Monday: A Day of Rot
C: I’m on reading week again, so I had some meetings, did some research, and had an altogether chilled out Monday. If anyone has any football/soccer and dance inspo, please send me!
Z: I have no memory of Monday… It was definitely marinate in Harris vibes.
Tuesday: Americans Will No Longer Be Running on Dunkin’
We woke up bright and early aka 9:30 am (what happened to our 7:30 wake-ups??) and set off to the Hammersmith Dunkin Donuts for our weekly Dunkin run to maintain our status as Americans. It was a bit cold, so we layered up and trekked the 7.5 kilometers to Hammersmith station. Not a kilometer away from the station, Catja’s body completely shut down for a hot sec. Her newly diagnosed patellar tendonitis flared up, but she stubbornly kept on running. This turned out to be a very stupid idea because she started having a panic attack from the increasing pain and casually told Zoe that she couldn’t breathe when they finally arrived. She legitimately thought she was having an asthma attack because she couldn’t take a full breath for several minutes. She also didn’t bring her inhaler (CATJA!!).
Right outside the station, Catja stopped to catch her breath and Zoe stood by, supporting from a distance. A woman trying to eat her croissant outside the station was looking very concerningly at Zoe, clearly stressed about Catja’s wellbeing and Zoe’s lack of response, but we were just adding spice to her morning commute.
After Catja could breathe again, we headed inside to get our donut and coffee. Yet again, the donuts were fantastic! We then headed back home on the Tube while chatting and sipping our coffees.
The remainder of the day we spent doing classwork and having a lazy afternoon. Zoe finished the day with a late-night call with her friends from high school who are back in the States. Despite the call starting at 11 pm (far past Zoe’s bedtime), it was really nice to finally catch up with them after far too long.
Wednesday: Serendipity
Zoe had class in person for the first time in AGES, so we decided to have a little central London adventure. We set off in the morning to Bank Station and took the Waterloo and City line for the first time! It was unfortunately very underwhelming, but Catja liked the teal color. We planned on visiting the Mithraeum, the remains of the Roman Temple of Mithras from AD 240. Unfortunately, the museum was reserved for a school visit, so we’ll have to return another day.
We decided to just meander the area and find touristy things to do along the way. Walking around Bank felt like another world. We were surrounded by very well-dressed working adults. A trio of finance bros goofily crossed the street on their lunch break and stopped by the gym, which felt right on the nose. Zoe was enamored with the idea of working in Bank (not the finance bro part) because it felt like a big adult job area, and we’ve been talking a lot about the impending job application season. Catja was less enthused with the idea of working in Bank, but she would feel like a girlboss in those offices.
First, we walked through Leadenhall Market, where part of Harry Potter was filmed for Diagon Alley. Then, we stopped by the Garden at 120, a rooftop viewpoint on the 15th floor of the building on Fenchurch Street. It gave some gorgeous views of the Thames, Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s, and the Gherkin. Zoe’s fear of man-made heights wasn’t even that bad which was a relief. Next, we walked to St. Dunstan in the East, a church that was severely damaged during the Great Fire of London in 1666 and later bombed during the Blitz. It is now a communal garden, with greenery growing around the ruins and Christopher Wren’s surviving tower.
We walked along the north bank of the Thames around noon, stopping to watch UCL archaeologists work on the rocks below. We then stopped a little further down to look at the One Blackfriars building, which had a crane sprouting from the top of the building, holding up a window washing platform. To Zoe, it looked far too similar to one of Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s -inators to not take a picture. We heard strains of distant music and noticed a busker playing outside Tate Modern across the river. All we could discern was the sound of a guitar, a masculine voice, and a white man standing with a guitar. Catja has been mourning the months of radio silence from Marcus Man, and the very small chance that he could be busking across the river convinced us to cross Millennium Bridge just to check. Unfortunately, it was not him. But in an even more serendipitous turn of events, it turned out to be an older man singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” the same exact man singing the same exact song we heard when Zoe and I crossed the same bridge in December 2021. It made our day!
