A Walk and a Jog

So apparently no one sent me the memo about walking being one of the most amazing things that you can do in London. Forget the tube, leave the buses and cabs behind. Just put on a good pair of walking (or running) shoes and hit the pavement. They don't call it a sidewalk here, they call it "pavement," by the way.

This evening, Luke, Mallory and I decided to take a trip out to Oxford Circus in search of a small store called Cybercandy that sells foreign edibles including Lucky Charms, IBC Root Beer and Twizzlers among other things. After wandering in search of said store for about 15 minutes, we arrived at our destination. Personally, I found it a tad disappointing, partially because the selection was limited and partially because, to be frank, I love the city of London.

London is amazing in so many ways that would take an unfathomable amount of paragraphs to explain, but there are a few main reasons I am beginning to comprehend as today marked a month since my arrival here. London has commerce to offer the businessman, attractions to satisfy the tourist, museums to show the intellectual, streets for the lost to wander, cathedrals for the broken to search for meaning and parks for the runners to run in. Maybe it's partially me and how well I seem to adapt to new environments...or maybe it's me growing up a little by living in a city of seven million inhabitants. The chance to be alone in a crowd yet completely part of a city is exhillarating in a way that sends shivers down my spine from time to time on the tube.

And that's as descriptive as I'll get this entry. So we got out of the store after buying an IBC root beer apiece and made our way over to Covent Garden, which was closed. Instead of taking the tube back, though, we decided to walk back to our flat from Piccadilly Circus, which is where we had wandered to at that point due to a brief excursion to Waterstones. You might think it's a little crazy to walk for that long, but honestly, I wish we'd do it more often. Yeah, it was probably about 2 or 3 miles worth of walking, but you get so much more oriented with the city this way and discover places, streets and sometimes people you didn't know were so close to you. So yeah, it was pretty awesome.

Sidebar: I wish we had a siesta in London during the day. It'd be so nice.

As for me and the trip thus far, it's been a good past couple of weeks. There haven't been any recent trips to cool places like Bath or Stonehenge, but Luke and I will be heading outside of where we normally go this weekend, since most of our other friends are going on a trip to Liverpool...or Budapest, in Sara and Alexa's case. Where exactly we're going, we haven't totally decided yet, but it's going to be somewhere awesome, simply because that's where we like to go: places that thrill, chill and are economically friendly. My internship has been decent enough; I've spent a lot of time sorting out the storeroom with the other intern, Dan, so that's been a little frustrating, but thankfully we were able to finish that project today. We also met with the marketing director, Karmini Sharma, who gave us a briefing on the company itself, its history and what our role would be. Basically, we'll be doing some writing and getting published in newsletters and online magazines soon, which will be great.

Speaking of which, I need to get ready for tomorrow since I'm heading in tomorrow to do a half day of interning at ESPN. Hooray for writing! I'll update again when I get the chance...