This time, pictures from the London Eye, when Sami was here, and pictures from Richmond Park – fewer pictures of me and my friends, as requested.

I went into Central last Friday with the usual crowd, plus Cassady and Sami, and we went up the London Eye – beautiful at night, and I got some pretty good pictures. I pretty much sat on the floor of the little pod the entire time trying to get the right exposure time to get a decent picture of Big Ben and Parliament… some time I want to go back with my cable release and just set my camera down for the full half-hour to see what comes of it. I really want to go into Central at night and just mess around with night shots, but I haven’t had a chance yet. I have plenty of time, though!!

Saturday we went to Camden Market – a huge outdoor/underground market – but didn’t get too many pictures. Samangie was decidedly unimpressed by the whole place; I think it was a bit too hippie-ish for her. After that we went to Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea (football club) pitch… very exciting for me, as I’m sure you can all imagine… I know how she feels, though, I check the A’s and MLB websites at least three times a day to keep tabs on what’s going on! Saturday night we ate at a restaurant called Wagamama – it seems to have become something of a weekly event for us… not something I’m totally thrilled with as I’m dying to find a really good Italian restaurant, but, again, there’s still plenty of time.

Sunday we actually managed not to leave campus all day… really rather impressive given how much gallivanting we’ve been doing this past month!

At any rate, I’ll start with the pictures from LAST weekend… sorry I’m still a week behind, I’ll improve, I promise!

Me and Sami in the London Eye pod… yes, that’s as crazy as I get!

Parliament and Big Ben…
not my best picture ever, but it’ll suffice until I can get up there again!

Sami and me and Big Ben…
The picture of us is actually in my room, but I superimposed it over a picture I took on the London Eye…I love Photoshop!

Just Big Ben

Me and my ever-present map…
I swear that’s how I hold a map… honest!

Musarrat, Me, Sami, Cassady in front of Big Ben

Me in front of a red phone booth…
I hate touristy pictures, it wasn’t my idea!

Sami in the phone booth… also not my idea…

That’s all I really have from that night… I have a ton of other pictures from the London Eye, but they didn’t come out too well, so I won’t bore you with them. You really only need to see one picture of Big Ben and Parliament to get the idea. The rest of the pictures are from Richmond Park. I was feeling kind of restless Wednesday afternoon so I packed up my bag and went into Richmond Park. If you look at the map, Montford House is pretty much right across from the road that leads to the Cambrian Gate, so it’s really close. I walked around a bit, but it was kind of discouraging because, at least where I was, it was really hard to find a section where you couldn’t see the city or any cars. I love London, but I was really hoping to just be able to relax and feel the quiet. I did manage to find an empty bench near a little swampy pond where I sat and wrote for a while, which was nice. I stayed in the area pictured above that main road, so I’ll have to go back another time and explore the rest of the park – it really is so huge that I should be able to go to the middle and not see any cars or anything!

Map of Richmond Park – the Cambrian Gate is in the upper left corner.

Okay, so you can’t see any cars or the city, but there wasn’t a place to sit!

All those plants at the bottom kind of remind me of how I picture Virginia
when it was first settled… or the South during slavery… kind of disturbed my peace a bit.

Just part of Richmond Park… a bit more dry than I might have thought, but, then again, it is fall!

Again, just Richmond Park…

Still Richmond Park… if you’re bored, blame Dad – he wanted sites over people!

Richmond Park with some apartment-looking buildings…
I loved how the split in the trees afforded that view, I wonder what the view was a hundred or more years ago…

Yet more Richmond Park…

Some kind of ditch… I was intrigued…

I kind of felt like this tree when I was there – all knotted up.

Trees and a falling picket fence.

Gorgeous path… a bit of the countryside for me…

Some kind of metal work at the end of the pond I sat by to write.

My bench… empty because it’s sort of falling apart; seemed a bit appropriate that the American would get the reject bench by the reject swampy-pond. Oh well.

You can't really see it because the picture is too small, but the blue outline is my campus, and the red circle is Montfor House... The lower right corner, then, is Richmond Park. Thanks to John Bolton for the picture, by the way!

