Last Post

I've gotten a few kind emails reminding me of my blogging obligations.  I'm truly sorry I haven't posted in a while.  In fact, I have to admit I had completely forgotten about my blog.

When I was in Paris, I wanted to commit everything that happened to paper and to share it with all of you.  I think it was because Paris was a Life Experience, and as such we had to analyze and savour everything I did.  In London, though - here I'm just living life; my everyday things are routine and normal and banal, and I don't think that they deserve being blogged about.  That doesn't mean I'm not enjoying myself here, I am, absolutely.  It means that I'm living here, actually living, not just having an experience, and don't feel the need to let everything that happens to me marinate and be interpreted.

I do recognize, though, that you all want to know what's going on in my life, so I will begin writing mass emails.  Please leave me a comment on this post if you want to be included in the mass email.  I'll send one around in the next few days.

Back Home

The rest of my weekend in Paris was tons o' fun.  On Saturday, Jed and I visited Galleries Lafayette - he was the only one who bought anything, Mom, don't worry!  He then went back home to work on his Russian flashcards, and I soldiered on through the rain to do a little more shopping.  (The Euro, by the way, is weaker against the dollar than the pound; I had to take advantage!)  All the stores I went to have branches here in London, but - I remember this from my séjour in Paris in 2007 - every city in Europe has different stock.  It was a very productive afternoon!  Jed and I made a pilgrimage to Chez Omar, my favorite Moroccan restaurant, for dinner on Saturday night, and then I went to see Vicky Christina Barcelona on my own.  (It was good, not great, but I enjoyed it.  Plus, there's something very luxurious, I find, about going to the movies by yourself.)

I sang at the American Cathedral on Sunday Morning; it was so great to see everyone again!  The music we did was less than thrilling, but it was nice to be singing anything again.  Afterwards, ten of us went out for a five bottle lunch; obviously, we had a fantastic time.  It was so good to catch up with everyone and hear the gossip - I felt like I'd never been away!  Sunday afternoon and evening Jed and I did homework together in a café, and then I had to crash early as I had a 6:43 am Eurostar to catch the next morning.

So no, I did nothing touristy, nothing cultural, but I still had a lovely weekend in Paris.

Speaking of singing, though, I think that this past weekend was the last time I'm going to be able to walk into a church and sing with a choir; I'm just not a singer anymore.  Not that I've gotten bad, but I've gotten rusty, and because I'm not singing regularly I'm not oiling my gears.  I think it's time to accept the fact that I used to be a singer, and now I'm just an ardent supporter of the Anglican liturgy.

Anyway, I'm back in London now, and it does feel like being back home.  It's reading week, and I've got a presentation due Monday, so I am actually being productive.  (I also have a paper and a dissertation that I should begin working on, but no matter; I'll get to them.)  Today, tomorrow, and Thursday I'll be babysitting all afternoon, so I won't get up to many shenanigans, but if I do I'll let you know!

En Visitant Paris

Bonjour from Paris!  I'm here for the weekend, bumming around the city and visiting my friend Jed.  I arrived yesterday morning, after taking a 6:55 am Eurostar which was delayed by 45 minutes (apparently there was a fire in the Eurostar tunnel a few weeks ago which is still screwing things up).  Friday is Jed's errand day, so I was left to my own devices while he occupied himself with housewifely chores.  (He wants me to assure all of you that he is the epitome of masculinity regardless!)

I met up with Ludo for lunch near the Hôpital Necker; Ludo and Harry used to work together, so we've become friends, too.  He invited me to a traditionally French restaurant - "il m'a invité" literally means that he took me out to lunch.  I had the most delicious lapin; you know you're in Paris when a normal lunch at an unassuming restaurant involves things like rabbit!  Later in the afternoon I treated myself to a crêpe with nutella and banana, which was one of the three foods on my list that I have to eat while here.  (The others are Moroccan at Chez Omar, one of my favorite restaurants in the city, and a croque-monsieur.)  Having woken up at the crack of dawn to catch my train, after the lunch and walk I was zonked, so I came back to Jed's to take a nap.  In the evening we created a little picnic for ourselves of bread, five different cheeses, paté and saucisson, grapes, apples, and wine.  We then traipsed down to the Cité Universitaire to meet up with some of Jed's school friends before going to a birthday party outside of the city in Villejuif.  (The first time I was introduced, I was asked from I came from.  I totally spaced, and said I was English!  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it definitely means that London has gotten under my skin!)  The gathering was fun, but I wimped out of the party after not even an hour.  I haven't spoken French since December, you see, and a whole day of it was totally draining.  I didn't expect it to be so much mental work!

