Bizarro World...

So I came to the conclusion today that London exists in some sort of weird parallel universe where the majority of the population is certifiably crazy. I almost can't believe I waited this long to draw this conclusion. I mean, I have seen some strange stuff in my life, but these past couple of weeks have been nothing short of hilarious. And appalling. Hilariously appalling, really...

I know I already mentioned the guy who randomly approached me and asked if I'd like to have his child, and while that was definitely funny, I can't say I'd be all that surprised if it happened while we were out downtown in Athens. London is crazy on a whole 'nother level. Here's what I mean...

-- I already listed the James Taylor-playing Underground man as one of the things that makes me smile. What I didn't mention was the lady who plays on the days when he doesn't. She is this little pixie of a lady who looks like a tiny version of Mimi from the Drew Carey show. She has got to be pushing 60, yet she wears clothes that look like they were made for Disco Barbie, and she ALWAYS, even at 8 in the morning, has on huge gobs of this glittery blue eye makeup that make her look like a smurf. To top it all off, I am thoroughly convinced that she was in the munchkin chorus in The Wizard of Oz when they sing 'We Welcome You to Munchkinland'...and better yet, in her helium voice, she unashamedly belts Bette Midler songs in the far-too-echoey tunnel of the Underground. I always make sure to check which day it is when walking into this particular tunnel, and I quickly turn my iPod on full blast when I realize it's her and not my James Taylor man.

She's amusing, but she can't hold a candle to these three all stars...

-- A couple weeks ago, my friend Cora and I were walking over to another one of the universities in London to listen to a talk about women and AIDS. Nice and uplifting, I realize...I swear, as a result of school, my life revolves around HIV at this point. Anyway, we were just walking down the sidewalk, minding our business, and we were headed up a little incline. I sort of glanced out in front of us, because, as I mentioned before, you can never be too careful about watching where you're walking around here. Well a little ways up the hill, there was this stubby man with a big beer belly just sort of standing in the middle of the sidewalk. He had this weird look on his face, and as we got up to his part of the hill, he started doing this creepy stalker-stare straight at Cora and myself. Naturally, he was on my side of the walkway, so when we got right up to him, I made a very concentrated effort to stare straight at Cora (and away from him) as she was talking to me...and then I hear the strangest sound coming from our creepy little sidewalk man. Out of sheer morbid curiousity, I made the mistake of glancing over at him, and I see him standing there, poking his belly at us and doing that spitting 4-year-old raspberry thing with his tongue. He made that sound for a solid 10 seconds, and I didn't even know what to do but make a face of "what the...," look at Cora in shock, and walk as quickly as I could the rest of the way into the Underground station. We'd have liked to blame it on the fact that he was hammered (at 4:30 in the afternoon), but the bottle in his hand said Diet Coke. What a psycho...

-- So immediately after the sidewalk spitter totally creeps me out, we get on the train to head over toward the London Bridge, where our talk was. We make our way onto the subway, and at this point, we're still pretty tickled by the Incident. Cora then makes a comment about how weird stuff always happens to me, referring to the baby proposition, and right about that time, this impish little man jumps onto the train and stands near us. We're just standing there, minding our business and talking about the funny things that have happened lately, when he overhears our conversation and evidently decides that we are in need of some religious intervention on his part. He basically starts doing what looks like a little Irish Jig dance and pulls a crucifix out of his pocket. He holds it up in the air and repeatedly starts making a cross motion in front of us, while smiling this weird toothy (but missing a few teeth...) grin and chuckling to himself. I swear, at this point, I'm thinking that someone has definitely lost the key to the Central London Nuthouse and all of the crazies just happened to hop right on over to join us for a little higher learning at the London School of Economics...

These things were funny enough, but I believe that was actually Friday the 13th, so I'd just chalk it up to people being weird. And then today happens...

