Hey guys – Don’t worry I’m in Egypt safe and sound, but have little to no time to blog about it right now. We have almost no free time and are constantly on buses and trains around the country. Rest assured, when I get time I will relay all the crazy things I’ve been up to/seeing. Probably it will be next weeek when I’m in Dahab. Anyway, I’m off to dinner with the tour group here in Luxor. We’re going to an Irish pub – in Egypt. Ma’a salama for now!

Love,

Rachel

Words cannot express how excited I am to go to Egypt on the 27th of this month. Most little kids – their dream jobs are things like being a fireman, veterinarian, astronaut. Well when I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be an Egyptologist. No joke. I had old Hieroglyph books and dictionaries, watched movies and documentaries on life in Ancient Egypt, and even carried an Ankh around with me (a fact that embarasses me today). At least I can say my interests veered basically around the same continental land mass.

So I leave in less than 2 weeks for Cairo to start an archeological/cultural tour of ancient and modern Egypt. We go from Cairo & Alexandria – Luxor & Aswan – Dahab & the Sinai. The weather there has been absolutely perfect, in the lower-mid 30s °C, which will be such a nice change from all the rain and cloudy days I experience in Foggy London. And 2 days after my return to the UK, I jet off to Barcelona, en Catalania (España) to finally witness for myself the Gaudi architecture and Miró sculptures.

Before my departure I must finish 2 essays and gain significant headway on the third. Fun right? Speaking of which… I’m off to work.

Hey everyone, sorry I haven’t been using this blog as much as I may have hoped. I feel as though social networking sites like facebook have made it easier for people to keep track of me in just a mere sentence or two, and that this wasn’t necessary. But now that I’m deleting my facebook account, I will keep my friends and family updated on my life here. Look for Egypt posts soon!

Love, Rachel

Ah, to be a young, naïve first year again. Oh, wait… I’m having the chance to do that now! Orientation went off without too much of a hitch. Registration with the school and the library was hardly a hassle for me because I am not enrolling in the school for a bachelors. So in the past couple days I have been finalizing my class schedule and getting to know the neighborhood. On tuesday, Alice (my Belgian flatmate), Alicija (my Polish flatmate), and I went on a lovely bus tour of Central London’s best sites and it got me in a tourist state of mind. So many things to go and see! Unfortunately I also came down with a cold that has been plaguing me all week. I took things easy on Tuesday and Wednesday, but then Thursday Maggie (a SOAS junior year abroad student from Bryn Mawr) and I went to Camden Town for a little “retail therapy”. I bought a new purse, teas, and 100% hemp sneakers.

Camden Town and its Market are really fascinating. I guess you could call it the last major haven for U.K. punks: with underground venues, tattoo and piercing parlors, and goth/punk/alt clothing shoppes dotting the streets. Clothing there is no bargain, though, which seems to be a pattern everywhere in London. But at least in markets I can haggle. 

I have come to know the University of London Union quite well recently and must say I have fallen in love. The place offers so much! Clubs and societies, subsidized food, drinks, and retail stuff, constant events for students of all University of London schools, and an amazing gym. I feel so lucky to be connected to all this, and you all will definitely be hearing more in my blog about ULU.

Tomorrow is the Fresher’s Fayre at SOAS, where we get to be introduced to all the clubs and societies. Alicija, Maggie and I planned to go for the morning then take the tube to the closest IKEA for some kitchen necessities. And then Sunday I get up real early to pick up Emma at Heathrow! Yay! I’m so excited!

Pictures are forthcoming, my camera is just being really annoying now.

I have been so seriously blown away by this weather! It’s gorgeous! Not a cloud in the sky and temps in the upper 60’s F. Sorry, still working on the metrics system. I got a mobile phone and calls to me from the U.S. are free. It’s listed on my facebook, or you can email me for it. Same goes for my mailing address.

