Forced to face fears

Fear # 1: Being watched via camera, satellite, or eyes.
Facing fear #1: I can't stop counting all the security cameras that are on every street. And my sister, Laura, told me this horrify little fact that people in London are watched on average by 300 cameras a day. Here's a freaky article about it http://www.newstatesman.com/200610020022 (sorry, I can't figure out the link thing right now)

Fear # 2: Feet. Dirty feet. Ugly feet. Feet touching me. Even clean feet.
Facing fear #2: Wearing flip flops in the city is no longer a good idea. Socks and covered shoes are. Also, there are lots of people on the streets meaning lots of feet to have to see.

Fear # 3: Dirty teeth. My own in particular.
Facing fear # 3 part a: People here just don't care about their teeth the same way that Americans do. Don't know why they think it is normal to have yellow, crookedy teeth.
Facing fear #3 part b: My toothbrush won't charge and I can't figure out why. A normal toothbrush just doesn't leave your teeth with that just-left-the-dentist clean feeling that I love so much.

All of this to deal with and I'm not curled up in the fetal position rocking back and forth. Pretty amazing if you ask me. I must be really brave and tough.

Advice of the day

When using adapters to plug in your computer, make sure you have the voltage set correctly, or *KABLOOM* your computer will die in a flash of light.

The all-day trip to Ikea

The day started with Mom hoping it would be memorable and me hoping I would have a good story to blog. Be careful what you ask for. Here is our little cautionary tale:
Mom and I went online to order our furniture from Ikea and found out it would take three weeks to be shipped to us. If we went into the store and bought it all there, they would ship all the stuff to our house in only four days. It sounded easy ad like a good, two hour trip. We started out at 12:30 took the tube and the train up there and got shopping. Quickly filling up two carts with mostly hangers and such we went down to the self help area to pull out the boxes of our unassembled furniture. I don't know why we thought the two of us could manage all of those boxes. Four more carts stacked high with boxes, lots of tugging and pulling, help from strangers, and some abandoned furniture later we had finished. Then we just had to manage to push all six carts to the cashiers desk and stuff all the loose items in big blue bags. Two of the carts took both of us pushing and pulling to get them to move. But, we finally got that all finished and only had to take some mirrors and goblets home with us because they couldn't ship glass. OK, I think I am making this story sound not as completely overwhelming and exhausting as it was. That "simple" little trip to Ikea took ten hours. Seven of which were spent in the store trying to figure out how were could pull the boxes onto our carts and manuveur them around. The only thing we had to eat were some crackers and yogurt. Let's just say it was a very long day. I'm pretty sure I still feel it. At least we amused a lot of people. No one exactly told us that, I'm just assuming from all the looks we got. Why didn't we bring along some muscles? Foolish mistake.

Sleepless in London

I've only been here a few days, but I'm catching on.

Things I've learned so far:
1. Hair tongs= curling iron
2. It's spelled 'authorised' not 'authorized' and 'fibre' not 'fiber'.
3. When saying bye to someone add as many phrases as you can think of and say them as quickly as you can.
4. You do not want to be made redundant.
5. It is normal to be woken up at 3:30 am by someone outside you window screaming, "I am South America! I own this street!"
6. Smart people carry umbrellas with them at all times. It is very possible it will rain four times in one day.
7. Avoid looking/going into phone booths. Dirty.
8. People walk on the left side of the street and escalators are switched around too. Also, to avoid near-death experiences whilst crossing the street, remember cars drive on the other side.

I reckon that's not bad for only being here a day or two, yeah? Well, it's two in the morning now and the movers bring all our stuff tomorrow which will keep us very busy so I should try to get some shut eye.
Talk to ya later!Cheers!Thanks!Cheerio!I'm off!It's all good!Right then!See ya!Bye!

D.C.

My trip to D.C. (which was two weeks ago, I've been pathetically slow about updating) was a blast! My sister Sariah and I were crazy tourists, and managed to see almost everything. We went to the top of the Washington Monument and it was so clear we could see our temple far in the background. We got to see 32 million dollar stacks of money which didn't impress me at all. Nope, not one bit. I got to see art by most of my favorite artists including Rothko which made me even more interested in him. And, because I couldn't see The Dark Knight at the midnight showing (Sariah and I left for a two-day car trip the next day at 7am which would have only given me about three hours of sleep) we went with Laura. And it was awesome! I'm sure everyone has seen it at least once by now. I think the coolest place I saw was the Library of Congress. It was beautiful! I wish we had figured out how to get a pass to go in the actual library part of the building, but it was still amazing. It was also fun getting to hang out with Ruth and the boy she nannnies and meeting the people Laura teaches. And it was great getting to hang out with Peter even though his work was crazy. He was lots of fun despite him torturing me. So, summing up the whole D.C. experience: it rocked!