Speaking of class friends, I've been having tons o' fun with mine.  Here's a photo of some of us medievalists - well, it's all the girls; Jeff and Pete, who also come out with us, aren't in the picture.  (From left to right we are: me, Rachel, Fiona, Michaela, and Colleen.)  In December, Michaela and Colleen and I are going to go to Dublin; Fiona went to university there, so she's going to show us around.  I can't wait!

Also - because it's cute and I can't help myself - here's a photo of me and Jon, my boyfriend.

Ta for now!  I'll write more when I've returned from Paris.

Working for the Weekend

Okay, that's a total lie.  This is mostly going to be a working weekend for me, as all of a sudden the work has piled up.  (I have a presentation on Thursday on the monarchy in medieval England, reading for my Cloisters to Classroom class, background research on both my dissertation and my Identity and Power paper, and Latin exercises.  Whew!)  The week definitely was worth having to be a studybunny this weekend - and, as you'll see, I do have a few fun plans anyway.

The exploratory meeting of the American Girls' Dinner Club met this week; Katie, Claire Menagus (a friend from high school), Claire's flatmate, and Jess (the lone Brit) and I all had a lovely dinner at my house.  We're going to do it again next week, and make it an official sort-of-weekly thing for the American girls in town to catch up and gab.  (Anna and Christine, my other two Americans, weren't there, but they will be!)

The lecture I went to on Wednesday was pretty interesting, although by the end I was looking at my watch more than listening to the esteemed guy.  It was basically about how archeologists and historians look at sources in completely different ways and therefore often extract completely different conclusions from the same sources.  I thought of it sort of as a Venn diagram, where you have two circles that overlap slightly; one circle for the historians, one for the archeologists, and a bit in the middle where they discover the same things.  After the lecture, the usual crowd of class kids went out for drinks.  It's so great to have class friends - and we're more than class friends now, I think; we're actually friends friends.  A few of us girls went shopping on Friday - that makes us real friends, right?

The date, by the way, went very well.  His name is Jon, and I'm seeing him again tonight.  And tomorrow.  (Tomorrow is the annual Apple Fair at Borough Market - we're double dating with Amy and her boyfriend Harry, who is Jon's flatmate.  Pretty cute, huh?)

On the agenda for today is cleaning - it's my week to do the flat - grocery shopping, coffee with Christine, and reading till my eyes fall out.

Best Week Ever, Conditionally

Let me give you the upcoming highlights of my week now, because things are nuts enough that I'm not sure I'll be able to sit at my computer.  Plus, I'm sick, which works inversely with my motivation to blog.  (Yes, I've come down with the annual autumn cold/flu that's going around.  England's pharmacies are much more homeopathic than I'm used to - the medicine is all honey-based, and doesn't taste like medicine at all!  Cross your fingers with me that this stays as just a headcold!)

Okay, I'll flesh this out more over the weekend (my Saturday is going to be a breather), but here's the week:

Monday: class, dinner party with Katie, Jess, Claire, and Liz.

Tuesday: no class, babysitting; dinner out for Jess' 23rd birthday.

Wednesday: class, babysitting, lecture, the inaugural meeting of the society for the preservation of drunken medievalists.

Thursday: class, date.

Friday: class, shopping with some girls from my classes, Emilia's birthday dinner.

Whew!  Now you can understand why it had to be bam-bam-bam!

Londoner

I've well and truly settled into my life here; I've got a routine and I love it.  Seven hours of class a week, twelve of babysitting, and about fifteen of homework.  I've even figured out the rabbit warren that is the Senate House library (no mean feat!) and checked books out from both it and the UCL library.  (I'm still not a fan of this system, in which all books are expected to be read from the library, but I've finally resigned myself to it.)