That’s it for now… again, I hope everyone is well. Classes are still fine – my stats test felt pretty good, if you were wondering. It could just be because it’s still early in the semester, but I don’t think I’ll have much of a problem. I’ll have quite a few term papers to write, but they shouldn’t be too bad. I’ve written term papers before. The only thing I have a problem with is that the school makes a huge deal out of plagiarism, to the point where we have to submit all our papers through an online site that checks our papers for plagiarism. I’ve heard that the site comes up with false-positives with some regularity, as well, and I really don’t appreciate the feeling that we’re all guilty until proven innocent. I’ve never plagiarized in my life, but this whole thing has gotten me a bit worried. They’re saying that even having friends edit your papers is plagiarism, in which case, actually, I guess I have plagiarized, because I’ve helped plenty of people with their papers over the last few years – my last English professor encouraged peer editing! It shouldn’t be a problem, though, I’m sure I’ll be fine – I’ve never had a problem expressing my opinions!

Again, much love,

Dominica

Okay… I’ve been working on this for the last WEEK, and things keep going wrong. Last night I had it almost entirely finished before my laptop decided that overheating and shutting down would be a really good idea. We had words. Well, to be more accurate, I had words, but I was actually too furious to utter many of them, so my computer was more on the receiving end of some seriously vile glares than prey to my sharp tongue. It got lucky this time. Now I’m working in Word first to see if I can just upload the entire file… we’ll see how it goes. If nothing else, I won’t lose the whole thing if my computer decides to mutiny again.

At any rate, these are pictures from LAST Friday and Saturday night, September 8^th and 9^th… that’ll show you how long I’ve been working on this. Maybe next Monday I’ll have pictures up from this past weekend when Sami was here… maybe.

Me, getting ready to go out for Jessica’s birthday…
Yes, I’m wearing make-up…

Me and Samangie – I don’t know if I explained the nickname…
Until she was born, Angie’s parents thought she was supposed to be a boy, and her name was going to be Samuel. When she was born, obviously, she was a girl, and her sister suggested the name Angela. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really like the name or feel that it fits her, and prefers the nickname for Samantha, Sam. In attempt to combine the two, we’ve coined
Sam + Angie = Samangie.

Me and Samangie again, keep an eye on the boots…

Samangie, Anne, Vasi, Musarrat, and me

Top row: Jessica (the Birthday girl), Ben, me
Bottom row: Vasi, Roxanne, Anne, Samangie, Musarrat
Everyone was going to a club in Kingston for Jessica’s birthday,
but Samangie, Musarrat and I decided we didn’t get all dressed up just to go to Kingston…
so we went to Hard Rock Café instead…

Me showing Musarrat and Samangie how easy it is to take a picture of yourself…
Also a requisite tube picture…

Me and Musarrat, another requisite tube picture.

Musarrat and Samangie, the requisite tube pictures continue…

Musarat and me, this time on the way back from Central…

At last, all three of us, still on the tube coming back from Central.

Like I said, notice where the boots are now...
Samangie couldn't handle the whole night in them!

These are from Saturday night, now. Musarrat, Vasi, me and Samangie at Bella Italia off Regent Street… I tried to do some red eye work, but I haven’t perfected it yet so it just looks like we have different colored eyes… I’ll work on it

Vasi, Musarrat, and me heading back from Regent Street…
We walked about 5K that day, all told, and this was towards the end.

Musarrat, Samangie, and Vasi on Hanover Street between Regent and Bond…

A random Bentley just parked on Hanover Street…

Who leaves their Bentley just parked on the street???

Apparently people don’t have a problem leaving their Lamborghinis parked on the street, either, although this one, at least, was in front of a hotel with a security-type watching it…

A red Ferrari just sitting there…

I guess that’s just Bond Street for you…

Here’s a blue one, too… While Vasi was taking pictures of all the huge-brand store fronts, like Prada and Chanel, I was taking pictures of Ferarris… hmmm….

