they're really saying "I love you!"

I totally jumped the gun on that one because it snowed proper this morning!



Snow on the front lawn!



Snow on the ground!



Snow on the grass!



Snow on the cars!



Snow on the trees!



Snow on Air Studios!



Snow on my shoes!



Snow on the flowers!



Snow on Pax Lodge!

Today was like Christmas and Halloween - I woke up happy, it snowed, I went to church and then I got a lot of chocolate. (We did a proper Easter egg hunt with just the volunteers. It was good fun!) Happy Easter!

Yes! Snow! Snow flurries in the morning and a bit in the afternoon as well. I apologise for the image quality - my camera is broken right now so I was using my phone. But yes, it snowed in the morning and then again while I was out at the National Portrait Gallery (wonderful, wonderful collection) - I stepped outside and there was all this sharp white in my face. Totally awesome. And, freezing. I love it. None of it stuck as London is quite warm, but it was so great.

Also, we have some lovely daffodils in the front yard right now.



Also, there is an Easter funfair up on Hampstead Heath this weekend! I went up by myself today (not much fun) and it was very cute and empty. And I really liked this house:

i'm dreaming of a white easter

IT IS SNOWING OUTSIDE. OUTSIDE IT IS SNOWING. SNOW. FROM THE SKY.

IT IS NOT STICKING TO THE GROUND BUT IT IS ACTUAL SNOW. FROM THE SKY. WHILE AND FLUFFY AND FLURRY LIKE THE SONGS SAID IT WOULD BE.

CAMERAPHONE PHOTOS COMING.



THIS IS LIKE 100 TIMES BETTER THAN RAIN.

when the moon's in the sky I like it

I went to Nottingham for the weekend. My friend Nell had bought Panic at the Disco tickets so I went with her and her lovely friends. Nottingham is so cute and pretty and so was Panic at the Disco. Though their set ended at 9:30 and then no one really knew what to do afterwards. We went went back to Nell's flat and argued about lyrics and drum fills, actually. That's what happens when nerdy music people get together.

Anyway, I was just really happy to be among friends and to be in a house and to be fed food for three and not twenty and to sit around and watch television about cars without the feeling that I was meant to be doing something else.

It rained like you would not believe, however. We were soaked when we got back from the venue (we had walked.) And then I got back to London and I could see my breath though it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Goodness gracious, welcome to England.

this letter made me happy, but it also made me sad

I got a letter from my good friend Lia. It was a hilarious letter and I was very cheered. The front decoration is also pretty hilarious (maps of the US and England, in pink) but the tiny postscript made me homesick as well. I couldn't just go to college, jeeze.

I got good people

I received a lovely package in the mail a couple of days ago!



Letters from my sunday school class! Plus Star Wars action figures.



I put one of them up on my wall, a reminder. (It's coming, Katelyn! I'll definitely go find it!)




There were also dinosaurs in the package! They are now my pet dinosaurs. The tall one is named Rihanna. The triceratops doesn't yet have a name.

sing to me

We play so much Singstar here. SO MUCH. I think it's because we work really hard during the day and often times at night, we're too exhausted to go far from Pax. So we hole up in OWL (the lounge) playing Singstar for hours on end. We've played for the last four days. (This might actually explain the lack of posts.)

I can do a mean Adam Levine, apparently. And I know the words to more eighties power ballads than I ever wanted, or needed, to know in my life.

hello, hello, hello

Six out of seven days a week we gotta wear these polo shirts - one's white and one's navy, with the Pax Lodge logo on breast. On Saturdays, we get to wear our Saturday shirt. This is me in my Saturday shirt - as you can see, it has the logos of all four world centers plus the tagline 'girls worldwide say "Discover Our World Centers."'

There are three other world centers in addition to Pax Lodge. Our Chalet is in Switzerland and it is the oldest of world centers. Our Cabana is the second oldest, in Mexico. Sangam is in India. Pax Lodge is actually the newest world center, since it was only completed in 1991. However, it is the third world center to be based in London. The first one was open in 1939, until they ran out of space and had to open a bigger one in the 1960s. They ran out of space in that building as well, so they built Pax Lodge in the late 80s. Pax Lodge is the most ideal, so far, as it is based right next to the WAGGGS, which is what Lady Baden-Powell always wanted, but what was an impossible goal previously due to London building laws.

(WAGGGS [World Asssociation of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts] is the umbrella organisation for girl guiding and girl scouting organisations internationally. I didn't know, or care about, the significance of this, until I was given a tour of the grounds and our manager took me next door and showed me the mailboxes. They have mailboxes for nearly every nation in the world.)

Anyway, what I meant to say is that my shirt is too big, but you can see now also the amount of information I've soaked up in the past couple of weeks as well. I honestly had no idea of the reach and enormity of girl guiding until I started working here.

you know where you are

In Britain if you get injured in the kitchen, you must put a blue plaster (band-aid) on. This is so if the plaster falls into the food, it is easily identifiable. This might be standard practice in the US food industry as well, I don't know, but I am really loving this particular shade of blue. It is most definitely not found in nature.

