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...