Samangie, Vasi, and Musarrat with a couple of Bobbies on Piccadilly near the Ritz. We ended up walking all the way from the Oxford Circus station to the St. James’ Park station by way of Wellington Arch and Buckingham Palace.

That’s pretty much it for that weekend. Sunday Musarrat, Samangie and I went to church with Allie (the girl who flew over with me) but there wasn’t too much to say about it… other than that I hated it. According to Samangie it was “praise and worship.” Whatever it was, it was NOT my thing.

I hope this post finds everyone doing well. My classes are still good – nothing difficult yet. I have my first Stats test tomorrow, so I’m not really looking forward to it, but I’ve been studying with a guy in my class so I should be fine. The fact that I’ve taken the class already means I’m probably of more help to him than he is to me, but, it gets me to work on it, so I’m not complaining. Hopefully Wednesday I’ll be able to post pictures from this past weekend… keep checking back, and thank you to everyone who’s left comments! Please continue to do so, I love hearing from everyone!

I miss you all!!

Love,

Dominica

Anybody want to hear a funny story??

So, the school served wine with dinner tonight, and most of the girls I was eating dinner with grabbed glasses of either white or red. After that, one of them didn't want hers, so Vasi ended up with two glasses of red wine and one of white. Angie and I tried them, and I liked the white wine a bit better, so I ended up finishing Vasi's for her. When we went downstairs then (it's a two-floor cafeteria) with our trays, I stopped to see if I could grab a banana. Unfortunately, all the bananas were bad and they were at the bottom of the bowl, so I had to futz around a bit to look at them. Of course, as I turned around again, I tilted my tray, and the glass slid to the floor and crashes. And, also of course, everyone in the cafeteria applauded the first girl to break a glass. Then, me, being me, I curtsied. I love me sometimes. Best part? Vasi got all the "drunk girl" comments...

So... I finally managed to get this set up, and post some pictures. Commentary will follow. I had something all written out, but I've had to redo this thing so many times, all my clever witticisms have flown out our window. At least we live on the ground floor, so they didn't have far to go...
Main entrance into our flat... the stairs to the left lead to the entrance to the rest of the flats, and we live in the hole that nobody notices.
The advantage to that is that we actually DO have a little hole where I'm hoping the Royal Mail people will leave packages people send me! ;)
The dining table right at the entrance... we had two chairs, but one of them is out for repair. We can only assume that it'll find its way back at some point...

Here's our lovely galley-style kitchen... long and narrow. There's actually a rather sizeable space just in front of the fridge out of view. As you can imagine, I'm dying to do something with it, although I don't know what yet. I just hate the wasted space...
My flatmate Vasi making Greek coffee for both of us, which is why she's in a few of these pictures.
The hallway that leads from the dining table and front door down to our bedrooms and the bathroom straight ahead.
The bathroom itself, featuring the evil shower curtain that tries to smother me every time I take a shower. (Which is why I've requested one from home, WITH magnets at the bottom!)The entrance to mine and Angie's room...... and then from the other end, showing our closets.
Angie's bed, under the window and in front of the radiator - I asked, it's not a fire hazard, so don't worry.
Kind of an overview of the room, but meant to show the flags on the ceiling...
My bookshelves... it's a good thing I'm not in California because an earthquake would land those books on my head!
Our desks... not quite sure which is worse than the others... Angie's is bigger but has no drawer, and mine is small but has a drawer... our room is something of a hodge-podge of furniture...
My desk area, including the little cart we commandeered from the kitchen to house our printer... we're resourceful like that!Vasi thinks my bed is comfortable... must be that extra duvet under the sheets!
My pride and joy! All my pictures right where I can see them... well, there and on the opposite wall. I'm hoping to expand it as I collect more pictures throughout the semester. Now that I have a printer, all I need is the right photo cartridge (and at the right price) and I'll be in business.

That's all for now... I started this narrative last night and it's taken this long to finally get it (sort of) the way I want it. Please either e-mail me back with comments or post them here, I'd love to hear from everyone! Also, feel free to forward the link to anyone you think would be interested!

Much love,

Dominica