Home is in Your Head

Once we arrived in Amsterdam, it was straight on over to a coffee shop, where we had access to space cakes and joints gallore.

It was here that my friend Lu and I made the very poor decision to eat an entire piece of cake each instead of sharing one. At first we didn't really feel anything so we didn't think anything of it and even helped our friend Em smoke her joint.

In a couple of hours, however, space cake started hitting us pretty hard and I ended up in the middle of the "ocean" unable to move my limbs in the middle of our hostel room. My friend Max finally had to come "save me" from this "ocean," which basically consisted of him leading me to my bed. I felt enclosed in a little bubble where I couldn't communicate with the other people in the room unless they came inside this bubble. It was a classic rookie mistake, and one that I learned a lot from.

It was a really interesting out of body experience, and I'm not writing off pot forever, but I'm definitely not making the mistake of eating an entire space cake again. The kicker was that the next morning, on our walking tour of Amsterdam (during which I was still pretty high), the tour guide warned us against exactly what we did the night before, which we had a good laugh about.

Amsterdam is most known to young American travelers for its red light district and coffee shop culture, but it's significantly more than that. For one, it is a beautiful city, constructed from scratch by the Dutch.
Also, the entire "to each his own" attitude Amsterdamers share is really inspirational and comforting. They generally don't pass any judgment or try to place restrictions on people's personal lives. Our tour guide even said it's actually easier to be a homosexual in Amsterdam because it's so accepted there, and viewed by some as more the norm than being straight.

We did a lot in Amsterdam, but the one other thing that really stands out to me (aside from our crazy space cake adventure) was our visits to the Anne Frank Museum and the Dutch Resistance Museum. It was really interesting to learn about this period in world history that we've all learned about, but from a much more distant perspective.

It was extremely moving to feel that much closer to some of the experiences people went through during the period leading up to, during, and after WWII. I'll never be able to fully understand or comprehend the full extent of what happened, but just being in a country more directly affected than my own helped me at least begin put some of the pieces together. I really appreciate the fact that these types of history museums exist and that people are going to and learning from them. Maybe preserving the memory of and reflecting on the past will prevent us from making these same mistakes.

By the end of our 9 day excursion, I felt extremely exhausted from all the intense traveling and sightseeing, but so grateful and enriched by everything I saw and experienced. At the Flying Pig Hostel where we stayed, their slogan was "Home is in Your Head," and it really resonated with me. I've always had this romanticized idea of being a citizen of the world and living a nomadic existence. For those whose home is truly in their head and can live this kind of life, I fully support their sense of adventure and hunger for new experiences.

But as much as I'd like to count myself among these people, I also like having a place to come back to. Even though I have a tendency to get restless or mildly claustrophobic whenever I'm in one place for too long, I always enjoy the feeling I get when I return to family and friends. At the end of our trip, I was ready to come home to London. It really excited me that London has become a home to me. I don't think I can be a complete nomad, but I have managed to make myself very much at home in two other cities besides Los Angeles (Chicago, and now London) since coming to college.

Now that I'm back in London, I'm really excited to spend some quality time with this city I am now calling home.

Mussels in Brussels

On Monday we headed over to Belgium, the land of chocolate, waffles, and really delicious beer. When we got to Brussels, we quickly learned that lots of things are closed on Mondays...and Tuesdays...and Wednesdays...and sometimes Thursdays...

So for our first day in Brussels, since we couldn't really visit any museums, we wandered about, had greasy Greek food for lunch, browsed a comic book store (Belgians are crazy about comics, who knew?), gazed at the Manneken Pis (the little pissing boy statue), and had a delicious three course dinner during which I finally had Mussels in Brussels!
Some details that made this day especially great:

The Chocolate Crawl: Rick Steves recommended we go on a chocolate crawl in the main town center square in Brussels. Stop one was Godiva, where I shared a delicious chocolate covered strawberry and banana stick with Lu.
Stop two was Neuhaus, where I discovered speculoos for the first time. It is a type of cookie/biscuit that sort of resembles graham cracker but tastes infinitely better, and even more delicious when combined with chocolate. At Neuhaus they embedded the speculoos into a little chocolate, which was the most delicious piece of dessert I have ever tasted. Looks plain, but tastes insanely good.
Third and fourth stops were Galler and Leonidas where there was more delicious chocolate tasting.

Visiting the EU: As per usual, we were a pretty loud and obnoxious group when we were getting ready to listen to the tour guide's presentation at the EU. As we were getting off the elevator, we were all giggling about something or other and the lady directing us to our meeting spot shushed us and told us to calm down. I felt like I was in kindergarten...but then again that feeling was deserved because we were acting like we were five. Oops again.

Delirium: There is a bar in Brussels that is probably the coolest drinking establishment that I've been to. There are 2004 different varieties of beer here, all with their own unique glass to enhance their specific flavor and accompanying drinking experience. Here I discovered Floris, the sweetest, yummiest beer I've ever tasted. The first night I had chocolate flavored Floris, and during our last night I had honey flavored Floris, which was my favorite.
Belgians, like many Europeans, take a lot of pride in their beer. Each beer goes through an intricate process half resembling science and half resembling art to create a truly unique product. I definitely appreciate beer and the work and love that goes into creating it more since visiting Europe, but especially Belgium.