And of course, I couldn't just injure myself like everyone else, knives or burns, no. I was washing dishes and I somehow cut my fingers on the metal weave around the hose for the dishes. I must be the first person ever to injure themselves that way because the weave is basically airtight. I guess I was just so excited about doing the dishes!

(And, the cuts are already mostly healed over now. It was a superficial wound.)

we talked of nothing else but

Bryn asked "Are there any cobble stone streets or ancient cathedrals? Or squares full of outdoor cafes and pigeons? Is it pleasant and sunny? Or dreary rainy fog?"

Just so happens. . .



They are restoring the cathedral across the street.



Pigeons on cobblestones in Covent Garden.



Blue skies and clouds. For example, a half hour ago, it was pouring. Now it's bright and sunny out.

tea tea and coffee

My local library is so amazing. Even though its selection is small, it trumps all other libraries I've been to, by sheer fact that it has a) a coffeebar, b) a cat, c) my name on its cards. (I love the place I live in.) It is based in Keats' old home. I've been so many times in the past two weeks. It turns out that without a laptop to slow me down, I can do five books a week. And ok, some of them I had read before but I like to think that Tender is the Night is not an easy read under any circumstance. Also, I've been getting into comics, graphic novels, and Neil Gaiman.

The cat fact is especially special to me because I once wrote a story where a little boy was babysat by a cat who was really Edward Lear and ever since then, I have been convinced that all dead writers become cats. So hey, I've met Keats. He's orange and he sheds.

under the sea

Self portrait. Reading in the early evening. Reading Cowboy Bebop in the early evening, haha. I need to find a comics shop.



This is my room. It is very small. I think I can move into a bigger one later, but right now, very small. It's cosy! And the amount of stuff I have accumulated in the past two weeks is appalling.



My family sent me the prayer flags. Everyone knows I am a big hippie now. The Japanese words are peace, love and my name, which Mja from Japan taught me during Thinking Day celebrations my second day here. I wrote my name, my lettering is horrendous. The 'museum mile' pamphlet I picked up at the library and I've put it up to remind myself to get out and go places. I've also been writing down on it all the places people have told me to visit. So far I've only been to the Hunterian Museum, the British Museum and the Royal Opera House.

sound sound all around

Pax Lodge, where I live and work, is set in Hampstead, an affluent, suburban (or as suburban as London gets) area outside of central London. Right next door is Air Studios, one of the best recording studios in London. In my first week here, iTunes was hosting a series of concerts at Air Studios and, thanks to our close proximity and the mad connections that the girls here had made, we managed to score passes for a number of nights. In my first five days days here, I managed to see the likes of Daniel Merriweather, Tawiah, Jason Mraz, Ron Sexsmith, Julia & Angus Stone, and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly(.) I can't imagine a better way to start off my first week in London - for someone as musically geeky as I am, free music from indie artists in a top notch studio is like my own personal candy shop. Also, iTunes gave out passes that gave you ten free songs on the UK iTunes. I went three times. :)

However, having Air Studios in such close proximity does have it's banes. For example, the whiplash I've got casually peering at the fence as I pass by, trying to see into the studio. (It's said that George Michael has been holed up there for the past three years and that they're recording the soundtrack to the next James Bond in there!) Or, my favorie, the classic Justin Timberlake Panic of 08. Last Sunday I happened to stray from the dining room (where I was meant to be working) to reception where I was accosted by Hca (a fellow volunteer from Canada). She informed me that our housekeeper had just phoned while walking home. He told us that there was a great queue outside Air Studios and that Justin Timberlake was purportedly recording there that evening.

Do you know who you do not casually unleash that information on? A house full of girls. The handwringing and squealing was intense. Justin Timberlake! Right next door! He was so close we could practically touch him!

(None of us met him, not for lack of trying on the other girls' part. They did manage to get into the iTunes concert that night, though. I was working that night.)

And the lesson in all of this is that once a child of the nineties, always a child of the nineties, no matter what country you're from. Justin Timberlake. I can't even believe myself.

what a shame, she was just getting comfy

Primrose Hill. The mythology behind it, as I understand it, was that a young couple in the early nineties were painting their flat. They had extra paint cans leftover and, being somewhat intoxicated, went out to the park up onto the hill and painted "and the view's so nice." The members of Camden (the area surrounding Primrose Hill) since then, have made a habit of looking after that bit of hopeful graffiti, repainting and so forth.

Then, legend goes, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon were out walking one night (around Christmastime, if my rumors are correct), again, in the early nineties, discussing whether or not to continue on with their fledgling band Blur. They came across the graffiti and went off and wrote the 6:02 minute long "For Tomorrow" which turned out to be, not only a favored song of fans, but the song that really thrust them into the British limelight.

The last part is only interesting to Blur fans such as myself. But the view is so nice, one of the best in London, I think. The city just looks friendly up there and when my friends and I were in London last summer, we found ourselves hanging out at Primrose Hill whenever we got homesick or there was sun. (Which was all of twice. But we also had Harry Potter for whenever we got homesick.)

we're so sorry we've been gone

I'm back. Sorry about that! I've got about 300 photos from the last week or so to sort and many long thoughts, so get ready for it.