Excerpt from Journal - 25/5

Today was my turnaround day. With the echoes of yesterday's lack of direction still in my system, I found it difficult to find any more sense of purpose this morning after waking up around 10 am. Richard and I were both here, and we carefully avoided seeing each other, and both of us actually managed to shower and eat breakfast without seeing the other. I finally said good morning, and he quickly left for school, leaving me in my mode of hazed distraction for another hour or so before I shook myself out of it. Something interesting to note here though: I made a goal last Saturday that I wouldn't listen to any “normal” music until I went to the temple, and this morning, despite how distracted I was, I was still loyal to that commitment, which probably made it a lot easier for me to shake myself out of my state of distraction. I felt terrible after being distracted and directionless for so long though, and I made a series of short-term goals of things that I could do in the few hours before the May Ball, which I had to be at 6:30 pm at the Wandsworth chapel. I didn't do too bad either, although I nearly fainted after working out: a set of fifty-seven pushups followed by 120 crunches had me breathing hard, but the second set of forty-three pushups floored me (literally), and I hardly survived the set of forty-five second bridges that finished my four sets. Man, I am weak!! I left the apartment afterward and made my way across the street to pick up a Boris Bike to ride to Victoria station with my ears still ringing, and my whole body felt like I had just finished a track workout when I had actually completed a puny set of exercises. It was a good wake-up call though—I can't keep living my life in this lazy way or I'll be a dead man next time I try to heft any object heavier than a large book.

The ride on the Boris Bike to Victoria station was actually quite exciting. Driving on the left side of the road is really, really strange, but I found it strangely exhilarating to be on the road in such crazy traffic. It took me a good ten minutes to find my way around the bendy, unintuitive streets to the HSBC bank, where I got out 260 pounds to pay Carol for two more weeks rent. The way back was a piece of cake—just a straight shot down Charlswood Street. I wish I had figured out that path on the way over :P 

The rest of the afternoon had me doing my wash and cleaning my room, but most of it was spent working on a personal budget for the summer. First I counted up all my expenditures for the summer so far, and although I still ended up with about thirty pounds unaccounted for, I haven't kept a very good record of my expenditures. To be frank, I have never kept a good record of my expenditures, despite having attempted to do so at least four times before. I've just never had the time or the patience to do it, and I felt today that if I ever had time, I have it now, so I might as well do it and make a good job of it. I decided, in the end, on a $900 budget. That translates to about 562 pounds. With the days that I have left, that ends up being at about 5 pounds a day for every day except Sundays (when I don't spend money, of course), and excludes transport, which should be taken care of by purchasing season passes for each month until the last couple of weeks.  

Of course, this plan will only work if I'm committed, so that's part of why I'm posting this here today, as a part of that commitment.  This is going to work.  For the first time in my life, I'm going to live on a budget :)  So, although these first weeks haven't been characterized by perfect discipline or organization, I feel like I"m getting there piece by piece.  This budget is just one more piece.

Who knew? London reminds me of...Brasil?

I've been wanting to write a post about this for a while now :)

Because the fact is, London is far more like São Paulo than it is like the United States.  Or at least like Utah.  

Let's start with the general big-cityness of the two places.  People call London a crazy place, full of too many people and hard to understand streets. Well, London is absolutely gorgeous and the streets are a piece of cake in comparison to São Paulo.  However, a labyrinthine network of buses, subway, and trains that can be found in both cities, with the main differences being that Sao Paulo mass transit has a far greater emphasis on buses than the subway (London has so many underground lines the map looks almost like a Jackson Pollock painting).  

Beyond the makeup of the city itself, the cars are incredibly similar.  Car makers strange to any American, such as Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, and Renault, are everywhere in Brasil and in London too.  Granted, the cars in London tend to be a bit nicer, and include a large variety of BMW's, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz that I've never seen before, but the diverse small-car selection of Volkswagons, Chevrolets, and Fords are include many of the same cars I saw in Brasil. 

Then there is the food.  I remember being so taken aback by the strange food choices in supermarkets that I would find in Brasil.  Coming to London has helped me appreciate the impact of the European food market on the country.  Like in Brasil, in London there are those cream crackers that are like soda crackers except that they are far more refined and delicious.  And I used to laugh when people would say "bolo" in Brasil and think of these stout little cakes (usually about 10 inches long and 3 inches wide), when I would immediately think of a big, tall birthday cake, or at least a cake made in a pan.  Well, it turns out they sell those stout cakes in London too; in fact, I bought one yesterday just for the nostalgia of eating one again--it tasted exactly the same as the ones in Brasil!  