On our second day, we took a day trip to Bruges. Our first order of business was, as is always, food. We stopped by a place recommended by Rick Steves, Laurent, to eat the best waffles ever! I had a waffle with powdered sugar and chantilly.
After a canal tour, and visiting an old church (where we ran into a troupe of kung fu performers), we went on a tour of the only brewery left standing in Bruges, the Half Moon. We had the most darling tour guide who took us through the entire process of creating beer, and some of the history of brewing in Bruges. It's here that we learned about the different glasses and how they are designed to create different effects on the beer and make each tasting session special. Our favorite part, of course was the tasting portion. Here's a picture of their mini beer museum.
On our last day, we visited the awesome Comic Book Museum, the Belgium history museum and a strange place called Parking 58, which was on our tourist map of notable places to visit. We got to this destination and found that indeed, it was literally a parking lot. It looked like the kind of place where a lot of unsavory characters would congregate and make drug deals and shoot people (we, of course, fit right in). However, it did offer a really great 360 degree view of the city.
And that pretty much sums up Belgium. The food was really great, and it was here that I really started to appreciate beer. I was so pleasantly surprised by how much I liked visiting this country because I thought of it more of a brief stop over on our way to Amsterdam. But Belgium was charming, rich in history and most of all, delicious.

Paris, J'taime

This past week, my friends and I headed off on a four city European adventure. After nine days of intense sightseeing and travel, I feel exhausted but so fulfilled by the experience. This is going to be long, so I'll write about it in installments.

Paris Day One

3 a.m.: We woke up as people were stumbling home from their Thursday nights and were miraculously all aboard a cab by 3:45 a.m. For a bunch who all got between 0 and 2 hours of sleep the night before, we were surprisingly cheery and nothing but smiles. Our cab driver was nodding off during the drive to the airport and kept swerving into neighboring lanes (Eek!). I would have been more scared had my friend Lu not been petrified enough for the both of us. We got there all limbs attached, though, and headed off to our first city, Paris.

8:30 a.m.: We arrive in Paris! Sleepy and tired, we trek on over to Oops! Hostel in the Latin Quarter. It was the most darling hostel with Art Nouveau inspired wallpaper and an awesome breakfast. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in visiting Paris.

After having my first Croque Monsieur, which is a more epic version of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, we headed over to the Arc de Triomphe where we climbed all the way to the top and saw the first of many amazing views of Paris.
Mid-afternoon, we wandered along the Champs-Élysées on our way to Musée d'Orsay. I longingly stared at the glorious Louis Vuitton store with the beautiful window decorations and I could feel my heart breaking as we passed over a visit to this mecca of fashion to go to a fancy and overpriced Häagen-Dazs. It's the world's largest luxury store where there are enough employees for every customer. I vow to return one day (soon) and pay my respects.

After browsing the museum for a bit, we were ready for dinner. Our group gets quite grumpy when we're not fed, which is why most of our excursions and decisions revolve around food. After a wonderful and expensive steak dinner and some wine, we went up the Eiffel Tower. They were doing a special light show that night where the tower didn't just sparkle, it turned different colors and patterns. Here's two video clips of the sparkle show and the special light show side by side so you can see the difference. You'll have to turn your head sideways because I can't figure out how to rotate the video. Don't mind the oohs and ahhs on the second video. We were just super excited.



Here I was reunited with Alanna in the most romantic and cinematic of fashions. I ran up to the platform at the Trocadero and it was really dark and I couldn't see, so I started shouting out her name and running around across the platform. Then out of the darkness, with the Eiffel Tower in the background, Alanna ran up to meet me after probably the longest we've been apart since we've met. It was cheesy, but real cheese, not the fake kind. Here we are at the top of the Eiffel Tower (still can't believe it was your first time Alanna).

Paris Day Two
After stopping by for these AMAZING tarts (I told you our lives revolve around food)...
...we hit Notre Dame (which we climbed up and saw yet another spectacular view of Paris), the crypt outside Notre Dame (where we saw awesome ancient ruins) and Sainte-Chapele. At this beautiful church covered with the most intricate stained glass windows that typically awe people to silence, we found ourselves in the middle of the room chattering away and laughing at just about 100 decibels, enough to make the guard there shush us and kick us out of the church. I apologize for being an embarrassment to respectful museum goers everywhere and for perpetuating the stereotype of loud American tourists. In our defense, whatever we were talking about must have been really funny...
We finished the day at the Lourve just as the sun was setting behind the glass pyramid. Obviously, we couldn't see everything we wanted, but that gives me another excuse to return to Paris.

That night we saw Reggie Washington and DJ Grazzhoppa perform a jazz concert in Marais. We all went in thinking it would be a more traditional jazz performance but they incorporated a lot of hip-hop and spoken word into it, which was really interesting. Maybe French people are abnormally skinner than the rest of us because the chairs that we were sitting in were teeny weeny and squished close together. Practically stacked on top of each other in that warm room with the music playing, we all drifted off to sleep...except Brendan because he's the Energizer bunny.

