here are my afternoon students, there are 3 koreans, 2 japanese, 1 russian, 1 belgium and 1 spanish 

today i plan on doing absolutely nothing. ok, I am actually supposed to be writing a paper. but i will do it from the comfort of my basket! 

eventually, we got cold. so we headed up to Angel to sit in a pub and warm up alcoholically. then we went to watch Lucky Number Slevin at the cinema. odd film. but the main actor was really good looking, which is a plus. 

i really liked this dog. i think he is very cute. 

we stopped for a drink at progresso (in background). i thought the interior was bizarre, but justin claims it was calefornian. never having been to calefonia, i wouldnt know. but i do know that they were not playing bryan adams, which is more than i can say for the bloody starbucks from which i am writing this....OOOOOHHHH YYEEAH back in the summer '69.... 

justin had an odd obsession about these buttons i dont why, i thought these things normally appealed to old ladys but....but i guess i was wrong 

in the end the only that justin and i got were sunglasses. here he is sporting his. they were cheap and generic, and we spent the rest of the day walking around london with them on, like two goons 

i got the idea into my head that i wanted a fur coat. they were everywhere, but in the end i didnt find one that inspired me. the nice ones were going for about 50quid...but i am so broke i didnt even manage to splurge on that! 

i guess they sell really a bit of everything at this place. alot of it was total junk, but if you came a lot, you could probably find some good stuff there too.  

so yesterday after some thrilling hours in the library, I headed with Justin to Notting Hill and the Portabello Road market. 

le parole di una schiava

la mia gatta si chiama Naneh. Ha una vita molto interesante. Lei è nata a Mosca, e ha vissuto a Budapest e a Parigi. Oggi, Naneh vive a Londracon me. Lei si comporte come una principessa e io sono sua schiava. Faccio tutto per lei. Naneh è grassa con i peli bianchi e gli ochi verdi. È divertente ma bugiarda: lei ama le personne che le danno da mangiare! È molto astuta. Per esempio, quando piensa che nessuno la vada, manga la mia cena. Qualche volta, quando ritorno a casa, trovo il bidone della spazzatura ribaltata sul pavimento...ma Naneh ha sempre la faccia innocente, e io devo pulire il pavimento....come una schiava.

the towel trama

Well i learned something new today. It seems that in The Korea, it is taboo to use the same bath towel twice.
It seems a funny fact to learn while working in England, especially as I worked for Koreans for 3 years without ever finding out this great secret....but i guess the topic just never came up. My students in my afternoon class are mainly new to Britain, but sometimes there are things about this country they dont understand, which i find quite normal, as i myself sometimes cannot explain the place. so yesterday, Rosie (not real name) announced she had an important question. This brought us to the subject of bath towels. It seems in The Korea, people use a different bath towel everyday; not only that, but they use a different bath-foot towel (the ones you step on when you get out of the bath) and girls use a different towel for their hair....EVERY DAY. In the summer, they go through double, because it is humid in The Korea and they bathe at least twice. So on adverage, they go through about 7 body towels, and 7 foot mats per week....plus an extra 7 for the girls hair! So, girls can go through 21 towels a week, or 42 in summer. Rosie calculated that her family goes through. Rosie estimated her family goes through 91 towels a week, and double in summer.
So, naturally, Rosie came to England with 10 towels. She lives in a host family. She had noticed from the beginning that they looked at her strangly and a bit angrily every weekend when she did her laundry (which would consist of 8 or so towels) but she couldnt understand why. Hence her question.
The topic sparked a huge debate in my class. When i said that English people wash their towel normally once a week (if that), all the asian students recoiled in utter disgust. It seems Rosie was not alone in her habits, the other Korean and Japanese students all had the same, and they all united in agreement that one towel a week was vile. The European students looked amazed, obviously not having realised how dirty we are seen to be in asian eyes. Then more questions followed: how often do European girls wash their hair? Clothes? Body? Teeth? Who would have ever thought you could construct a lesson around body hygiene? But i guess this falls under the category of “cultural difference.”

sunday continued

after the museum, we met igor and made a bit of a tour around central london. we figured we would walk as long as the weather held and then head to the usual spot for lunch. daniel had never had fish and chips, so that is what he ordered, whereas igor and i, creatures of habit that we apparently are, opted for the usual burger with chips....i am not sure why we always end up in exactly the same pub and ordering the exact same thing...it is just that every time we try something else, it is normally unfulfilling...so better to stick to the know.
after wards, we saw daniel off on the themeslink to gatwick...a few hours later he smsed from geneva...must be nice there in winter...

sunday

daniel and i met early sunday at king's cross and headed to the british museum where i got a badly needed coffee. the cafe inside is not too bad by museum standards, and the coffee was decent and not overp[riced. after my caffeine fix, we went inside the old british library...i love that place even though i have been in it many many times. i still find it really cool!

finnally daniel arrived and we all headed for more drinks. then he and igor headed of to a party at the hungarian embassy. i would have liked to go, but i had a train to catch....very bizarrly, it turned out i knew a lot of the guys presenting at the conference, there were alot of guys from my budapest days, including Marija from belgrade with whom i used to enjoy 10 floor dinners on Nador utca.... 

the last time i saw daniel i was in a serbian hospital bed with tubes running out of my body. he and igor both came to visit me in that hospital, along with my roomate ira who had to smuggle me toilet paper...that was nearly 3 years ago, so it was really good to catch up with him. he is doing a phd at the university of geneva 

after we got the swiss sent off, igor and i retreated to our usual spot: the pub near his law faculty. we sat there and waited for daniel to finish the wrap up session of his conference 

during the free time, i met up with igor and we took a walk along the river while waiting to collect the swiss. fortunately, in true germanic fashion, they all arrived at the designated meeting point exactly on time and i got them on the bus. 

here are the protesters. fortunately none of the swiss kids got arrested, although i think they all enjoyed themselves and took tons of fotos of the protesters 

here is one of the views from the boat , at least it was an ok day (for england) although it did start raining at one point