Living La Vida London: Day 9

Staying up late is for the birds, let me tell you. My cousin (and one of my good friends) opened his LDS mission call yesterday for him and 2 a.m. this morning for me- he's going to be living around Mexico City, Mexico for two whole years being a missionary! It's exciting and also sort of sad because he's leaving and I can't talk to him face to face for a long time. But I stayed up far too late for that... it was worth it, though.

Needless to say, I slept in. I was planning on a full day of scholarly pursuits in which I would successfully outline my essay due on Wednesday and create both an outline and a visual for my Dracula presentation tomorrow. That didn't really happen, in fact, I spent a good portion of the day vegging out in my room catching up on YouTube videos. I got so hungry at one point that I had to leave in order to have any chance at creating a successful presentation for tomorrow.

I wandered into the Pizza Hut close to where I live and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the pizza they served there. This was actually a sit-down restaurant complete with a salad bar, so I got to sit and slowly enjoy my meal. I got a salad with my meal so I naturally ventured over to the extremely tiny salad bar to find that there was less lettuce than pasta salad, and absolutely no ranch. I kind of have an emotional attachment to ranch dressing, so a small part of me wept as I settled for the blue cheese dressing. They did have corn, though. I made the most of that feature. When I sat back down at my table for one, I noticed that some very American music was playing, namely Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Getting Back Together" and felt comforted for some reason. There was an older, very prim and proper couple sitting to my left who were nearing the end of their meal and I thought I heard the older man singing along to the song. I shook the idea from my mind, thinking how hilarious but inaccurate that was. Then P!nk's "Just Give Me a Reason" came on and that man actually started singing to it. His wife simply sat there as if it was completely normal. Finally "Careless Whisperer" came on and he started singing again! It was one of the funniest things I have seen so far on my trip.

After my mid-afternoon dinner and show, I wanted to find something that would allow me to further avoid my obligation to prepare for my presentation. I went across the street to St. Mary Abbots church and took a few pictures after sitting at observing the Sabbath for at least a few minutes.

 

I looked up some information on the church after going there and came to find out that although that is not the original building on the site, there has been a church there since 1100. Wow. It was rebuilt in 1370 and 1872 because of the growing size of the area, and funeral monuments from past versions of the church are all around the building as well as outside. Some notable parishioners were Sir Isaac Newton as well as Beatrix Potter who wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and good old Princess Di. 

 

It was cloudy again today (as usual, but I sort of like it that way) and I was passing some stereotypically British looking flats, so I took a stereotypically British facade photo.

I did end up getting an alright visual ready for my presentation. I'll hammer out the exact details in the morning. I feel like sleeping is a good idea at the moment. I've had a long day of doing almost most nothing, and that took it right out of me.