Next, we stopped by Twinings to pick up more of Catja’s favorite Apple Cinnamon Raisin tea. We also tried a really rich black tea flavored with cocoa and hazelnut. It was delicious but very heavy, and we thought it would be better with some milk. Finally, we walked up to Bloomsbury to visit The Cult of Beauty exhibit at the Wellcome Collection, which was Catja’s school field trip assignment. It was a fascinating exhibit unpacking the beauty industry and art history. Catja left Zoe to return home, and Zoe killed time before her night class. Catja ended up finishing One Day and spent the evening sobbing in her room, but it was so good.
Thursday: “Esta bien”
We woke up even earlier on Thursday morning, although it was significantly less bright and rather rainy to get haircuts. After hearing about Hebe’s lovely experience at Sassoon Academy on Monday, we decided that it was time for a fresh chop. Sassoon has a deal where you pay £10 for a haircut and they have a trainee cut your hair with the help of a professional. The whole process takes like 4 hours since the professionals have to check in frequently, so it’s pretty much a full morning activity.
We arrived at 9 and were assigned to a trainee. The trainees pretty much exclusively spoke Spanish, so there was not a lot of communication happening. Despite the language barrier, we both ended up with great haircuts! Zoe even got to practice a bit of her Spanish at the end, although she has not retained enough to really have a conversation. Catja was having a blast with her cutter Juan Luis, who worked magic on her wavy hair and gave her precise, voluminous layers.
With our new dos ready to take on the world, we headed home to have a lazy afternoon. Catja took a really long nap that was basically just fully sleeping (like, fully dreaming for 2 hours). Then, she hung out with Anna and Jake for another evening of bookbinding. This time, she and Anna made collage covers from Christie’s art auction magazines which was very fun and very addicting. It’s a big win for crafternoon ideas but also doesn’t help discourage Catja’s hoarding tendencies.
Friday: Sainsbury’s Has a Sale Section?! And other lies from a Hinge man
Z: Looking to blow off some steam, I decided on Thursday night to go for a longer run on Friday morning. I planned out my route to Hampstead Heath, which is about 5 kilometers, and another 5 kilometers around the Heath. I set off in the rain and immediately began taking wrong turns. After three wrong turns, I had somehow ended up almost in Golders Green, which was not at all my intention. By some miracle, I finally made it to Hampstead and thought the chaotic part of my run was over, but I was wrong. As I was running up a steep hill in Hampstead up to the Heath, I was stopped by a man who decided that it was a fantastic idea to interrupt both his own run and MINE to hit on me. I quite literally ran away. I did make it to the Heath where I saw some adorable dogs and trod through lakes of mud to eventually find myself at the Tube station.
C: I woke up and was feeling rejuvenated on the first day of Women’s History Month. I got a Tiktok that advised me to seize the day and look on the bright side, so I got dressed up in my favorite red coat, put on some gold eyeliner, and opened the front door to a dreary, rainy, grey day. So that put a slight damper on my mood, but when I emerged from the Tube 40 minutes later, it was a gorgeous sunny day in Kensington Gardens.
I stopped by Barbara Kruger’s exhibit “Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.” at the Serpentine Gallery. It was all about language, manipulating language, and the pressures placed on women, and the exhibit featured intense soundscapes, annotated speeches, and bold visual art. It was a brief but interesting gallery walk, and I walked outside deep in thought only to be hit by strong wind and sideways rain, which snapped me back to reality.
Unwilling to go back home just yet, I walked along the Serpentine Lake to a waterside cafe, where I sipped tea, read my book, and people watched for an hour, protected from the liquid sunshine outside. After seeing swans running on water, watching people ride horses around Hyde Park, and listening to Spanish men speak excitedly about football (I understood West Ham and Chelsea), I went back home to be productive for a bit.
We realized that we were both home after a few hours and had a catch up about our days. Catja then shared that she’d been chatting to a guy on Hinge who loves the Sainsbury’s clearance section. Zoe suggested that we walk to Sainsbury’s to peruse and see if we could find a sweet treat, so we did. Unfortunately, our shop doesn’t have a clearance section, and things didn’t work out with Catja and Hinge boy (Hinge in general has been woefully disappointing for the past several months ugh). Fortunately, we got delicious apple turnovers for dessert! We made pizzas from scratch, watched season 6 episode 4 of “Drive to Survive” just to glimpse our new crush Logan Sargeant, and had an early night.
