What a week!

So it's been awhile since my last post, but I've had good reasons. Last week wasn't very exciting, just going to class and hanging out, nothing unusual, so I didn't feel the need to bore you with mundane accounts of my day to day duties. Starting Sunday though, the week has been crazy, and it's only gonna continue for at least the next week, but I feel more like the next month.

Sunday was the Chinese New Year celebration in Trafalgar Square. I had read a fair amount about it before going, but I had high hopes as apparently it's one of the biggest Chinese New Year events in the world, of course China leading the way. I met up with Michelle and Hannah and we headed into the madness that was the transformed Trafalgar Square. The decorations were neat, Chinese lanterns hanging everywhere, lots of balloons, a few huge dragons (it's the year of the dragon) throughout all centered around the central main stage. The stage was home to all of the singers, dancers, comedians, magicians and speakers that were performing throughout the day. Along the outskirts of the square were tons of small tents and food trucks selling everything from Chinese food, to doughnuts, to stuffed animal dragons, to those little firework poppers you throw on the ground and they spark and make a pop! (Tons of those, completely covering the ground, best of luck to the cleaning crew for the event.) We stayed for a little bit, but other than standing in the masses looking at the stage and shopping, there wasn't really much else to do.

 

A firework display as seen from my room on Monday night, the actual Chinese New Year.

The Main stage.

That being said, we headed over to Chinatown where we knew there were other, smaller, celebrations going on. Chinatown, as expected, was packed. There were literally lines just to get into restaurants. After seeing the masses, we quickly abandoned our original plan of having Chinese for dinner, and walked around Soho finding a quirky little pizza place to eat instead. While sitting in the restaurant, we did see half of a decorative dragon costume run by, followed minutes later by the tail end sprinting to catch up. That was about as Chinese as our New Year got. It was cool, especially the decorations, and I'm glad we went, but overall, a little bit of a crowded disappointment- for whatever reason I was expecting a little more.

Chinatown

Chinatown

Monday was quite the day as well as it was my 21st birthday! My only class for the day happened to be cancelled due to my professor's cold, so I got to relax and enjoy! I got to sleep in (always a good thing) and spent the day online talking to friends, going grocery shopping, and baking a cake for later that night. 7 of us ended up meeting up and going to dinner in Chinatown since we didn't get the opportunity to on Sunday. After dinner we all headed home and got changed before meeting up again and heading out to Hawaiian themed Mahiki! Such a great night with great friends, which really helped make my first birthday away from home or school. Turning 21 isn't quite the same when the country's drinking age is 18, I didn't even get carded for anything, however it was a blast!

Liz got to mix our drinks....

...while our bartenders had themselves a photoshoot

The rest of the week is gonna be hectic as well! Tonight is Lara and I's weekly Tuesday Italian dinner night, tomorrow will be spent writing one of the three papers who have rapidly approaching deadlines, and Thursday we have tickets to go see Matilda the Musical! We've been trying to get tickets for awhile, but nearly every show thus far has been sold out, so we ended up just getting the cheapest seats we could from the box office instead of going to one of those discount ticket offices. The weekend will likely be spent exploring some more and working on these papers and then the following week is Paris! I can't believe I've been here for nearly a month already, it's crazy. It seems like just yesterday I was home, yet at the same time, I feel like I've been here forever. We've been saying around here that we figured January would go by slow, and then as February hit time would fly with all the schoolwork and weekend trips, so here we go, hold on tight!