Paris Day Three
After a failed attempt to go skydiving with Max (we stupidly thought they would take walk-ins), we visited the Pompidou museum where we saw Duchamp's Fountain, the Jewish Quarter (best Falafel ever!), a French history museum, and Victor Hugo's house while the others went off to Versailles.

After reuniting at Les Invalides, we headed into the army museum where they had an epic display of weaponry (I'm a little obsessed with swords).
We spent that evening in Monmartre and visited the Sacré-Cœur, where we fought each other with baguettes like the tourists we are. After seeing the Moulin Rouge and more of Pigalle, we had dinner at the cutest restaurant just below Sacré-Cœur (Thanks to Rick Steves for recommending it!) where I had this quiche.
Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, and after 3 days of eating Camembert, drinking wine, and looking at amazing art works I wasn't ready to leave. I still need to visit Père Lachaise cemetery and kiss Oscar Wilde's grave, go to Musée Rodin and finally see a comprehensive collection of my favorite artist's work, shop, and a million other things on top of visiting the Louis Vuitton mecca and revisiting the Lourve. But Belgium called, where more eating, drinking, and sightseeing was to come...

Beating Seasonal Depression

In the U.K., about 20% of residents suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is due to the dwindling daylight hours during the winter and our bodies' natural instinct to hibernate, which is basically code for eat lots of carbs and stay indoors.

This is what I've been waking up to the past few mornings:
Indeed, waking up to these grey skies and rain doesn't exactly put me in the cheeriest of moods, but I'm feeling as excited and privileged to be here as ever.

My meeting with the editor of the Le Monde English Edition didn't really go as I had planned. Everything that newspaper needs to function is outsourced. The print design is outsourced to a company just outside London, their online subscription services and Web design is outsourced to a company in Cambridge, they have a publisher that prints and distributes all of their papers, and their writers all work from home and don't even come in for brainstorming sessions. In fact, there wouldn't even be anywhere for them to come in to because there's no office! The English Edition's "office" consists of the editorial director, at her home, on a single iMac taking care of business.

It was definitely a novel experience for me, seeing this sort of structure in the journalism field. The editor kept describing how efficient this process is, and no one really can afford the "luxury of face-to-face contact" anymore. And, though I do believe her when she says this process is efficient and that they get a finished product out there every month, I couldn't help feel that some vital element was missing from this particular publication.

In the limited experience that I've had, there's nothing more exciting than the collaborative, creative processes that go into putting together a news product. Feeding off each others' ideas, popping your head into the design team's operating room to see what they're adding to enhance your article, and feeling your heart racing as you type up your last graph before making deadline is all part of an experience. Collaboration and support for one another to get a completed paper to press is what gives a publication life. It's what sparks innovation and creativity, and this vitality is not something I'd like to see the industry sacrifice in the name of efficiency.

Needless to say, I pretty much immediately lost interest in working there. Besides, she basically wanted me to sell IP subscription services to different organizations, which sounds like nothing I want to be involved in.

Flash forward a week, and I am now working in collaboration with the UCL Media Relations (PR) office on a body donation project. It's a public awareness, not activist, campaign that will hopefully educate the local community about body donation and shine light on options for those individuals who might be interested. I'll be helping to create a media press kit, do original research, and organize a big public event where a panel will be leading a dialogue on the topic. This, I really feel I can get excited about.

Since the last time I've blogged, Halloween passed, which was fun, but celebrations definitely weren't as big here as they usually are at home. I dressed up as Daisy Buchanan from the Great Gatsby, and my friend Brendan was Jay Gatsby. Here's a picture of my full outfit:
Not exactly as costume-y as it should have been, but it worked for my shoestring budget. To recap, Halloween was the usual drinking, smoking, hysterical laughing hoo-hah but with the volume turned down a couple notches from what I'm used to.

I've been focusing a lot more on my classes the past week or so, and everything about them suddenly seem so much more interesting. Maybe it's the booze leaving my system since toning the partying down, but these ideas that are being thrown at me about ethics, welfare, equality, globalization, the environment, and so on are really coming together to make me consider my potential impact on the world.

The university students in my classes are so much more interested in taking in what they're learning from a global perspective. They care so much more about (or at least are more vocal about) contributing to the improved welfare of countries they have no material connection to, but feel in touch with just by sharing this planet. Another cool thing is what a mixed bag this university really is. Just walking to class, I hear at least three other languages other than English. When I get to class, I have such a unique opportunity to hear the day's topic from a truly global perspective, with input from students from all over the world.

Also, I'm really getting into the swing of cooking for myself. My friend Alison and I made this delicious pasta meal a little while back courtesy of Emeril's recipe on the Food Network Web site.
So despite the S.A.D. going around, I'm feeling good.

It helps that in less than 48 hours, I will be embarking on my first European trip since I've been here. Six of us are headed to Paris (can't wait to see you Alanna!), Brussels, Bruges, and Amsterdam during our school's Reading Week, and I'm super stoked. I'm sure there will be plenty of fun stories to tell upon our return.

'Till then...