I ♥ London

And then it started to snow...

2010-01-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

Watching out the living room window two people squeezing under one umbrella...

God, I love the snow!

2 4 1 (otherwise known as two for one)

2010-01-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

Never too late to start writing on your blog again, so why not two posts in one night? Two for one then, as the supermarket/pub/bar offer!

Loving London at the moment because I live next to a theater pub. I never knew a place like that existed before but why the hell not? Basically it's a pub where they hold performances every once in a while. The building has a writing that says it was originally built in 1415 (!!) and rebuilt in the 1800's. Some history, huh?

Some nights, when coming back from work and endlessly looking for my keys in what it seems to be a bottomless bag, I see the actors practicing in the balcony where the pub staff have their breaks. (I assume that by the ashtrays full of cigarette butts that I can see on the large wooden table, the coffee mugs and the empty bottles of beer all around the place.) They (the actors) rehearse, trying out their voices and making the weirdest sounds; sometimes they'll cackle and sometimes a deep voice comes out of their lungs.

I don't know if I should find it funny or really serious. I mean this is indeed a moment of an artistic process. I get to see what the audience won't. Maybe it'd be weird to watch them perform, having caught a glimpse of their private moments before the show. Maybe I'd feel like I was caught doing something I was not supposed to do.

I love little moments like that in London. You're there looking for your keys and a few feet away from you, someone is getting ready to go on stage, God knows what thoughts are going on in his mind and what that tiny moment before appearing in front of an audience means to him.

Maybe some (excuses)....

2010-01-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

OK, it's been long enough...

In between thoughts of 'I should really drop it' and 'I really need to start writing it', a lot of things have happened that kept me occupied enough to stop me from writing.

Liar.

I don't know what the truth is, really. I've always thought of a blog as some sort of a diary and ever since I was young, I've absolutely hated diaries. I just go back and read the previous pages, hate what I'm writing and then tear it out. Then, I go out and read what other people write and I think that I can never be as good as them.

But things have changed since October. And I am no longer staying in 'Greater London'; I am an 'Angel' now, living in this city and breathing it so much more than ever before.

In between the move and this post, I've also been back home. Home=Athens, Greece. (Funny how this word will probably appear in this post again meaning 'home=London, UK'). I guess this has made me want to write again, thinking I have left so many things unsaid about this city I've come to love so much (London in this case) that I need to start getting my thoughts straight and writing them down as often as I can.

Soooooooo, I'm back!

It's gonna take time.. a whole lot of precious time... to do it right child...

2009-10-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Here I am... I disappeared again for a while but I wasn't lazy this time... Just very busy.

I am overwhelmed by this city, by how fast it moves, by how many things you need to plan in advance... My 'always-leave-it-till-the-last-minute' policy doesn't work any more. I need some time to do it right I guess.

OK, this is a blog about London so I'd better start writing about that and stop moaning about being busy. That's why I wanted to come here in the first place.

I ♥ London so much because this is a place where nothing seems too strange or out of place. Like this guy in his little 'Elvis' car with his Elvis glasses and his Elvis music playing so loudly that everyone around Piccadilly can hear it. I love the fact that he actually said hi to the camera. I am wondering if he does that to get attention or is he really nostalgic?

I never got the whole thing with Elvis lookalikes. I guess I've grown up at a time when idols are quite dispensable; maybe I don't get what Elvis means to them. Still, this is what you see going home from work on a Thursday night when you're in London. And then you reach the tube and you see the blonde Asian girl busking with her 'Love's Hero' guitar singing in her own language tunes that from far away sound like they come from a tiny transistor radio. Gotta love it!

Stressed is desserts spelled backwards!

2009-09-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

It was about time stress kicked in! I have been a good girl so far, all smiles and not a single complaint but this was bound to happen...

My time management skills have never been that good, that's why I'm always the girl you see running to get to the station or doing my makeup on the train because I have no time to do it at the house. Which is a lie. I probably do. I just don't know where time goes, seriously! Especially since moving from the nice little town where I spent the past year and everything was about 5-10 minutes away. I need to adjust to the rhythms of the big city which I absolutely ♥ so far.

I've got quite a few balls to juggle now; the internship, volunteering for a drug charity, trying to write a couple of things for the uni paper and of course work. Hand-eye coordination was never one of my best qualities so the balls keep falling on the floor for the time being. I am slowly learning though... Any day now and I am going to pick up the pace.

I am insanely happy to be here and I wouldn't want to change a thing but I do have to practice on my juggling skills because life here is always going to be like that. Which is something that keeps me going and makes me even more certain that this is where I want to be right now and this is what I want to do.