-- I'm sitting in the atrium of a building at school this afternoon, waiting for my friend Heather so we could go listen to this boring lecture on participatory action efforts in Brazil (don't ask, it was terrible...and in Portuguese...), when it starts raining the obligatory 2 inches for the day. Of course, everyone starts scurrying around whapping people with their umbrellas, and the chaos that I previously described for you ensues. I, however, can sit happily inside and laugh about all of this, because I don't have to walk anywhere. And then I see one of the stranger things I've ever witnessed. This tiny girl (seriously, even I probably had 3 inches and 15 pounds on her) ducks inside the doorway, for what I assume is a momentary break from the insanity going on on the sidewalk. Ohhhhh no. I had no idea what a treat I was in store for. She crouches down and pulls a pair of those swishy warm-up pants out of her bag. Ok, I think...maybe she's going to the gym. Nope, nope, nope. She proceeds to pull them on OVER her regular pants...and yes, Anna, she almost falls while doing this. Twice...but she doesn't stop there. She then tucks the blazer-esque jacket that she's already wearing INTO the top of the pants, cinches up the drawstring around her waist, and ties them as tight as they'll go. Then she crouches back down again, pulls a little nylon pouch out of her bag, ever so carefully unzips it, and pulls out an anorak (those swishy pullover jackets with a hood that zip halfway up that every kid who shops at Old Navy has). She pulls the giant (and by 'giant' I mean this jacket probably would have fit Reggie White) thing over her head and zips it all the way up to her chin. She then cinches the drawstring around her face so tightly that all you can really see is her nose. As if all of this wasn't enough to make me laugh out loud, she isn't quite finished. She crouches down one last time, pulls a SHOWER CAP out of her bag and pulls it over the hood of Reggie White's jacket. Then she goes to work on her shoes. She tucks the bottoms of her swishy pants (and by extension her other pants too, I guess...) into her shoes and then loops the laces around the bottom of her pants and ties them up around her ankles, in what I can only assume is a final attempt at keeping water off of her clothes. The girl looked like she was ready to go fly fishing. In Niagra Falls. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life, and I couldn't believe no one else was getting to witness it. She then zips her bag up, straightens her shower cap, and marches out into the rain. I mean...was all of that really neceesary?? Have you never heard of this great invention called an umbrella? Heather, of course, got there about 15 seconds too late to see any of this for herself, so while I was telling her about it, I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face...oh, and I know I must have said the word 'pants' about 10 times, really loud and giggly, which, FYI, is not something you want to do in England. 'Pants' here means underwear...and I could totally care less. It was hilarious.

I have GOT to start taking my camera with me when I leave the house...

Oh, and one last funny thing...in my horrendously boring research methods lecture last friday, my teacher was talking about experimental design and the placebo effect. He was using this example of people with colds, and how giving them anything resembling medicine can sometimes cause them to report a lessening of their symptoms. The remedy of choice in his example was echinecea...only he kept pronouncing it "ek-ay-nay-see-uh." He must have ever-so-eloquently butchered this word 15 times in a span of 20 minutes, but ironically, only after he made some snide comment about Americans being dumb. Beautifully illustrated there, sir...

That's about all I've got for today. Just wanted to share some laughs from the looney bin that I am currently calling home.

However, I think that in order to truly appreciate it, you may just have to see it for yourself...hint, hint... :)

Love Actually...

Last week, I was feeling particularly London-y and decided to spend a rainy night NOT reading (for once!) and instead, I watched Love Actually...which, I should point out for those of you who haven't seen it, is one of the greater movies of all time, in my humble (but accurate) opinion...and was reminded of how much I love the opening part. It's a big montage of pictures of random people greeting people in the airport, all huggy and happy to see each other, and it has Hugh Grant narrating in the background. This is what he says:

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the Arrivals Gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. Seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there...fathers & sons, mothers & daughters, husbands & wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends...when the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge. They were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."