I've started thinking about subjects for the two papers I have to write, too.  I think I'm going to look at the myth of Charlemagne in the centuries after his death for my Identity and Power class; the writers who postdated Charlemagne's reign saw him as a new David and a second Constantine, and I'd like to examine how and why.  For Cloisters to Classroom I think I'll be treating medieval interpretations of the Song of Songs.  If you haven't read it, you absolutely should - it's beautifully written.  The thing is, though, it's pretty risqué, and medieval scholars had some trouble turning it into a nice, clean, Christian allegory.  I also went to David, the head of the Medieval Studies course, to discuss preliminary dissertation topics.  He was totally into my idea of exploring how eleventh- and twelfth-century theologians read and interpreted the Pauline Epistles, so I felt like an academic rockstar.  That feeling lasted about five minutes, though; he gave me a few books for "background reading" and told me to come back in a week, so now I'm a little overwhelmed.

I've been getting to know London well enough over the past few weeks that it's really starting to feel like home.  I walk to and from babysitting, so I'm familiarizing myself with west London, and I carry my A-Z (the map book that even true Londoners use) with me everywhere.  We've mostly been going out in the east side, so I've been broadening my knowledge of London geography that way, too.  Went to Katie's for dinner on Tuesday - she lives near Barbican - and to Anna's on Thursday - she's in Fulham.  Did a bit of clubbing on Thursday night with Amy and two of her friends in Kensington, and travelled to London Bridge today for coffee with Harry.  I feel like such an adventurer!

It's strange: even when I was happy living in Paris, I never wanted to live there for the rest of my life.  I can absolutely imagine staying in London forever and being perfectly happy.  Harry suggested it was a language thing, which it might be, but I think I fit better with the culture here than I did in Paris.  Everyone's friendly and open here; it's louder and more in-your-face than Paris but less stressed than New York, and it has the same sort of dual community that Washington, DC does in that some people here consider themselves absolutely Londoners while others will always say they're from elsewhere.  I love it.

Sarah Visits London!

Sarah's guest-blogging this entry:

Hola from London! I got in very very late Thursday night, technically Friday morning after my flight from Barcelona to Gatwick and an adventure on a Night Bus or two around town. During the day Friday, Betsy and I went to the National Gallery (don't worry Mommy, yours is better) and I made sure to check out all the Spanish art that they had and also the J.M.W. Turner (also for you, Mom). It was a gorgeous museum and it was really neat seeing some super famous pictures, like Monet's one of the Japanese bridge and all the flowers, in person. We also saw Big Ben and the rest of Parliament.

While Betsy went to babysit, I met up with two friends from Trinity who are studying abroad here which was really nice. We went to Spitfields Market for lunch and walked around near Kings Cross, where they live.

That night, I met up with them again and another school friend and walked around Covent Garden before going out around in the Picadilly Circus area. It was so pretty! I also almost died about 27 times because I didn't know which way to look when crossing the street.

Saturday, Betsy and I met up with Emma, our old au pair, for lunch. I haven't seen her since she was our babysitter, literally 10 years ago, so obviously I've grown a lot (she said I look a lot like Mommy!) and it was so good to see her. We went out for a nice little lunch and walked around the Oxford Circus area where there are lots of good shops. hehe. Then Betsy and I went back to her "flat" and took naps before a few of her friends from school came over. It was really nice to meet them! A very nice bunch. 

Then we all went out up near Liverpool Street and after a little while, I met up with my Trinity friends again, but didn't stay out too late, and came back to the flat where the lovely couch was calling my name.

This morning we met up with Debbie and James and little Henry (almost 3yrs old!) for brunch. It was absolutely amazing to have normal breakfast food, very unlike what is considered "standard" for breakfast in Spain. We met them at the Waterloo station which is on the other side of the River Thames (I say/type that with a British accent, of course) and Henry had a wonderful time pointing out every single boat on the water. We all then went across the bridge and wandered around through some of the markets that were open before landing at our final destination, Starbucks. We then parted ways and Betsy and I continued down to Buckingham Palace which honestly wasn't as impressive as I thought, but the Queen might not find Silver Spring too inspiring either, so I guess to each his/her own. Then we went to Harrod's and I thought I was a small child in a toy store around the holidays. I guess that's somewhat the reality, but it was incredible. I think its a good thing that we didn't stay too long. We moseyed around for a bit longer before coming back to the flat, napping again, then waking up to a delicious pasta dinner. And now here we are! Betsy is doing homework, I'm... not... but I have to be up super duper early for a 6:55am flight back to Barcelona. Away from the normalcy of London and the english-speaking world. It's been a thrill, but I'm excited to go back. Two more full weekends in Barca before trips to Paris and Rome!

