Odds and Ends--Day 22

I spent the majority of the day today working on homework, as often happens on Thursdays. After lunch, I walked with my roommate and another friend to the Study Centre to pick up our tickets for tomorrow night's candlelight concert at St.Martin-in-the-Fields. I am pleased that most of my friends here are also going. It should be a great night. We are also trying to orchestrate a visit to Buckingham Palace in the early part of the day, so we are going to sit down and have a little group chat about that this evening after dinner. As a side note, it was a really nice day today, so I was glad for the afternoon walk after glaring at a computer screen for the previous three or four hours.

After we picked up our tickets, we made a quick stop at Waitrose to restock on cereal before heading home. I am continually in awe of the good quality of the food here, even when it is something as simple as cereal or bread. It seems that Europeans place a higher priority on "quality over quantity" than Americans do, and as a result, their food is less highly processed. Everything on the shelves and in the deli cases and other food counters looks so fresh! I just want to buy everything because it looks so good!  All in all, I would say that European food agrees with me. I am a really big foodie and somewhat of a health nut, and I think that a European lifestyle coincides quite closely with my ideas of healthful living. This is true not only of food but also of general fitness. Many Londoners own bikes, and London has many bike-rental stations (like the Nice Ride system in Minneapolis) which I am sure pre-dated their American counterparts by a few years at least. The public transit system is also more highly developed than in the United States, so the streets are clogged mostly with bikes, buses, cabs, and pedestrians than personal vehicles. One thing that is exceptionally unhealthy here is the air. I'm sure that less cars equals less fuel emissions, but the sheer number of other vehicles must make up for it. And Londoners are quite fond of smoking! I can hardly walk anywhere without inhaling someone else's cigarette fumes. It's quite disgusting to someone who considers smoking a vile habit that should be allowed in homes only.

Anyway, I thought I'd take this rather slow day to express some of my general feelings about a topic that is very important to me right now. I really like the responsibility of buying my own food and feeding myself, and it's actually kind of fun in a way. I just think how much easier it will be when I come back to the States because I'll already have experienced it in a foreign country.

Pictures from the Tower of London are forth-coming. I hope to share them alongside some awesome pictures of Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square tomorrow, assuming everything goes according to plan.