Five Minute Friday: Visit

Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

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Yeah, it's a Doctor Who travel reference. The Doctor loves to visit new places :)

I'll come clean. I am a very enthusiastic tourist. There are few things I love more than visiting a new place. There is something about seeing new things and new places that just thrills me. I love to explore all the streets, shops, cafes, and ins and outs of a place. I love to visit with the locals. I love to visit art museums and theatres and street markets. I love visiting historic sites and monuments and local places of interest. I love visiting new places in our hometown too. Just this morning, GB and I had to go run an errand and it took us near a new grocery store that opened about a week ago called Sprouts. I've never been to one of those before, so we decided to visit and check it out.

O City, My City!

This is a continuation of my previous entry London Calling! about my love for and my experiences in the UK and more specifically, my beloved London.

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When I got on the plane in Atlanta to fly to London for the spring semestre in 1997, I had no idea what wonderful adventures and experiences awaited me. I had, of course, heard the stories of previous study abroad students, but nothing could have begun to prepare me for what awaited me when I got off the plane at Gatwick Airport that brisk January morning.

We arrived in London and took a coach from the airport to the study center where we would be living for the term to get settled into our new digs. I was excited to see all the famous sights I'd seen pictures of, but as Gatwick is about 30 miles outside central London, I was forced to wait a little bit as we trundled along in the coach. I nibbled on the Cadbury's chocolate that our program director had given us as we arrived and watched green fields, houses, petrol stations, shops with unfamiliar names, and the flow of traffic on the left side of the road instead of the right.

Yummy, yummy! An assortment similar to what we nibbled on that first morning.

London Calling!

After my Five Minute Friday post last week about noticing London, I've kind of had it on the brain, so I thought I'd expand a little bit on that theme. Here's the first entry in what I hope will be a few about this city that I love so much! Once I write the second entry, I'll link up to it at the bottom of this one!

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-- quote from Samuel Johnson

I admit it. I am in love.

I am in love with a city and that city is London.

Five Minute Friday: Notice

Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

Also, in the interest of trying to be my authentic self and letting you "notice" the real me, I'm writing through a lot of intense emotional pain right now. This may or may not come out in my words below, but whether or not it does, it's time to start the clock...take a breath...five minutes...here we go...

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Noticing London

I leave the study center where I live with all my fellow students and step out into the brisk February air. It is cold, but not so cold that I am frozen solid. The sky is a typical sort of London grey with heavy clouds. As I go down the front steps and stroll the sidewalk, I take in the row of attached houses behind me and around the corner. I continue walking, occasionally passing people as I make my way to the Tube station two blocks away. 

On the corner of Gloucester Road, there is the fruit man on the corner. He is there almost every day and I have become a familar face to him. He spots me and gives a little smile, his eyes crinkliing at the corners. " 'Allo there luv. How yer doin' this mornin'? What ken I do ya for?" he says by way of greeting. I return his smile and exchange pleasantries as I select a couple of pieces of fruit, hand over a few pence, and wave goodbye as I make my way to the Tube station. Inside, I put my ticket in the turnstiles and walk through, grabbing it from the other side as I continue my stride.

The Tube zips along quickly and I get off at Victoria Station to find my local internet cafe. The station platform is crowded with people of every conceivable colour of the rainbow. There are Indians, Afghans, Brits, Americans, Italians, Germans, Swedes, Danes, and everything in between. I know because I hear their dialects, accents, and native tongues in conversations as I pass through on my way to the cafe. The smells of the people are mixed too. Some food smells, strong cologne, delicate perfume, a mixture of sweat and dust, and the ever present smell of body odour. 

Behind me, I hear the sound of the Tube train's doors shutting and the rumble as it speeds away to the next station. As I make my way out into the grey clouded daylight, I am struck by this mix of cultures, sights and sounds. All on display, if only one will take a moment and notice.

It is in noticing these things that I have fallen in love with this city of tea, gardens, palaces, crisp BBC and warm rolling Cockney accents, Cadbury's chocolates, and yes, even the slightly piquant body odour of those who are not fond of deodorant. All of it is real and authentic and unabashedly who it is. And I am glad to notice. 

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