Chloe Is Always Right

Trying to manage a bevy of girls celebrating a twenty first birthday is like herding butterflies.

Gorgeous, awesome, wonderful butterflies.

In celebration of Latia’s legal coming of age she and all her flat mates –henceforth known as the Belgravia girls because that’s the part of London they’re living in and because we will need to refer to them more because they are epically fun- joined Chloe and I at a bar our flat mates assured us would be awesome.

Unfortunately they made this assessment based solely off a flyer promising cheap drinks which upon closer inspection turned out to be only on Wednesdays and live bands which would have been better suited to a high school open mic night. And no dancing!

Clearly that would never do, so my fellow cruise director Umlaut and I navigated multiple tube transfers with ten plus people in tow (Where’s Jen? Did we lose Abby? Quickly everyone, to the Bakerloo line! No, brief stop at Sainbury’s!) back to our flat for an impromptu dance party of our own before deciding on heading back to the club we were at last night, Moose, which was a great time. The Europeans pronounce it ‘muse’ but the décor includes antler silhouettes and other such rustic allusions, so my bet is on ‘moose’.

Unfortunately Moose is somewhat BYOB. Plenty of alcohol but totally bring-your-own-boys if you don’t want to risk getting creeped on. Being as big a group of girls as we were we probably would’ve been fine, but we took the precaution of inviting our friends from Flat 6 along.

Now, you would think Flat 5 would be on one floor and Flat 6 would be above it, right? That would be logical, yes?

London architectural design laughs in the face of logic.

Which is why when I took the spiral fire escape staircase upstairs a few minutes later to ask the gentlemen drinking on the balcony above what was taking them so long, I was mortified to realize I was not addressing the intended group of boys at all, but rather the inhabitants of Flat 7. If I’d been a little slicker I might have told them to come out with us anyway, but things being what they are I apologized for the inconvenience and disappeared. So that’s their story for the weekend.

Eventually we got everyone down Oxford Street to the club, right by the French Connection UK store (“Oh, Eff see you kay?” asked Abby. “Sorry, I don’t speak French,” I replied, blatantly missing the abbreviation.) Moose is fairly inexpensive as far as London dance clubs seem to go, with a three pound cover charge which is really four because you have to pay to check your coat, and you can’t not check your coat, but inexpensive in London is a total oxymoron when you consider that a pound is nearly two American dollars. As far as I’m concerned it’s worth it, because so far it’s two for two spectacularly fun nights, but perhaps not for twice every weekend.

And to think I used to leave the dancing to Emily! Why should the triple threat girl (acting, singing, AND dancing) get all the fun? No, no I say to that.

This morning I utilized my secret super power to get a hot shower (Oh, did you not know that waking up before nine regardless of how late I stayed up the night before was my secret super power? Because it is. I am physically incapable of sleeping in.) and got some reading done for classes before Chloe and Rachel and I headed over to the Tate Modern Art Museum.

The collection is a lot of darker things and really minimalistic modern-y modern art of which I’m not so fond, but there were a few pieces I loved. Or rather the phrase that came to mind before I could banish it with a shriek of no-no-I’m-not-my-mother-noooo was ‘made my heart sing’. Thanks Mom (yes there was a Monet water lily).

The coolest exhibit was a multiple artist collaboration exploring different interpretations of this one throw away anime character they somehow obtained the rights to, and the disconcerting implications of identity and self-possession of fictional characters. I did not like when it stared at me with its blank digital eyes.

Walked across the millennium bridge (apparently it’s the one that gets destroyed in one of the Harry Potters) to St. Paul’s Cathedral where there were bells, successfully navigated the weekend tube home (they shut down 80% of the lines and then mangle the remaining ones for maximum fun/problem-solving skill practice/”construction”) and discovered at awesome curry place a few blocks down from our flat.

In summary, brilliant weekend.

Tomorrow I start my internship!