I so love that part of that movie, because I so believe what he's saying. I know that I'm usually a smiley, bouncy, happy girl...some might say annoyingly so...but one of my worst fears is turning into one of those people who you see out somewhere and wonder why they look so sad. I've noticed a lot of people like that since I've been here...the ones that look like life has just worn on them to the point that they don't even smile...and it's so sad to me. I know life isn't all cotton candy and fingerpaint, but I am so incredibly tired of turning on the news only to see stories about wars and bombs and genocide and politics and bird flu. I know those things are important and that they play a big part in determining how the world works, but I guess I naively wish that every once in awhile, people could just stop for one second to realize that it's not all bad. There are good things that happen...lots of them, every single day...but everyone is so busy worrying and complaining and arguing that they miss them. I also wish people would remember that, at the end of the day, we're all just people, and we all want the same things. We all want to be happy. We all want to be healthy. We all want to be free. We all want to be loved. We all want to feel safe. We all have dreams. Regardless of nationality, or age, or gender, or race, or sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status, or political affiliation...regardless of whether or not your religion wants you to wear a veil...regardless of whether you love the President or despise him...

That's the other thing I'm tired of...I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I try to keep my mouth shut in public because I don't want anyone to hear my American accent...I do this because it honestly feels like almost everytime this happens, I get an evil look and an eye roll, and then I get asked, 'so how do you feel about Bush?' I hate this question. I hate it for several reasons, but I hate it most of all because I shouldn't have to explain myself to these people simply based on what my birth certificate says. Why does it MATTER what I think?? If I met someone from Venezuela, my first question wouldn't be, 'so, do you think Hugo Chavez is a nutball too, or is that just us?' It is totally unfair to clump 300 million people together and assume that we all share the same mindset. I'm beginning to think that a lot of this is the result of some kind of weird global inferiority complex...that because we're the biggest dog in the fight, we have some kind of target in the middle of our chest that everyone feels like hitting, although at the end of the day, they sort of want one themselves because that would mean they're calling the shots. It just seems especially silly in a country like England, where people act like they hate us, yet they sit comfortably on our coattails most of the time and cruise right along with whatever's going on, content to be the allies but at the same time relieved that they aren't 'the bad guys.' I know a lot of them don't like Tony Blair either, but then again, I don't immediately ask every Brit I meet who they voted for. I do really like this quote that I heard of his recently though. He was asked by a member of Parliament why he believes so much in America, and he said "A simple way to take measure of a county is to look at how many want in...and how many want out." I think he's on to something there. I can't help but think that, for all of our problems and weak spots, I have to appreciate the fact that I can still make up my own mind and not worry about getting blown up by a roadside bomb. Maybe that's what I'll start saying to these idiots who evidently enjoy political debates on the Underground...

I can't even believe I'm writing about this, because I rarely discuss politics with anyone, but I guess I'm just constantly beaten over the head with this stuff, and I'm over it. I'm over the insanely divided way in which our country, and the world in general, operates. I hate that everything has to be a battle, and I obviously don't know what needs to happen to fix it, but honestly...

However, I have to believe that things can be different. The eternal optimist in me believes that things can change for the better because Hugh Grant and his script writers are right. Even with all of the fighting and disease and controversay and poverty, the world is still a beautiful place full of people who laugh, and cry, and fear, and hope, and love, and dream. And you know what Eleanor Roosevelt said..."the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

I guess that's me :)

They say you have to crawl before you walk...

Well, evidently the British are still working on crawling, because I SWEAR to you, they can't walk to save their lives. Much like any other place, you have the obligatory morons who stop walking with no warning & the ones who can't grasp the concept of 'if you're slower than Christmas, please kindly walk to the side so those of us with places to go can pass you', but I've never been someplace where simply choosing a side to walk on is an impossible task. It probably ties right on into the fact that, for the most part, people are unbelievably rude here, but honest to God, merely walking down the sidewalk here is the most taxing part of any day. It's like playing real-life Frogger, only the consequences of losing are death or dismemberment. Logic would lead you to believe that because they drive on the left side of the road that they'd walk on the left side of the sidewalk. Au contraire. You try & conform to their wrong-sidedness and you find yourself getting into head-on collisions. Ok, so you move to the other side of the sidewalk...nope, happens on that side too. You can't win for losing, & then throw in the people who don't even attempt to choose & instead opt to stay right in the middle of the walkway. I know it's a stupid thing to get mad about, but it's constant, & it's everywhere you go. I think my road rage has turned to sidewalk rage. I'm really wondering if I'm eventually going to see an all-out brawl in the middle of the street, because these are some seriously self-involved, 'my-day-is-more-important-than-yours' people we're talking about. I'll try my hardest not to actually get involved when it happens, but I feel fairly certain that the occurence of such an event is inevitable. I only hope I have my camera when it finally ensues!