So the past couple days have been ones of big expense unfortunately. But some things are just so essential you don’t have a choice: a hair dryer, basic cooking supplies, my phone, etc. I’ve come to know the Islington neighborhood quite well and I absolutely love it. The flats are all so quaint and the shoppes so dainty and cute. Yesterday was the welcome day for International Students (yes I am international), so we all crowded in to meet each other at the Vernon campus. I met a lot of lovely, interesting people from all over the world – from Japan to Denmark to Ireland to Niger. We then sat in on talks about how to get through Orientation Week, to register with the school and with classes, and all the stuff the school offers to assist lost and confused students.

After that I went back to the flat to make some dinner. Our flat is almost entirely international and I love it! There is myself, the oddball American, an awesome girl named Alicija from Poland, Alice from Belgium, a Korean guy who I don’t really know, and a lovely SOAS sophomore from Italy. And one last person I have yet to meet entirely. A few of us went to the International students welcome party last night at the main campus in Russell Square. They have a basement bar for students that reminded me a lot of the grind… if the grind actually served alcohol. So we stayed there for a while, met up with Maggie, another U.S. student from Wisconsin, and Marloes, a Dutch girl who had been living in the U.K. for a few years. We all fascinated each other with what we are studying, our interests, and our travels.

We walked back after 11 and I debated going back out again with Alice. But we stayed in and talked about our favorite movies and cooking. I watched a little U.S. tv, and went to bed. Today I am cooking Moroccan food – cous cous with chicken and vegetables. Should be interesting. We all are trying to do communal cooking. It’s cheaper and more social! Anyway, I’m off to get some breakfast and a shower.

Such beautiful weather! Over 24 hours here and it’s been clear blue skies and warm enough to be Autumn in San Francisco. Not exactly the London you picture in guide books.

I arrived in London early Thursday morning. I have come to the ultimate conclusion that Heathrow is not such a miserable airport, provided it is your final destination and you don’t need to transfer. I couldn’t find my airport greeting person from SOAS, so I hopped into one of the famous London black taxi. Now, now you budgeteers may think me mad for spending nearly £60 to get all the way across London when the tube and train are way cheaper, but picture this: me struggling trying to roll 2 large suitcases at once with two smaller bags on top of them, and my backpack on my back to boot! No way I was going to walk around carrying more than my own body weight through the London Underground.

I arrived at my residence, Dinwiddy Hall, by late morning. It is a huge building filled with what the Brits call cluster flats – meaning all the rooms are in pod groups of 5-7 centered around a shared kitchen. I have my own tiny room and bathroom, or as I lovingly call it, a water closet with a cement floor! The room is pretty poorly lit but I have a big window that overlooks the courtyard so there is not so much street noise. Despite my need for sleep, I dropped my things on the floor and headed out on the town for some much needed essentials (i.e: bedsheets and pillow). I milled around Islington and discovered Chapel Market, indeed a dying tradition. There were lovely fresh vegetable stalls, clothing vendors, and “fishmongers”. Historically Chapel used to be vibrant, bustling with all sorts of people all day every day and it used to take up many blocks. Today it has significantly shrunk but the vendors are still quite desperate for a sale just as buyers are hungry for a bargain. I bought my bed sheets, pillows, and comforter from a young Moroccan gent. Mine are plain but his stall had many duvets styled from all the top selling movies.

I also went grocery shopping at the local mega-grocery store, Sainsbury. It was not a cheap day, let me tell you. So I bought enough supplies to make a chicken stir-fry which will probably last me 2 days. Now most of the day and evening had gone by and I had yet to meet any of my flat mates. Yesterday was a constant stream of closing and opening doors and no one seemed too interested in meeting me. But then I got back from shopping around 19:00 and found Iko in the kitchen, a lovely SOAS grad student from Japan. She is studying Arabic and Iraqi history. I was so fascinated. Apparently there are two other people in the flat, two “unfriendly” Korean guys. But they are moving out saturday to make way for the “freshers”. We shared some dinner and I unpacked everything. Figured the “new place” jitters would go away once I made this place my own.

I went to bed early but got woken up at midnight – by the fire alarm! Now, the unfortunate thing about this building is that it is kind of like the pentagon but in order to get out from our flats you need to walk out to the courthouse and back into the building to get out to the street. Design flaw, no? I rushed outside while other students, more clothed than me, took their time and didn’t even want to get out onto the street. I was floored. Where were the RAs? Oh wait, there are no RAs! This building is owned by a private company. We only have a security guard at night. Groggily, I drudged back up the stairs and fell asleep again. Woke up at 6 am, went back to bed until 11 am. 