I don't even have time to address the massive amount of tea that is sold in Brasil, which of course is also sold in Great Britain, which is the world capital of tea, if there is one.  The only thing London is missing is the delicious french bread that is sold all over Brasil, but I guess I can understand them by not embracing that menu choice with open arms...national pride, I suppose.

The cell phone services are remarkably similar to the ones in Brasil as well.  I was surprised two times in the last few days because I heard someone's cell phone ring with a tone exactly like ones I had heard during my mission.  I don't know for sure, but I'm almost positive the same cell phone companies that exist in London own the companies Vivo, Oi, Tim, and Claro that dominate in Brasil, and the popularity of 'pay as you go' systems that are so common in Brasil (as big a ripoff as they are...it's what I'm using and it hurts) are common here as well.  I'm probably ignorant, but I've never even heard of someone using such a system in the US.  

Lastly, and this one applies less to England particularly but to Europe generally, but the most common greeting between a man and a woman in Brasil is a light kiss on the cheek, or rather a light touching of the cheeks while kissing the air next to the cheek.  While I was visiting in Brasil (no longer a missionary, and therefore no longer restricted to just shaking everyone's hand), I tried to perfect this approach.  Although I'm sure I wasn't that good at it, after 12 days it felt quite normal to give a kiss and sometimes also a hug when saying hello or goodbye to someone I was friends with.  I can't be more grateful for this, because when I said goodbye to Eliza (the Polish girl I met the other day), she turned her head toward me in the exact same manner as I had become used to while I was visiting Brasil, and almost without thinking I gave her a light kiss on the cheek.  

But listen folks, can you imagine how awkward that would have been had I not gotten all that practicing out in Brasil??  I could have thought any number of things had I not known what Eliza meant in that moment, and if I hadn't made a complete fool of myself, I would have at least hesitated for several moments and risked offending someone who I had just met.  Thankfully, London reminds me a lot of Brasil.  Indeed, going to Brasil for a dozen days before going to London was certainly the most effective preparation for going to London that I could have had, for it not only got me used to constant change, moving around, and living out of a suitcase again, but it prepared me for the culture shock of being in a new place among new people.  

In my case, similarities meant strengths.

Six days in, football-ed out

So, it's been a long while since I made a post here, and it's high time I did, since today marks the end of my sixth day here in London. The experience so far has been extremely positive for me. I love the host family I'm staying with, my roommate Richard, and all the people I have met here so far. I'm living here in the neighborhood near Pimlico station, which, incredibly, is in Zone 1 of London, and close to almost EVERYTHING. I've been able to get out and see Westminster Abbey, the Globe Theatre, the Roman Wall, and a few other scattered attractions with the group last Thursday, but I haven't ventured out much since. Now that things are settled here at the flat and I feel better organized in terms of my classes and project, I feel like it is time to hit the streets on my own.

I had a cool experience on Saturday. I had some free time during the afternoon, and there was a group of guys (I guess they would say "chaps" or "blokes" here) who were playing football in the cement area outside the apartment building. I watched them for a while from the kitchen window and realized they were playing with essentially the same rules as I used to play in Brasil. After a few minutes I couldn't stand to watch any longer, and with some encouragement from Carol (my host mum), I changed into basketball shorts and went outside and asked them if they would let an American play. They said yes, and I was surprised to find out only a couple of them were actually English. Most of them were immigrants, and they switched a lot between speaking in Arabic to each other and yelling out swearwords in English. Although it was foul, their language didn't bother me so much as it could have--they really didn't use the words for anything else except to have something to yell out when they were upset or excited about something.

With regards to the actual gameplay, I learned that using a large, very pumped-up football is quite different from using a small, half-flat ball like the ones we would play with in Brasil (new balls were a rarity there). This unforgiving ball tended to bounce off my foot at a random trajectory just as often as it would go where I intended it to, and I'm afraid I was unable to convince any of the players who were there that I had skills worth mentioning like I had been able to do with my Brazilian friends. I tend to play aggressive and run around a lot, but ironically I was the most help to my team while I was in goal--in the field I just got creamed. Still, many of the guys were very welcoming (including one nice guy in the group named "Osama"), and a couple of them invited me back to play with them the next Saturday. I think I'll take them up on it. While of course it's a ton of fun for me to play, it's also a way to be a part of a group of people I would never have access to otherwise. Lucky for me the field study is in London--if I was in New York City they'd have been playing basketball, and I would have been hopeless!