Oh...and none of this is even taking into consideration the days when it rains, which is more often than not. It's kinda like driving on 285 in Friday afternoon Atlanta rush hour traffic when it rains; take the normal inability to walk and increase it by a factor of 10. The streets and sidewalks are mostly old & uneven, so there are places where huge, deep puddles accumulate, and people shove you right into them. And then there's the issue of the umbrella. I've quickly learned that if you're going to survive in London, you must never leave home without your umbrella...which means that everyone on said crazy sidewalk is similarly armed with one when it starts to rain. The sidewalk maddness then turns into huge pile-ups of entangled umbrellas spokes (what do you call those??) and angry, sopping wet people, because no one takes into account that you need to tilt to one side or the other when another umbrella-weilding person is walking straight towards you. It's hilarious to watch from inside the front window at Starbucks, but it's not quite so funny if you get stuck in the middle of it. If I make it out of here with both of my eyeballs still intact, I'll consider myself lucky.

So other than the daily near-death experience of making it to school and back home again, everything's going well and life is good. School is going to be hard, and I think I'm finally going to have to actually learn how to study, but I figure, if I work hard and do my best, I should be ok. There are around 20 of us in my programme (stupid British spelling!), and 10 or so of us have formed what we lovingly refer to as our 'cult.' It's so funny, we move in a pack everywhere we go. We're nice and diversified too: there's a girl from Virginia, a girl from Minnesota, 2 girls from Canada, a boy from England, a boy from Nigeria, a girl from Australia who now lives in Botswana, a girl from Zimbabwe, a girl from Norway, a girl from Ireland, and me. I'm sure people listening to us talk are baffled by the random assortment of accents, but we like it. Plus, it's saving us a TON of time and sleep, because we split up our readings and summarize them for each other. Sweet, huh? Maybe tomorrow in our reading group we'll hold hands and sing Kum Bay Ya.

In other news, I must say that, although it physically pains me to miss football season, at this point, I'm almost relieved that I'm here and not there. I was telling my daddy yesterday, it's much easier to mourn from afar. This way I don't have to see the newspaper headlines unless I seek them out, and I can avoid the idiots on the radio all together! I know that even the best teams experience growing pains from time to time -- Miami, FSU, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Virginia Tech are all currently having struggles of their own, and look at Penn State, Michigan, & Alabama a few years ago. Tennessee didn't even get to a bowl game last year!! -- but losing to Vanderbilt is about as low as you can get. Except for losing to Mississippi State. If we lose Saturday night, I'm going to have to request that the powers that be seriously consider just forfeiting the rest of the games and sending the boys into hibernation until next year. At least that way we wouldn't have anyone else tearing an ACL or doing whatever it is that kickers do to hurt themselves.

In keeping with last week's list of things that make me smile:

- the guy who sits in the tunnel of the Oxford Circus Underground station and sings James Taylor and old, old Elton John songs; today he was singing the Jackson Five!
- the fabulous people watching here -- my Mema would be so proud! It really is hilarious the things that people deem wearable over here. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if a blind person dressed some of them!
- the cute little school-uniformed kids that cram onto the trains in the afternoon to go home from school; I still find it pretty impressive that they know where they're going...and by the way, yeah RIGHT, that my kid is ever riding MARTA by him/herself!
- the fact that there's a new poster advertising the London Theatre Broadway production of Chicago...with "America's Sweetheart" (really?) Ashlee Simpson playing Roxie Hart. Patrick Swayze is also doing Guys & Dolls right now. We are sooooo going to the theater!