So, because stressed is desserts spelled backwards, I'll keep thinking life is as pretty as these cupcakes... And as yummy as well! And I won't be stressed... Maybe only when I'll think about the calorie count...

PS. I bought these cupcakes in Camden; they were organic and they went fast!

Black and blue

2009-09-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

Or maybe red??? Plenty of multi-coloured bruises tonight after almost 3 hours of paintball; plus yellow hair, dirty clothes and the most horrible smell of sewage on shoes and socks. But sooooo much fun! Ι really want to try it outdoors next time although the tunnels under London Bridge made the game quite different I'd say. Still, it's great that you can just exit the tube station and play paintball in the heart of London. I think I should be adventurous and try the ice rinks next. :)

Also went to the Borough Market this morning. I absolutely love it but I need to find out what the best time to visit it is because lunchtime is clearly not! I had to queue for about 10 minutes to get a halloumi burger from a Greek stall; which I didn't think was that good actually. Too much bread and only a tiny slice of cheese. I have to go back though and try the cheeses and the desserts and also get some nice chorizo from the Spanish stalls. I want to get the camera with me too; it's such a great place for photos.

I might do some flashbacks in the 'Lost' fashion soon with my previous discoveries around London. I am still quite new to the city though so don't expect anything that you probably can't find in your travel guidebook. Remember, it's my Greek eyes that make the difference!

My sunny one shines so sincere

2009-09-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

Back home from a long day in London. One of my favourite days in town so far... I guess the sun does bring out the best in me the way new beginnings do.

Monday will be my first day working as an intern and I couldn't be more excited. I met Jen today at the Pain Quotidien in the Aveda Institute and talked about the details of the internship; I really can't wait! I guess I will have to report more on that once I start working. :)

I guess the title is self-explanatory but I really, really do ♥ London. And sunny London really fills me up with ♥ ♥ ♥.

I took this photo back in April but this really is the image I have in my head of my sunny London so far... Lazy days soaking up the sun, discovering the city street by street, park by park, pub by pub, festival by festival, museum by museum, exhibition by exhibition...................

I'll be sharing my discoveries with you; hopefully, you'll be able to see London through my (Greek) eyes as I'll try to describe my life here and my new beginnings in my current city: London, United Kingdom.

Brave new world

2009-09-25T09:29:00.001-07:00

Well, the first post doesn't really belong to this blog. It was my first (apparently unsuccessful) attempt to blogging and since then 10 months have passed and my life has changed even more radically.

My current city is London and this is now a blog about living in London but when I went back and read that first post I felt that it did give a nice introduction to why I decided to blog so that's why I kept it.

I'll keep this one short because I am off to work but I'll have to write again quite soon; there's so many things I want to talk about.

I'll go wear my cardigan now; I've roamed the streets of London bare-armed for 2 days now, I am ♥ the sun, but it's getting quite chilly for this greek one.. Brrrr...

2008-11-07T02:23:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!
It seems I decided to start a blog way too late (almost 2 years too late), but here I am now, ready to share my views and my experiences with the world (that sounds so cliche, doesn't it?).

I won't lie and say that I had thought about it for a very long time, because I hadn't. I didn't think I had that much to write and considering my innate laziness, a blog didn't seem an option for me. Sure I spent hours online everyday, checking my Facebook profile and reading gossip on Perez Hilton, but I just couldn't be bothered to get myself down and write something. Maybe it is because I felt my life was sort of boring, revolving around the same things over and over again, my critical thought butchered by the 9-5 (sometimes 6 and 7) working day, what could I possibly write about?

The first time I really thought about starting a blog was about.... 3 or 4 months ago, when I saw on the news the story of a pair from Germany that gave birth to twins of different skin colours, one black and one white. (For a brief video of that story, go to http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yZreMZSe2_0&feature=related .) I wanted to say and write so many things about it, about what that meant for me in respect to the world that we live in... But my laziness prevailed once more and I just didn't do anything about it.

But my life was about to change in a not so unexpected way. It wasn't completely unexpected since it was my choice to apply for universities abroad but I had just made my decision to do a MA next year since I hadn't gotten the kind of reply I wanted. And then on the 21st of August, just one month before Week 1 of term, I got the acceptance I wanted.

You're probably wondering what that has to do with anything, but the truth is that this experience that I am living right now prompted me to start this blog. There are so many things I want to write about and they do make sense now. Because how can you write your views on the world if you haven't really seen the world? Living in a different country for the first time in my life and being surrounded by people from all over the world, learning things about them and about myself in the process, that's what I want to write about.

I also want to write about the lessons I have learned (that IS the name of the blog..), but more specifically about those that I thought I had learned but apparently I haven't...

So, that's a very brief introduction to this blog and if it doesn't make much sense, well, give me some time. I am new to this.