Day One | I caught a bus by myself!

VIDEO: Day One

Tonight marks the end of my first full day in London! I have officially achieved some rather important things, which makes me feel, and this may be slightly ironic since I'm not even a teenager anymore, but anyway, it makes me feel like a grown up! I have:

- flown to London on my own

- caught many buses on my own (and not got lost!)

- found my godmother, Laurie, in a completely different part of London to the one I'm in

- gone to a grocery store by myself

- done ACTUAL shopping by myself

- made dinner for myself with the stuff I'd bought

- washed up my dinner stuff

- unpacked properly!

Okay, so the list isn't that long or impressive, but those small achievements are highly satisfying. I am, however, yet to get my phone sorted out. All this first-world free-wifi living is not all good, because due to there being so much free wifi all over the place, you can function, to an extent, without having a phone line and mobile data. But have no fear: I will do it tomorrow!

I arrived yesterday afternoon, after two painless flights. We stopped over in Lusaka on the way from Harare to Nairobi, which I wasn't aware of until they announced it! But it wasn't a big deal; it just added to the number of safe landings the pilot had to make! I had a two hour layover in Nairobi, which was uneventful. But there were two things I was disappointed about. First, I didn't have to have my passport stamped. Literally, you get off the plane, walk into the airport, go through security, and go to your gate. No passport necessary! Second, there were only two shops, which in itself is not hugely disappointing. However, one of the shops was a small boutique-type affair, and it stocked the ORIGINAL Kenyan sandals that they sell at the Flea market back home. For those who don't know, these sandals are leather-soled and have beautiful beadwork on the straps. I have one flowery pair, and when I went home, Mum and I searched diligently for another pair, but to no avail. So you can imagine my delight when I found them in the airport! And you can also imagine my sorrow when I tried every pair within a two-size radius of my size and couldn't find a single one that fit properly! Oh well. I did get a delicious yoghurt smoothie, which was far better than having some generic coffee from the place whose intimidating line forced me to the yoghurt place!

On my flight to Heathrow, the sound wasn't working on my screen-thing, so I watched one movie (for the umpteenth time) on my laptop, and then I watched a delightful little movie called Storks, without sound. It's a sweet animation, and not very difficult to follow. I think it must be an excellent movie, because even without sound I almost started crying at the end! Watch it if you can. I managed to get quite a bit of sleep on that flight, so when I landed in England, I didn't feel terribly tired. I got through Immigration super-quickly, and, thanks to the FREE WIFI, I knew where Kate, my cousin, was, when I'd collected my bags and was going through the exit bit. My bags arrived serendipitously on the carousel, as I walked up to it. First came the red one, and just after I'd hauled him off, the little black one shot out the.. what do you call it? The gaping chord of bag birthing.

Kate and I took the tube back to her house, using Oyster cards, which are marvelous things. They're basically an essential here in London! (Thank you Sandra for lending me yours!) On the way home, however, we discovered that there had been a slight miscommunication, and I was not going to my flat that night, and actually needed to stay with her! But everything worked out fine: I got to meet Christopher, her fiance, and Gus, her dog; I had a delicious supper of salmon and salad; and I got to sleep in a really cool pull-out bed, which magically appeared from the wall!

I slept very well, and the next morning I woke up to a sniffling, grunting dog staring at me. Gus is adorable! Kate had very kindly organized a cab to take me to collect my keys and then on to my flat, and all I had to do was get myself and my suitcases out the front door without locking one of them in, because the door locks automatically when you close it! It might sound like a simple task, but a narrow doorway, three suitcases, and one girl could face some trouble. All was, however, successfully negotiated. I sat on one of my suitcases on the pavement, and in hindsight I think the people walking past must have thought I was a bit strange. Oh well. The cab driver was very pleasant and eventually I ended up outside my flat with keys and suitcase in hand! I ran into another student doing Yale in London with me, as I came up to the front door, so when we went in we put our suitcases in the lift/elevator and we took the stairs. It was only one floor, but I thought it was a pretty clever plan!

I dropped my bags, quite literally, in my room, and then headed off to the nearest bus stop to hop on a bus to go and meet up with my Laurie for lunch! We had organized to meet at one, and I can't remember what time it was, but I had plenty of time, so I was sure I wouldn't be late, trusting London stuff to be on time and all! There is a beautiful little app called City mapper which every Londoner should own, because it tells you, down to the minutest detail, which transport to use! I missed the first bus by a split second, and actually that was a good thing because it was going the wrong way and I would not have made it in time if I'd taken it! So I found another one, changed buses when I had to, and then, eventually, ended up where I was meant to be! I found Laurie where we'd organized to meet up, and we set off down the road to find a little place to eat.