Oh, and adding to the vocabulary list, I heard a little girl who couldn't have been 12 say "this is bollocks" the other day. This place is awesome...

And yes, Momma, I'll take pictures soon, I promise...

It's in the little things...

Before I left home, I had a bunch of you suggest that I start a blog to keep everyone posted on what's going on over here, so...wah lah. Your wish is my command. I don't know how often I'll have something interesting to write about, but thus far I've only met about 10 possible friends, so who knows. I may have way more spare time on my hands than I'm used to! I'm thinking that the loneliness thing would probably be good for my scholastic endeavors, but I bet it would also be pretty detrimental to my personal wellness, so...we shall see. Hopefully once I get settled in, I'll find a happy medium. Until then, I'll be thriving on e-mails from home (hint, hint!!) and trying to find my way in the biggest, weirdest place I've ever been. I swear, If you'd have told me a year ago that this is where I'd be and this is what I'd be doing, I'd have told you you were out of your mind. Crazy what can happen when you least expect it, huh? If this is any indication, I don't even want to KNOW where I'll be a year from now.

So let's see...I got here a week ago today and spent the better part of my week trying to come to grips with the fact that, yes, I did indeed just pack up my whole life and move at least 5 time zones (7 in Allison's case, 8 from Sarah, and 9 from Wes) away from every single solitary person that I know and care about. I know most of you see me as a somewhat of a social butterfly, but this "butterfly" definitely never realized how isolated and fish-out-of-water-esque she could feel! I'm sure I'll be just fine once I get settled into some sembelance of a routine, but right now, I can't help but think that I'm a bit crazy for taking this jump. My hope, and my honest belief, is that I will eventually be so happy here that I don't want to come home (but I will, I promise), thrilled that I did this, and a better person for it. However, I know I can't expect that to happen overnight. I guess it will just take a little while before I can actually see it that way, so until then, please bear with me if I sound like Eeyore, all gloomy and sad and "I lost my tail" about stuff...Ali, that was for you :)

Ok, pouting session over, moving right along...most of my time this week has been spent basically getting acclimated to life in a new country and trying to find my way around without looking like a complete idiot. City-wise, I'm fine. If nothing else, my job at the University DEFINITELY taught me how to read a map and navigate in a strange place! However, I refuse to be one of 'those people' who pulls out a map in the middle of the sidewalk and stares blankly at it for 5 minutes, so sometimes I just have to get myself lost and then wander around aimlessly until I re-find my way. Finding ANYTHING the first time around was definitely challenging (finding school took me an hour, finding a hairdryer took me 3 days!!), but I think I've got my bearings now and can walk around without it being blatanly obvious that I'm (gasp!) an American.

That's the other thing...I almost find myself trying not to talk in public, because it seems like everytime I do, someone gives me a look when they hear my American accent. I feel like people here are just kinda rude and self-inportant in general, to the extent that I honestly believe I could fall down in the middle of the street, in the pouring rain, in front of a bus, and people would just step right over me and keep walking. I'm trying not to take it personally, but it's really weird to have people look you straight in the face and maintain their perma-scowl, instead of smiling and saying hi like they probably would at home. I know it's just a cultural thing, but geez...

The jury is still out on school, although I can say, unequivocally, that this is the scariest, most intimidating place I've ever been. I'm not kidding. It's like Harvard on steriods. They practically have a shrine built to their 13 Nobel Prize winning alumni, which really makes me stop and wonder what I'm doing here! Everything is way more complicated than it is in an American university, which is to say much more complicated than it needs to be, and the answer to every question (if you can even get an answer out of someone) is 'go look on the website'...which, by the way, is the worst website in the history of the internet. You can't find anything, if you do manage to find what you're looking for, nothing makes sense, and you have to have about 45 log-in names and passwords to get anywhere. You'd really think that with all of these brilliant people in one place, they could somehow figure out a way to make things a little more user-friendly, but whatever. Class is alright so far, although I think it will be quite awhile before I raise my hand to say anything. I've been out of school for almost 3 and a half years now, so it's been quite awhile since my brain has had to do any sort of analysis, critical thinking or reading comprehension. I'm hoping those skills will kick back in pretty quickly, or else I'm in serious trouble in the land of the geniuses here!