Over and out. Adios.

- Sarah

And Another Weekend Approaches

This week - in contrast to last week, in which I had tons of down time - has been a whirlwind!  I'll start where I left off.

Got dinner and drinks with my new friend Dan on Saturday night; we went to Embankment, which is right near Charing Cross and not far from Covent Garden.  We found a cute Italian place right near the station for dinner, and then wandered up north a bit for drinks.  We kind of had a disaster, though; I don't know if our waitress was new or what, but when she tried to refill my wine glass she poured from too high and totally missed!  She was mortified, and I couldn't stop laughing.  Oops.

On Sunday I dragged myself out of bed to hear Christine sing at the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More, a Catholic church near South Kensington.  (Christine feels like it should be spelled "moste," and I agree!  It's like saying "The Very Incredibly Superduperly Reverend.")  The music was so beautiful!  Totally made up for waking up early after a late night.  Later in the day I had an audition at St. Bride's Margaret Street, a very high church Anglican place near Oxford Circus.  The audition went pretty well, and the director was as nice as he could be, but I won't get put on their substitute list; he said my voice is too light and my sightreading isn't up to par.  After a year of not singing, I wasn't too surprised - or disappointed, actually.

This week classes have been in full swing.  I'm starting to understand why, even though I only have seven hours of class a week, they say this is a full-time 40 hour/week course.  I have so much reading already!  It's all really interesting, but they work on a different system over here and I'm having some trouble getting used to it.  Instead of buying five (or ten or fifteen) books and reading them over the course of the term, you're expected to plan yourself in a library (or two or three) for hours and hours each week and just read the assigned books!  It makes taking notes a little more difficult, but I can't afford to photocopy every reading.  The classes - not so much Latin, which is still dragging - are very substantive, and each student brings something different to the discussion; it's ideal.

Last night I went to the opera with Katie, an American friend.  We saw The Barber of Seville at the English National Opera; it was good, but not great.  The singers were mostly very impressive, but sometimes they were drowned out by the orchestra.  Also, they had adapted the libretto for English, and added some very English humor, which was absolutely enhancing in one way, but sort of detrimental in another.  We did manage to get great seats in the top balcony for only £16 each, though, so we didn't feel too bad about leaving after intermission.

I got a call from my friend Amy - really Harry's friend Amy, but I've co-opted her - during the opera, and went out to meet up with her and some of her friends at a student night at a King's College bar.  It was tons o' fun... and who did I run into there?  Christine!  Smallest world ever.

Sarah's visiting this weekend - maybe I'll be able to convince her to guest write an entry!

  

From Waterloo to London Bridge and Back Again

Yesterday more than made up for all of the time I killed in the past week.  I had Latin at 9am, and made a friend from the class!  His name is Dan, and he's a classics MA student from Plymouth.  We grabbed a cup of coffee after class, which officially makes us friends.

After coffee I had lunch with Alistair, a friend of a friend from back home.  He worked at Christ Church in Greenwich, CT for a year, so we actually have lots of mutual friends, and we engaged in a lively church gossip session.  We met at Waterloo and walked all the way down the south bank of the Themes to Southwark Cathedral, stopping for lunch at a yummy Asian restaurant.  It was bright out but chilly - a lovely fall day.

I had spent Wednesday afternoon looking for babysitting positions online and had set up an interview with an American family, and I got the job!  I'll be sitting three afternoons a week for Samantha, a happy and energetic three year old.  Her mother and I bonded over stories of cultural confusion.  They live a short tube ride away from me; it really all worked out perfectly.  I start next week.

I then ran back down to Waterloo to meet up with Emilia, one of the girls I was supposed to live with.  She's making it as a professional singer in London - how cool is that?  We hadn't seen each other since we were 12, but we had a great time.

Busy day; I had to run home to change for a night out with Oli, a friend's brother who lives just outside London in Reading.  We took the tube to Southwark Station, which, it turns out, isn't really near Southwark Cathedral at all.  We had to walk 30 minutes to get to the place where we were supposed to have dinner, and it was freezing!  The nighttime walk along the Themes was beautiful, though, and the restaurant was amazing, so it was definitely worth it.  After dinner we cabbed over to Kensington to meet Oli's brother and some of his friends at a club.  It wasn't really my scene - too many girls in corset tops and guys in blazers trying to impress them with expensive drinks - but we had a good time in our little group.