In the end, we settled on a gorgeous Italian place with lovely people and glorious food. We both had a veal pasta dish whose name I can't remember, but whose taste I will neither easily nor quickly forget! We were so full that we didn't even want to look at the dessert menu, and so we left and ventured back out into the vast London world. We found a Carphone Warehouse - I don't know why you would call a place that sells phones and only phones a "carphone warehouse", but anyway. Unfortunately, I'd left the phone I would be using behind, and so only Laurie got sorted, but it didn't matter. Then we returned to Starbucks' free wifi and I re-greeted my fabulous little friend City mapper, who told me I needed to take the 414 back to Sussex Gardens Stop/Station. My sense of direction is terrible, and so is my phone's when it comes to telling me which direction I'm facing, and so it took a little while to work out which side of the road I needed to be on, but in the end I ended up going to the right end of London.

But my adventures didn't end there.

After I'd said good bye to Laurie, (very quickly because the bus waits for no man,) I sat on the 414 for A LONG LONG LONG LONG time. It stopped at literally every single stop possible. This did give me ample time to sightsee, thought I wasn't sure what sights I was seeing, and to observe that people drive perilously close to each other in London! I was also privy to the three young teenagers in front of me's conversation, a discussion of infinitely angsty teenager proportions: very intelligently, and thoughtfully, "I can see why we have to learn English at school, because it's good for jobs, but why do we have to do other things?" "Yeah, I want to learn about money because I don't know anything about it." "That's what they teach you about at university." HAH. Also, I didn't realise, on the first bus I went on, that you can sit up top! A real classic London double-decker bus! When I saw someone vanish upwards, I saw that there were stairs, and since then I always go up and commandeer a bird's-eye view of London!

Eventually I made it back home, only to discover that I couldn't reach the finish line: I couldn't remember the access code to the building! (Our keys are for our flat only.) Fortunately, some sweet person let me in, so I didn't have to wait for all eternity! After a short housing orientation, I ventured out again. This time, it was to Waitrose.

Waitrose is a beautiful place. I know once I've been to other stores, I'll think that about them too, but for now Waitrose is the most wonderful. I intended to buy only milk and teabags, (of course,) but I ended up doing a classic grocery store shop. I was slightly shocked by what I ended up buying, because one would think that being in such a tempting place would result in some extremely excessive chocolate and bad-for-you-food shopping, But no, I bought:

- butter

- sunflower seed and chia (what even is chia???) wholewheat bread (I spetn SO LONG choosing this)

- milk teabags

- a toothbrush (it is a vegan toothbrush - whaaaat - and is called a humble brush)

- shampoo

- healthy yoghurt (which I also took forever to decide on)

- plain oats

- bananas

- strawberries (at half price!)

- apples

- chocolate (because who can go shopping and not buy chocolate?)

- cheese

- ham

- (I didn't intend to get these, but they were on a special) two packets of digestives/biscuits

I returned home feeling enormously satisfied and successful.

London is beautiful, and my only complaints are that people move too fast and that my neck is getting sore from looking up at the old buildings the whole time! It is a magical experience to be transported back in time to a world where the characters in my Georgette Heyer books lived and breathed! I saw a "Vidal Sassoon" store and it made me think of one of my favourite characters, Lord Vidal, from one of the books, and it just made me so happy!

So far, London is luvverly!

A link to my video from today will follow once it's uploaded!

Toby

Nairobi

Christopher, Me, Gus, Kate

Laurie and Me

FOOD IN THE FRIDGE

APPLE CAKE!!!

Baking is a marvelous thing, isn't it? There is almost nothing more satisfying than taking something out the oven and seeing how lovely it is! That being said, here is a pretty easy cake recipe I made today, which, if our oven wasn't missing an element and I hadn't forgotten to take the necessary steps to pacify its temperamental heating system, would have turned out a little less crunchy underneath! Also, this cake didn't rise above 2 inches, so it would probably be a yummy idea to make two rounds and put one on top of the other, and separate them with whipped cream or something like that.

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/4 tsp vanilla

1 and a half cups of self-raising flour

pinch of slat

1 tsp cinnamon (ground - obviously don't stick a stick of cinnamon in the mixer!)

2 cups grated apple (or 1 cup grated and 1 cup chopped - whatever you feel like!)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts/raisins/anything interesting

1) Turn your oven on! 180°C/350°F

2) Soften the butter - either cheat and use the microwave, or just be prepared and leave the butter out the fridge for a while before you start backing

3) Beat the butter and the sugar in a mixer. The recipe says until light and fluffy, but honestly it's hard to see how a grainy mixture of sugar and butter can be "fluffy" - so just beat it until it looks well-beaten!

4) Add the eggs to the mixture, one at a time, mixing as you add

5) Add the vanilla

6) Sieve the flour and salt and cinnamon straight into the mixture. Fold the flour in, so that when you turn the mixer on again, it doesn't go everywhere! Then do some more beating until it's all combined.

