London

We had one of our rare weekends where they don't have anything planned for us, so I decided to head back to London for a couple days. Marlee and E.J. had said the night before...as they were going to bed 2 hours before me...that they were gonna wake up at 7:45 and take an early train so they could have more time to enjoy London. Ok, whatever, I already booked a ticket for 11:00am cause fuck waking up early. So I walk downstairs at about 10:30, and what do i see but a foot in Maddie's bed. She had left the night before and i thought i was alone in the house so I was like what the... I look in, E.J.'s crashed on Maddie's bed and Marlee is fast asleep. Nice guys. So I wake them, tell them they could still make my train...they mumble that they'll take the next one but they'll meet me at the Bayswater station at 5:00pm. I head out, get to London, do my thing at Portobello Market (and met this guy, at Pret no less, who was really awkward and nerdy in this cute funny way and asked me for my e-mail as I was leaving) I go to the station at 5:00. And wait til 6:30, at which point I'm like guess I'm just not gonna see them all weekend. I went and had dinner by myself and then met this guy John who I'd met in London before when I was with Kenny and Alex. We went to Camden Town (got scared of getting stuck on the tube for hours when it randomly stopped cause of British tabloid horror stories about the day before when people were trapped in 120 degree heat) and went to the World's End for a while, and then this place called Koko, which turned out to be pretty awesome. It looked like Proctor's theater, complete with gilt and carvings and opera boxes, only painted dark red. There were like four levels of balconies. And it even had leather couches. They also had this cover band that apparently was covering some reallly famous British rock band that John kept expecting me to recognize and I was just like .... I knew one song they played, it came to my memory from some dark past of listening to the radio in like 6th grade. Once he got over my total ignorance of British rock we danced to it remixed into dance music and he kept being like, you'll know this song, and I kept being like mm yeah, no. Still, we had an all around good time. And then left and were like how the fuck do we get home. He lives in London and was still like fuckin night bus schedule... so i felt a lot better about my utter lack of comprehension.
The next day after my like 4 hours of sleep I basically just wandered around aimlessly. I did go to Camden Market and ate some amazing ethnic food (i know! so adventurous of me) and I met these French guys who had only been in London for two days and wanted to practice their English on me. I thought it was really good, but there were a couple times where they just could not communicate something. We were getting on the tube to go our separate ways and Jimmy (I have no idea what his French name would be) was trying to explain that he likes to "tease" girls, and I wasn't really getting what he meant by it, so he goes up to this like 16yr old who's covered in white face paint with dyed black hair and a black canvas outfit with metal all over it and tells her she's pretty. So now he's done it. She's like "NO I"M NOT" We figured that'd be the end of it, but he'd piqued her interest so she starts talking to him about Marilyn Manson and shit. and then her and her friends were annoying 16yr old goths for the whole tube ride and I made fun of them in French with the two guys.
Oh, and possibly the best story of the weekend--if you take best to mean most creepy but funny later--was just as I was going to catch my train, I get stopped by this guy who needs to figure out the bus schedule..... I tell him I'm really not that good at it, but there's the map. And he's like where? So I walk him over and show him (I know, I'm just too fucking nice) and he's like oh so I just take the 249, 35, or 16, got it. And I'm like..yeah.... And then he's like, where are you headed? So i tell him I'm going home. And he's like, home? You should come party with me. I try to explain that I need to get back to Bath and can't miss my train, and he's like, you can come sleep at my place, I have a five bedroom flat, "and I'll just put you on the first train back in the morning." So now I'm super creeped out. I finally convince him I can't, and so he gives me his business card, points to the email on it, and is like "send me an email, and we'll work on getting you back to London" ....shudder.... But I guess if I run out of money here I know I can go work on getting some from the "European Business Development Manager"