Oli and I met up with Christine and Katie, two friends of mine from DC and New York, respectively, this afternoon for lunch and a trip to the Tate Modern.  I saw the Surrealist exhibition - very cool - and one on art from 1945-1960.  I wanted to go to the Rothko show, but it was absolutely packed.  Another time, maybe.

Tonight I'm getting drinks with Dan.  It's exciting to have new friends!

Time on My Hands

I had my third and last class today; it's called Identity and Power: 500-1300, and it's taught by a charismatic Italian professor.  There are nine of us, which, apparently, is a lot for a master's course.  (Four students were just added to Cloister to Classroom, bringing our total up to 8.  That's still smaller than 90% of my Columbia courses, though, so I don't mind so much.  Seems small to me!)  We did some preliminary reading in class about medieval identity and discussed them as a group, talking about royal identity and how it's created and defined.  Very cool!  We don't have readings for the first week which is a bummer, both because I'm very interested in the material and because I could use the time filler.  (I only have seven hours of class a week - how bizarre!  And - maybe this is just because I'm used to Columbia - the readings don't seem to be too intense.)

Speaking of time fillers, I've been looking for babysitting jobs.  I have an interview tomorrow with a family that has a three year old daughter - wish me luck!  They'd want me three afternoons a week, which works well for my schedule and my wallet.  If it doesn't work out I've been in email contact with a few other families; two websites, gumtree and craigslist, have been instrumental in finding babysitting ads.  (What did you all do before the internet?  Crazy!)

Tomorrow's going to be nuts - I have a lunch before the interview, a coffee after, and dinner with my friend Oli.  I'll report back over the weekend!  Now, off to do some reading.  I think I'll start with "The Rule of St. Benedict."

Sunny with a Chance of Showers

It actually poured yesterday, but no matter.

Anyway, I'm finally here!  I arrived Tuesday morning.  My flight was smooth; in fact, we got in early.  I made it to my new flat by 11:30am and settled right in.

Karma is a wonderful thing: finding somewhere to live was a chaotic experience, so the place I finally ended up is lovely.  It's on a quiet road a short walk from the West Kensington tube stop, and the building fronts a leafy courtyard. The neighborhood is right next to post South Kensington and near the ritzy Kensington High Street, but it's a little grittier and has lots of character.  All the rooms in the flat are off one main hallway; there are four bedrooms (split among five housemates), a huge living room, a big kitchen with a dining area (and a dishwasher!), and two full bathrooms.  I've only met two of my housemates, Jess and Gianni, but I'm sure I'll run into the others sooner or later.

Classes began today.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have Beginner's Latin from 9-10am.  The class is largish - maybe 15-17 students - but we're all MA students, which makes me more comfortable for some reason.  The teacher is a young Italian woman and is very enthused about Latin; the students range in age from early 20s to late 40s.  We only did introductory stuff today; the real work will begin Friday.  Straight afterward I had From Cloister to Classroom, a course on monastic scholarship.  There were four history students there, although the professor said some English interlopers might be joining us next week.  We'd had some reading to prepare for today, so the class was pretty meaty; we discussed different types of scholasticism and read some extra texts.  Tomorrow my third and final course, Identity and Power 400-1200, meets at 10am.

Lots of early classes - but hopefully I'll start to find some babysitting work, maybe in the afternoons, and my days will fill up.

Last night Christine Buras and I tried to go to an Indian restaurant that was highly recommended, but got totally lost in East London.  We walked in the wrong direction - twice - and carved a big circle around Whitechapel.  (I kept imagining that Jack the Ripper, who haunted Whitechapel, was going to jump around the corner.)  An hour and a half after we met at the tube, we finally gave up and picked the first Indian place we found; it turned out to be an amazing restaurant.  Who knows, maybe we'll go back there again - on purpose!

Gopnik Revisited

Those of you who read my previous blog, B is for Betsy, will remember the passionate affair I had with Adam Gopnik's writing.  Long dormant, it has awoken again, inspired by a piece on Babar that he wrote for the September 22 issue of The New Yorker called "Freeing the Elephants".  My interest was especially piqued by this comment about how literature reflects the temperament of three cultures and their corresponding great cities, cities I have come to consider my own.