Saturday: The Audacity of Men
Z: For some unknown reason, my course met yet again on Saturday morning to discuss technology-based interventions. As fancy as that sounds, what really happened was that I taught middle-aged members of my course how to use iMovie. Honestly, a very wholesome three hours. I then caught the bus across the river to meet up with Catja, Luke, and Ethan at the Imperial War Museum.
We all met up outside the museum for a lads day out. Luke hyped up the Spitfire plane which was hanging above our heads while Ethan quietly seethed about the lack of a Napoleonic-era exhibit. We started our adventure through the museum at the WWI exhibit, where we learned about a young Irish boy who wanted to join the army, reminisced on history class buzzwords (shout out to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Zimmerman Telegram), and discussed if driving a tank or flying a plane would we a worse fate. We split up to see the “Spies, Lies and Deception” and “Peace and Security 1945-2014” exhibits and reconvened in the bookshop, where we had to set a timer for Luke to go wild and look at all the books. Catja geeked out when she saw the same SR-71 Blackbird toy plane that she has back home from Udvar-Hazy.
We headed to a pub across the street to watch F1 and football. After Luke repeatedly tried and failed to open the side door to the pub with Ethan disappointedly watching on, Zoe and Catja decided to try the front door, which opened quite easily. Unfortunately, there were no TVs in the pub, so we set off to find another down the road, which also did not have TVs that would play the race. As we learned the hard way, Saturday 3 pm games are not televised in this country, so Catja prepared by packing her iPad in her new trendy city girl Uniqlo bag and set up the VPN when we sat down. Luke pulled up F1 on his phone and set it next to the iPad.
Then the afternoon took a turn… as Catja and Zoe watched football and Luke watched F1, Ethan, who hates both sports equally, decided this was his moment to begin a debate on the morality of democracy. We then sat for the next two hours listening to Luke and Ethan hardcore debate whether democracy or dictatorship is better morally. While we chipped in our two cents from time to time, we women sat very much silenced on the sidelines. We knew things were getting bad when they threw their drinks at each other and the bartender had to break up the brawl.
Just kidding! We’re just practicing saying outrageous lies with the confidence of a man :) ETHAN AND LUKE IF YOU’RE READING THIS WE PROMISE THAT WE ARE JUST KIDDING! WE LOVE YOU (say it back)! In all seriousness, we had a really lovely afternoon catching up with the boys, even if we did leave a bit concerned that Ethan has dictatorial aspirations (cue “Aspirations” by Marcus Man).
We headed home for the evening on the Tube, where we played Shag, Marry, Avoid with U.S. politicians. Ethan came up with truly the worst combinations of people, challenging us to think far too much about Mitch McConnell (I think I may be scarred for life -Zoe). Luke and Ethan dropped us off at Dollis Hill before heading home. Thanks to Luke for leaving us with a parting gift that really lingered (iykyk).
Not really wanting the planned pasta for dinner, we decided to scrounge up what we had left from the week and make something new. Somehow we landed on chicken pot pie, but really that was just a rough outline of an idea. We made some pie dough, lined muffin tins, and filled them with cheese, ham, pepperoni, vegetables, and gravy. We were feeling oddly confident about this idea, which was clearly a result of spending the afternoon with Ethan and Luke, as Zoe stated “I’m feeling ‘Ethan-Thinks-He-Could-Be-A-Good-Dictator’ confident” about this meal. Although they came out of the oven looking fabulous, as we dug in it soon became clear that every ingredient we had added was salt based. We finished dinner, feeling like Perry the Platypus in that one episode where he is all dried up like a raisin and just smacks his mouth looking for water.
Overall, it’s been a great start to a new month! We have now officially lived in London for 6 MONTHS!! and are still loving every moment of it. Shout out to Spurs for celebrating our wins with us tonight.
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