Upon arrival in the UK, Marie was surprised to hear-unlike her other American moochers who’ve paid her a visit-I had no travel itinerary.  That’s right, nothing I was remotely dying to see.  She saw this move as unpreparedness on my part, and while that was partly correct, it just so happened that I had no strong desire to see anything in particular.  I was perfectly content with roaming the city, and haphazardly happening upon sites of interest.  This conversation took place at the airport, while sitting down for a muffin to avoid rush hour on the Tube.  Tired of my insistence, she began to rattle off places I had never heard of in London (pardon my ignorance), it soon became obvious to her that I was sleep deprived.  My nodding off in my seat may have been what gave away my pathetic state. While I argued I was fine, the Tube ride home that followed her discovery was painful.  It was worse than rush hour on the metro and people didn’t seem to care at all about personal space.  This was particularly apparent when I felt a nagging pain on my side, where I discovered a woman’s elbow gradually piercing my appendix.  Fortunately for me, it didn’t remain there for long; she was off the Tube a few stops later along with a derelict public transport patron who insisted our section of the train had to be subjected to his poor excuse for music. Before I go on, I should say in his defense, Art of Noise and Tupac were on his playlist.  While this was redemptive, it was only partially because both songs were progressively butchered into house remixes.  Anyway, on the last leg of the ride, I finally got my chance sit and nodded off quickly. In my attempt to be a grateful guest, I fought hard to stay awake and engage my host.  Needless to say it was a loosing battle that raged on until her sister’s flat, where I finally accepted defeat and rested for a couple of hours.

Two hours later…awake and ready to go, we phoned my new BFF, Niaz, and met up with him at Trafalgar Square for photo ops and made our way to a hole-in-the-wall café, which promised us the best gelato.  At the café we made new Polish friends, who gave us complimentary helpings of the Italian treat.  Our wandering the city then brought us to Covent Garden, which was a total misnomer.  It turned out to be concrete jungle, with a central market area and an open square perfect for street performances.  We were in luck.  We were in the front row, as a crowd was beginning to gather.  We sat down to watch Sam Willis do a series of tricks that consisted of him balancing on stacked tubes and trunks and sword juggling and doing the two at the same time.  While the show wasn’t that impressive his taunts and jeers to passersby to attract a crowd made the stop worthwhile.   He also used a member of the crowd has a prop in the show, he happened to be an American.  Sam straddled the poor guy, while he rubbed lotion on this belly.  Don’t ask.  Actually, I’ll explain. Sam decided to demonstrate the sharpness of the knives he was juggling.  So Sam asked for a volunteer, at which point John came into the picture.  To demonstrate, Sam planned to slice a cucumber.  Little did John know that he would serve as the surface the cucumber would be sliced on.  As time winded down for Niaz to catch his flight onto his next destination, Marie and I hurried with him to the Tube.

Aimless and wanting to buy time in our attempt avoid rush hour on the Tube, Marie and wandered back to Trafalgar and a neighboring art gallery.  We spent the next hour mocking abstract art, and praising classic French works, until we got kicked out at closing time to resume wandering about central London.  We then happened upon an area that Marie was planning on taking me to anyway: Big Ben and Abbey.  On our way over to the two, Marie and I detoured to an area that displayed the history of Buckingham Palace guards. Sounds boring I know, except there were guards there.  It would end up being the closest I would get to get guards on my trip.  Two guards stationed there stood still, as tourists snapped pictures and tried in vain to get a rise out of them.   As expect, they wouldn’t budge apart from random times when they’d march up and down the archways of the classical architecture they stood under.  Once it was my turn, I approached the guard apologetically, asking for forgiveness for treating him as an object.  To my surprise and pleasure, the guard winked at me. His welcomed gesture only encouraged me to playfully lean forward, under the pretense of leaning in for kiss. To my surprise, again! He turned his face my way.   At this point, I should remind you all, as you probably already are accustomed to my ways, that my clumsy and girlish habits messed up this perfect photo op.  Let me explain: in my playful attempt to lean in for a kiss, I also decided to lift my foot in the air and point my toe, and when he unexpectedly turned his face to me I lost my balance and just like that the photo was ruined.  I blushed – as if anyone can tell ¬- and couldn’t help but laugh at myself.

Finally back on track to Ben and Abbey, we happened upon a protest.  About a hundred brown people gathered to bring awareness to genocide in India.  For a moment I blended in with the crowd, people handed us flyers as we unknowingly stood in solidarity with the cause of Tamils.  As the police gathered around the growing crowd, I decided it was best to delay the start of my political activism and exited the square.  However, this was before I spotted a statue of Mandela, which I had to stop and high five.  Off to Westminister Abbey, we found out if we had arrived moments sooner we would have been able to go inside. Tired and hungry, off we were to meet Marie’s sister and friends for dinner.

Dinner was at a sit down restaurant where we ordered pizza.  While dinner didn’t offer a taste of authentic English cuisine, it was definitely a taste of non-America service.  The waiters almost seemed reluctant to take our order.  After, getting food in my system, my body caved in to it’s other desire – sleep.  I started feeling drowsy at the table.  In the midst of laughter, and stories I began to nod off.  We called it a night; well at least I thought we did.  Marie had one more thing planned for the night: spoken word and neo-soul.  Sleepless in London, I couldn’t protest for that was I combination I could never say no to.  We hopped in the Tube and headed over to the newly opened lounge.  To our dismay, the promises of the venue’s grand opening were unfulfilled. The lounge was dead and worse yet we got rained on en route.  So once again we were homeward, but this time the prospects were promising.  In the flat, I was pleasantly surprised to find out Marie’s sister had a bed for me.  My gratitude was abounding, I guess I’m too used to being a college student.  I would have been fine with couch space or the floor, but was grateful for what was to me, first class treatment.  I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

My anxiety over this trip, mainly my project in Venda, had been building for months.  It’s been a long time coming, and while I wanted to get this show on the road, I had this nagging feeling that I was forgetting something.  The car ride to the airport confirmed my worries when five miles down the road I realized I had left my wallet on the kitchen counter.

Once on the road again, I took deep breaths, which I had been accustomed to doing as of late to prevent nervous breakdowns over every snafu.  While concentrating on my breathing pattern helped, my ADD inevitably ended up distracting my concentration causing my thoughts to wander back to various aspects of my research project.  So much for breathing meditations.

Anyway, in line at Dulles I ran into a familiar face, a student from UVA. I recognized him, Niaz, from Runk dining hall, where I had once borrowed salt and pepper shakers from his table.   He and I immediately became BFFs and got seats next to each other on the plane to London. We also made plans for a rendez-vous at Trafalgar Square upon our arrival. While waiting to board Niaz noticed the name tagged on our plane…African Queen.  It was a message from the gods, an omen, a sign of good things to come.

there she goes...