A Typical London Weekend

So for the first time since I've been in London, I felt unpacked and settled enough to spend time out with friends on the weekend.  Friday night I ate the national dish of England….Fish and chips? Nope. Surprisingly, it is curry. I actually ate lamb cooked in a spicy sauce but almost all my other friends had the curry. There’s a great place to eat Indian food in London. It’s called Brick Lane and there are several Indian restaurants on the street. When you walk by, they offer you “deals” to get you to eat at their place. Come to find out, the “deal” we took was just the restaurant’s regular special! It was alright though. The food was really great.

We decided to go to the Camden Market on Saturday. It wasn’t too touristy. It’s more of a local thing. It really reminded me of a swap meet or the little border towns in Mexico. We had fun shopping outdoors (even though we were so cold we couldn’t feel our fingers!) It was nice to haggle for better prices. There was even a fruit stand with really good deals. I ended up buying two mangoes for 1 pound. I miss eating fresh fruit…and real Mexican food. After shopping, our group met up with more people and went to a pub and had dinner. The pub was very cool. It was built inside a huge, old church. We met some rugby players while we were there. They all had accents from different parts of the UK. It was so difficult to understand them when they spoke. I kept trying to ask them what position they played in the game but I don’t even know what rugby players do. They ended up explaining it in “American football” terms. One guy said, “I throw the ball so that’s kind of like being the quarterback.” Maybe I should have looked up rugby before coming to England.

Sunday I visited a Pentecostal church for the second time since being in London. This church was fun to visit. Most people who attend are originally from Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, the Caribbean, and countries in Africa. It’s interesting to hear them speak and sing because their accents are mixed between their country of origin and an English accent. I loved being surrounded by many different accents and nationalities. It’s tough to keep my own accent with words like “yeah” and “cool” because I want to say it with an English accent. Then when I hear the Jamaican accents, I get totally thrown off! I almost don’t know how to talk anymore. Well, as you can see, being in London is about cultural variation. I’m always surrounded by different races and cultures and languages. It’s even more diverse than southern California!