I See

I never tire of the 'I See London' references and puns. They're almost as good as the bun ones. Anyway, forgot that when I was saying my goodbyes-for-a-moment that I'd be in London today, land of free internet, where time and opportunities for updating abound. (By 'land of free internet,' I mean Claire's wonderful flat.) Arrived safely and sort of on time because while there were two delays, the train was also magically ahead of schedule so everything evened out.
The first delay was incredibly awkward because, as aforementioned, Fi and Dave came to send me off and act as my personal luggage valets. I think it's safe to say that they're my favorite light blonde and ginger kids in Eddie. Things worked fine and well until I actually got on the train. And the train didn't move. And we gestured at each other for awhile and smiled. Then pretended to look away at other interesting things. Then kept making really weird small talk through the glass. Yet still, the train wouldn't leave. Finally, we just resorted to playing charades. It's extra challenging when you really can't talk. The people on the train thought I was a bit crazy though, spitting out "two words, second word, world, no, earth, globe, what? Oh, China! Understanding China!" and tapping against the window, like a monkey in a zoo. I'm not sure if that analogy worked, but whatever.

Oh, that Fi sure is good at charades. And that Dave sure is good at... pretending to run. Another thing these kids are awesome at is the art of potlucking. Now I remember in high school once, when I had the whack idea that we'd have a potluck, and it was complicated because I didn't invite everyone, just the people I wanted in my house, and there were many lies spun to protect people's feelings, and after all the trouble, Squeaky brought tortilla chips. And I yelled at her for it (gently, of course). Not because I didn't like chips, but because of the obvious lack of effort and more importantly, I was hoping she'd bring her mother's chocolate chip scones. Last night, we had a potluck and these kids take their cooking seriously. We had chickpea bread, cheese pastries, pasta salad (stolen from Dan, the poor, hungry boy), chicken wings, mac and cheese, beef casserole, custard, Hungarian mushroom soup (recipe provided by Dining Services, though I forgot to add salt and everyone was too polite to comment. The soup tasted a lot better today when it was properly seasoned, I swear), banana bread, apple crumble, bread pudding, and brownies (a rarity in this Kingdom). And there were only seven of us. It was phenomenal. We didn't even have room for the ice cream Kaz brought. I can't believe I just typed the words "we didn't even have room for ice cream," but it's true. I am just as astonished as you are and fully ashamed of myself. But you should have seen the leftovers we had.

You should also have seen Hannah's handwriting. No one could quite decipher what she was writing for most of the night, which was too bad, because we played games that involved the writing of short words and sentences (the task proved very difficult for Heather), and Hannah hit people that couldn't read her handwriting. Everytime I drew a slip of paper out of the hat, I would fear getting hers, because it was sure to earn me a hard smack on the arm.

The category was favorite pudding (dessert), I drew out a piece of paper...

Moi: Le... mal... cheesecake? Le val? Le mal? OW! Hannah, did you write this?
Hannah: It's lemon cheesecake.

Dave, on Fi's brownies: Oh, Alan, so this is what brownies are supposed to look like. Ours didn't look like that!