud of this, but I might have been the instigator behind these actions. Maybe… Regardless, some more house bonding activities and it was a ton of fun. I left early, because unlike some of the people in this house, I actually wanted a little sleep before waking up at 3am to get ready for our day of travel to Turkey. But, all in all, a good week so far. And one more week until I’m standing in LAX. Woohoo! Note- one more picture to come from this evening... I'll put it up later. Or possibly in next week's update.