Living in London: Bad Dinners and a Movie Premiere

We've had quite an exciting week in Londontown! Monday and Tuesday went by as usual, but Wednesday started off the excitement, though not necessarily in a good way. After class, we headed to the dining hall for dinner. It's usually not a wonderful experience, but Wednesday was even worse than usual. Most days, I can pick out at least one thing that looks appetizing (and no, this is not me being closed-minded to English food; I'm talking about the lack of variety of food (vegetarian mush and mystery meat every day) and the quality of the food (fried everything--oh so healthy!). Anyway, on Wednesday, not even the French fries looked edible. It was a disaster. Katy and I decided to grab something quick at Gloucester Arms (our favorite/closest pub) on the corner of our street. We got in and the sign said that the Soup of the Day was Tomato and Basil. Yummm! Katy ordered that and I ordered that with a ham and cheddar sandwich. We kept seeing people with chips (fries) and started craving them so we ordered a small side of those as well. When our food came, the waitress (?) told us the soup of the day was actually pea and ham, which neither of us could imagine actually eating. She told us we could order something else because it had just been changed apparently and we hadn't known (although, she seemed iffy about whether or not I could switch because I hadn't asked her specifically what the Soup of the Day was). Katy ordered the same sandwich I had ordered and because I couldn't get a refund, I ordered a piece of chocolate fudge cake, which is really yummy. My sandwich came with our soups before they took the soups back, so I had my food while Katy waited for hers, which came eventually. Our fries came when we had finished (and were full), and then my cake after that, which I didn't need to eat and wasn't even hungry for. It was hectic for them and much too time-consuming for us and it was just a bad idea. I think next time I'll stick to basic fish and chips. Much simpler.

Today was much better! Well, dinner was decent, but the afternoon was very well-spent. We decided to venture to Leicester Square in the West End, the theatre district, because the movie Valentine's Day was premiering tonight. We planned to go and take pictures of the stars who planned to show up, unless it looked too crowded when we arrived at 3. It didn't look like too many people were crowding around the gates yet so we camped out (only one row of people back from the gate) and began the wait. The stars that were coming would start arriving at 6 so we had a bit of time! We befriended two other American girls from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania who are also study abroad students at a college near us AND two British girls from Windsor, about a half hour out of London. They were all really cool! We apparently picked a good place to stand! Although, the guy next to/in front of me was a little creepy. It was a really fun experience though. I'd never been to anything like this before!! Anyway, we figured out who was still coming since most of the airports on the East Coast of the U. S. are closed: Ashton Kutcher (and Demi Moore), Jessica Alba, Emma Roberts (Julia Roberts' niece, though Julia couldn't make it), Topher Grace (from That 70s Show), Hector Elizondo (the driver from The Princess Diaries), and of course, the director, Garry Marshall. It was awesome. We were pretty bummed that the rest of the stars (most notably Taylor Lautner, Bradley Cooper, McDreamy, and McSteamy [Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane for all you non-Grey's Anatomy watchers]) weren't there. It's Taylor Lautner's 18th birthday today so the plan was to lure him back to our pub and celebrate with him, which unfortunately didn't quite work out. Anyway, it was freezing out but totally worth it, and I stole Katy's pictures because her camera is way better than mine (as in it never seems to take blurry pictures whereas mine never seems to take clear pictures). Enjoy!