He writes:

In London, in children's books, life is too orderly and one longs for the vitality of the wild; in Paris, order is an achievement, hard won against the natural chaos and cruelty of adult life; in New York, we begin most stories in an indifferent city and the child has to create a kind of order within it.

The rest of the article can be found here; I highly recommend it.

Clear as Mud

The past week I've been home has been both incredibly frustrating and wonderfully clarifying, in terms of what I'll be doing for the near future.

Here's what I don't know for sure: when I'll leave the states. My passport - and visa - should arrive today or tomorrow, allowing me to fly to London on Saturday night. Until it comes, though, I'll be on tenterhooks. My accomodation plans have also been turned topsy-turvey; Emilia and Jess weren't able to find us a decent three-bedroom flat in the area we wanted. Tentatively (although this will be figured out for sure later this morning) I'll be living in a room in Jess' current flat in West Kensington, which is being vacated this weekend. I'll be subletting it for four months, giving me a base from which to locate a studio apartment for myself for the last six months of my stay in London. Cross you fingers for me that this all works out!

Luckily, I do know more about my course. There are 10 MA students in Medieval Studies, and each of my graduate level classes will include 4-6 of my peers. I'll be taking Beginner's Latin, which will be supplemented later in the semester with a class on reading medieval Latin; Identity and Power, 400-1200; and From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic Scholasticism. If I have the time I'll also audit Old French, although from what my professor said I probably won't because of the workload of the aformentioned three classes plus preparation for my dissertation.

That's all I know - or not - for now. Hopefully the next time I write I'll be in London!

Situation Normal: All F****d Up

I had an adventure yesterday.

I gaily tripped onto my British Airways flight at 6:50pm on Monday evening, slept like a rock until landing at Heathrow at 6:55am Tuesday morning, went through customs - and was detained.

You see, I had applied for a visa weeks ago, but as I forgot to send in a supporting document was denied the paperwork.  I assumed that since I was coming back within three months I'd be fine without a visa; turns out I was wrong.  Heathrow immigration detained me for ten hours before shipping me back home to the US.

So now I'm back in DC, reapplying for my visa and waiting to fly back to Engand (which will hopefully happen the weekend of the 27th.)

Oy vey.

Take Two

When I was in middle school, the theme - or inspiration, if you will - of one of NCS' Writer's Day cathedral services was "Take One."  Curled up in piles around the cathedral, our skirts tucked around our knees and our bare feet pressed against the relieving coolness of the marble floors, floppy bluebooks and number two pencils in hand, we girls wrote stories and poems and scribbles about Take One.  Most entries, I believe, touched on movies or the theater.  One memorable finalist story had to do with the sign over a bowl of Halloween candy.  I can't remember what I submitted; it's likely that, as I'd done before and would sheepishly do again, I didn't turn in my bluebook and, instead, crumpled my scratchings in my hand, embarrassed by what I had committed to the page.

Many of you read my Parisian blog - the account of my exultant, breathtaking, whirlwind seven months in Paris as a student and explorer.  (For the curious or nostalgic, here it is: B is for Betsy.)  That, my friends, was Take One.  This is Take Two.

For those of you who haven't been in the loop, welcome; let me catch you up.  In late January 2008 I decided to begin looking into graduate programs in England.  It was contrary enough to everything I had said I wanted that it took me nearly a month to tell family and friends that I had, in fact, applied to four Master's courses at various universities in the United Kingdom.  Four months - and one very frustrating application complication - later, I was admitted as a MA student to University College London in Medieval Studies.

I don't know much about the program; I haven't received information beyond what is listed online.  I do know, though, that I am thrilled to go back to school to study what has always interested me most.  Obviously, I'm also over the moon about being in London for a year.

My accommodations are still up in the air, though I know I'll be living with two other girls, Emilia and Jess.  Emilia and  I did several choir exchanges ten years ago, and reconnected via Facebook.  She responded to the desperate "Help!" message I emailed out a few weeks ago; it turns out that she and her friend Jessica were looking for a third for their new apartment - sorry, flat.  We're hunting in northwest London, relatively close to UCL's campus, and we're trying to be close to Paddington.  I'll let you know what we - well, they - find!

So.  Take Two.  A second European city, a second degree, a second amazing experience.  Wish me luck!