(I like to the use a spatula to make sure that the stuff at the bottom of the bowl is actually getting a look-in with the mixing metal arm thing!)

7) Stir in the apples and any other extra things you wanted.

8) Put it in the oven and DON'T FORGET TO TAKE IT OUT!

9) Bake for 40-45 minutes

I added icing sugar on top (confectioner's sugar is the fancy name for that, I think).

ENJOY

First post. Breaking the ice. The drop has fallen.

The drop has fallen

Last year, I was supposed to write a blog, called “My Twentieth Year” (because once you turn 19, you’re actually living your twentieth year)! It was created, designed, ready and waiting patiently for me to spray paint it with whatever bottled up thoughts my colourful soul wanted to explode. But somehow it just never happened. My twentieth year came and went and now here I am. Twenty.  I have three pages which open automatically when I open Chrome, and one is a countdown to May 13, my birthday. I set it up to count down to my 20^th Birthday, but now it’s to my 21^st. My TWENTY FIRST BIRTHDAY. No offense to people older than 21, but for me, 21 is old. 21 is legal everywhere in the world. 21 is when you become what I’ve always thought was a “proper” adult.

And thus here I sit, in front of my laptop, making myself start on my twenty blog before I turn twenty one, and before another year of my life dances by without record. I think, though, that now is the right time to start writing again. It’s “Summer” at the moment, despite the fact that I have enjoyed a lovely, lively fire almost every night since I got back to Zimbabwe nearly a month ago. It’s been a bit of shock, slipping into a life of leisure after almost nine months of school. I bought a literal hand-luggage-suitcase-ful of books back home, none of them scholarly, and how many have I finished reading? None. Not a single one! I think that having to read snippets of a minimum of three intriguing, LONG, heavy Directed Studies books nearly every single week for such a long time has pretty much numbed the receptors that are usually so excitable in my imaginative reading mind. I have a wonderful variety of books to choose from: re-reading the classic Pride and Prejudice, which I love, and which I will probably write about in the near future - if I read it, shelf upon shelf of poetry books, an entire list of a friend's favourite books, the vast expanse of online books, a biography about a fascinating guy (information I gleaned about three weeks ago from the foreword and the first chapter of the book) and another book about the history of Zimbabwe. Can you guess which one I am attempting to read, with no inducement whatsoever? 

The history book.

Honestly. What has Yale done to me? And you know something else I never thought I would ever think, say, or feel? I ENJOY school. Those are three words you have probably not heard above ten times in your lifetime. I mean, yes, junior school was fun, and sport in high school was great, and it's not that I didn't enjoy being at school, or learning, or exploring my mind. But there was an omnipresent sense of school being more of a one-off journey, with a definite and glorious end in sight, similar to how some people portray the idea of dying: walking towards the bright light (of Heaven, one hopes). But right here, right now, I don't want school to end. It's wonderful to come back home, and to be on holiday, and to do nothing for a while, but for some undefinable reason, or no, actually, many completely definable reasons, I am just as excited to go back to Yale!

I
am
excited
to...

go back to school.

And you know what? I'm glad that's how it is. I'm delighted that I have finally learnt to feel like that. I'm slightly, fabulously giddy. I hope that everyone choosing a college or preparing for the next step in their life has the opportunity to choose a place where they truly wholly and completely want to be. I think that is something that being at Yale has really taught me is that
life is not about fitting into the worlds other people create for themselves. A lovable livable life is a patchwork creation made by YOU. You have the power to choose and use all the beauty and worth and love in everyone else's worlds, and stitch it all together in your own. And the best part about making a mismatched, unpretentious, realistic quilt of life like this is that it can be shared with everyone and anyone. If your quilt was only orange, and only one shade of orange, then how could you expect someone who detests the colour orange to find anything to value or appreciate in a solely orange quilt? You are not simply monotonous and dull. God didn't make you like that! You're vibrant and changeable and indestructibly individual. And you have the power to make the quilt of your life exactly how you want to!

That was a bit of a ramble, but I suppose if there isn't a precise topic, then it doesn't matter does it?

I think my quilt has lots of different colours, because I love different people who are all so different, and I like to think that I have been able to absorb some of their specific radiances, and add them to my life. Or maybe the world is just one gigantic patchwork quilt, and we all share different patches and colours and stitches. Who knows.

One thing I do actually know (or do I? Can we really ever know anything? Socrates has much to say about that!) One thing I *think* I know is that being at Yale has made me realise everything I just wrote. It's not that I was in a class called "Patchwork: the new Network", or "How to sew your life" or anything like! Rather, I have been exposed to such a variety of humans. I can't stop thinking about how wonderful it is that we, even as buried deep as we are in all our difference and strangeness and discord, are still somehow all human.

So there it is. The start of my twentieth year blog! 339 days until I'm twenty-one. 339 days to fill up and overflow with life!