So today I just got back from trying to settle my payment balance. Thanks to British style bureaucracy I was shuttled from room to room, from registry to accounting to cashiering to registry to the door. Hopefully all is taken care of. At least I managed to pry a receipt out of them.

And now I am off to the local mall to buy a mobile phone. I may even attempt the bus! Though I have pretty much resolved that one of the best ways to save change is that if I’m going anywhere under a mile, I’m walking. At least until I get my oyster card.

The day after my 21st birthday I waltzed into the local liquor warehouse of Worcester, Massachusetts [you all know State] to make my first legal purchases. I quickly breezed through their piss-poor California wine section to the harder stuff and, to my shock/awe/disbelief I came across four brands of legal Absinthe. Prices varied but essentially amounted to $50 for a half litre. Yes, it is quite a steep price. I mulled over in my head the idea of the FDA relaxing rules for selling of products containing thujone, the hallucinogenic ingredient in absinthe responsible for the old green fairy folklore, and wondered how this could be possible. So to the internet I went – and the internet answered.

Real Green Fairy?

 

Indeed, the U.S. has relaxed the rules on a nearly hundred-year old ban on this slightly psychedelic drink. In late 2007 a few brands were approved for sale provided they contained such trace amounts of thujone that it can be considered thujone-free. It turned out, though, that absinthe never had very much of it to begin with. But there is so much more to the fabled drink of French Bohemia. The main ingredients are three herbs – a trifecta of pure inebriated bliss: grande wormwood, green anise (also used to make Greek Ouzo), and florence fennel, two of which used to grow in my back yard in California. Historically, most types of absinthes range in proof from 120-150, about 60-75% alcohol by volume. Though there are many styles, the end result of consumption is the same: truly uninhibited intoxication. You have such a good time, you will never want to remember it the morning after. Believe me, I would know.

So are these U.S.-approved brands the real deal? Not exactly. They are for the most part on the lower end of the absinthe proof scale. The only brand I have found with extensive information available about their product is Lucid, pictured on the right. Lucid contains all of the original ingredients but to a lesser degree. For more information about the Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, check out their website at http://www.drinklucid.com/. You may not feel like it’s the 1800’s and you are lounging around at Moulin Rouge like all the famous artists, but it’s pretty damn close.

Absinthe is typically prepared by pouring one ounce (30 mL), or for the more adventurous an ounce and a half (45 mL), into a small glass, usually with a “dose line”. A slotted spoon is placed over the glass and on top of that, a sugar cube. Then, cold water is poured over the sugar so it can dissolve into the drink until the water level reaches 3:1, or for the less adventurous, 5:1. It is stirred in order to break up the chemical compounds and release all the flavors usually suppressed by the anise. But many people have also preferred to mix absinthe into a cocktail, and many famous concoctions have been coined over the years, including the “Green Lantern”, Ernest Hemingway’s “Death in the Afternoon”, and even an Absinthe Bloody Mary. When I was in Amsterdam three years ago, my curiosity overcame me and I tried absinthe the old fashioned way. I was still an art student after all, and had just spent the day at the Van Gogh museum. I guess I wanted to live a little in the shoes of one of my idols.

Make no mistake, most people find the taste of absinthe appallingly awful, myself included. It is not the drink you order to enjoy. It is the drink you order to get, well, as they say in the army, FUBAR. I think it is something everyone with a fondness for liquor to try once in their lives. As for me, I’ll be in the U.K. for a year where it is not banned so rest assured I will document my next excursion into the world of the green fairy.

Welcome all to my travel blog! I will try my best to update this every few days or at least once a week. I have a full year ahead of me: studying at a top UK institution, low-budget European travel, cooking adventures of global proportions, and just plain having the time of my life! I will certainly miss all my friends at home dearly but I do hope to keep you all entertained and updated on my life abroad – so please check back often. Comment, even! I will be arriving in London on Sept. 18th and hopefully I will have things to write about immediately. All my love!