All craziness and stressing out aside, I think the thing I've realized the most this week is that it really is the little things that make a difference.

Little things that can add up to ruin your day:
- accidentally giving some guy a coin worth 2 pence instead of 2 pounds (the difference between 2 British pennies and 2 British dollars...although it's really like 4 pennies and 4 dollars, but I really can't even get into how infuriating that is!) and feeling like a big idiot about it
- asking the reception desk guy in my building an easy, totally logical direction question and him chuckling and saying to me, "You're in London, not the desert. It'll be alright"...the attitude is not necessary, sir.
-going out of your house for literally 5 minutes without your umbrella, and it starts pouring down rain while you're walking
- wearing my cowboy boots to school :) that are usually totally comfortable, except somehow, now there's this one little seam behind my right heel that's kinda jutting out...a little seam that could evidently be used to kill someone, seeing as how by the time I got home that day, it had carved a nice little bleeding hollow spot out of the back of my ankle that still hasn't gone away.

And little things that remind you that somehow, it will all be ok:
- some guy coming up to me while I was waiting in line to by my Oyster Card (similar to the NYC subway's Metrocard), handing me his, and saying "Here, would you like this? I'm done with it. Seriously, take it," smiling, and walking away
- getting to hang out with Shauna's brother, Chris and his wife, Jan for a couple of days over the weekend; we didn't do all that much except just walk around and explore, but I think just having someone familiar around for awhile was exactly what I needed after the week I had. Plus, they gave me the first hugs I've had in 7 days! I'd never realized what a huggy, affectionate person I am until the option wasn't there...the moral of this story is, if you come to visit, you'd BETTER be prepared to give me a really good hug!!
- all of the sweet, encouraging e-mails that I've gotten from people at home; I promise, I'm working my way down the page responding them :)
- meeting up with some of the people from the London chapter of the UGA Alumni Association last night at about 1 am to watch the stupid Tennessee game; even though we lost, it was so much fun to sit around with people withOUT British accents, watching a game just like you would at home...except that it was 5 in the morning when I had to navigate the bus situation to get home...
- a phone call from Wes at 2:30 in the morning (which is almost lunchtime for him) just to check on me, because he knew I was having a panic-attack kind of day
- walking back to the Underground from school on Thursday and passing what looked like a field trip of kids who were probably 8 or 9; It started POURING right when I was passing them, and they all started squealing really loud and giggling and squirming around. It was so cute, I couldn't help but laugh while walking past them, although it really made me miss all of the adorable little ones in my life at home!
- the hilariously inappropriate guy who walked up to me the other day as I was wandering around in search of the ellusive hairdryer and said, 'Hey. Would you like to have a baby together?' Who says that?!? I couldn't do anything but bust out laughing and say, 'Ummm, no, I'm good, but thank you,' but I did have to give him creativity points. Of all of the bad lines we've ever heard, that has got to be the best one.
-the fact that, in my research methods lecture on friday, my teacher actually used the words "poppycock" and "fat bastards," and he had the word "gibberish" somewhere in his power point presentation; these people are too funny...

So yeah, while there have definitely been days this week when it took every ounce of energy I had not to break down and cry in the middle of the hall at school, I'm making it. I'm determined to make the most out of this year, and I know that it will all work out ok in the end, as long as I let the little things that make me smile be the ones I focus on.

I suppose I should go read all kinds of oh-so-interesting articles about HIV/AIDS prevention programs in Uganda and textbooks about health psychology theories, but I'll be back with stories (and pictures, I suppose) sometime soon. Until then, keep me posted on life at home.

Cheers! (Do I sound British yet??)