Food!

So I've been meaning to do this post for awhile now, but am only now getting around to it. I wanted to highlight some of the really awesome food that my roommates have cooked for me, mostly of it's food from their home that I've never tried before.

Since Kelsey's boyfriend is visiting for the week, they decided to treat us to a Hawaiian specialty: Spam Musubi. Basically, it's fried Spam molded together with rice and wrapped with a strip of seaweed. Kelsey didn't have her mold on her though, so we ours was in the shape of sushi. It was pretty good. Like a variation on sushi with a salty meat slice instead of raw fish. I didn't get a picture of it, but here's what it's supposed to look like:

This post was originally inspired by all of the food that Aleja cooked last spring semester, most of it Colombian (though she can also cook this amazingly delicious lasagna). One of the dishes she made is arepas, which are little round bread things that are made out of corn and fried and then you split them to form a sort of pita-like shell and fill it with all kinds of stuff - cheese, peppers, meat, basically whatever. They also sell these at every New York street fair, but I've never tried them there. Here she's mixing the arepa dough:
This is what arepas look like once they're cooked and stuffed full of cheese
Another Colombian treat that Aleja makes is Natilla, which is a dessert that is mostly eaten around Christmas time. It's kind of like a flan but cinnamon and it's soooo delicious. I keep bugging her to make some more but she has to have her mom send her boxes of the mix. This is what it looks like once it has set:
And this is what a slice of Natilla with cinnamon looks like:
She also introduced me to green mangos. Basically you buy an unripened mango from the store that's still green and you cut it up, put some salt and some lime juice on it and eat it. It's really good and I eat tons of mangoes now.

Also, I figured I would show off some of my food: cakes! Below is not even close to all of the cakes that I have made in college, but just the ones that I have pictures of.

I made an oreo cake for my roommate Allison's 21st birthday. This isn't a very good shot of it since it's in the fridge, but it was delicious.
I also made this tiny individual-sized ice cream birthday cake for one of my coworkers at Emack and Bolio's two summers ago. My boss there still doesn't know that about it...
This is probably the most epic cake I've ever made. Totally edible and made completely by Kristin, Katie, and I.
And lastly, a pirate chest cake that Lindsay and I made over the summer (it says "Aaargh!" on top). It's revolutionary because it's yellow cake with a layer of brownie in the middle. Don't know why we were the first people to think of this, but it's so good.
A view of the inside of the cake.

London: Thursday

My trip to London ended with a walk along the Thames to Borough Market, which is a big food market. On the way we ran into Anna's friend Nabil and his family, who were also headed there to grab something to eat - obviously a great place for lunch!

I got a meat pie which was really good (and then also a little sausage snack, which Anna named "A Banger in a Blanket"

Anna got a veggie burger, which she's chewing:
and which was delicious:
On the walk there and back, you walk past a reconstruction of Sir Francis Drake's ship
And a view of St. Paul's cathedral on our walk over the Millennium Bridge
Anna's face when I told her I had to leave later that night :(
My plan was to go to Ladurée (that delicious French macaron store) before I left but when I was printing out my plane ticket, Anna noticed that my flight was at 7pm not 8pm like I had thought it was. Good thing she noticed too because I had to leave like right then to make it to the airport on time. But luckily I didn't miss my flight. Anyways, it was a really great trip to London, I had a great time with Anna and the weather was beautiful (it literally started raining the moment I stepped onto the plane - such perfect timing!).

London: Wednesday

Wednesday was a pretty big day.

Anna and I started with afternoon tea at a hotel, which was delicious. There was sooo much food (little sandwiches and scones!) and it was the first time that I had ever had clotted cream, which is delicious. You can see how we devoured all of the food in the picture below.

Then later that night we bought really cheap tickets to Hairspray (like 23 pounds) and they were for the front row! The below are pictures of Anna looking shocked and amazed that we're sitting so close to the stage.


The show was really great though sometimes the actors' British accents slipped through which Anna and I found thoroughly amusing. Also, the girls sitting next to me had somehow memorized literally every dance move and proceeded to dance along to the best of their ability in the seats for the entire show. I thought it was cute, Anna was super annoyed (good thing she wasn't sitting next to them). Also during the number with the two parents (if you're unfamiliar with the show, the main character's mom is always played by a guy for some reason), the two actors couldn't control themselves and kept cracking up while they were singing, it was hysterical (though probably not very professional)

Blurry picture of the theater, which was soooo unbelievably close to Anna's flat.
How close, you ask? Well, I took this picture standing in her doorway without any zoom. It's the bluish and white building and was less than a block away.

London: Tuesday

Anna had class on Tuesday morning and since it was such a beautiful day, I decided to take a walk along the Thames (which is like a 5 minute walk from the LSE campus) while she was in class. I ended up walking toward Big Ben and hanging out around there for awhile. I had downloaded a Rick Steves podcast guide to the area and listened to that while I walked.

View from the park next to Westminster Abbey.

View of Westminster Abbey from the park (isn't it so amazing outside?? I couldn't have asked for nicer weather during my trip!)

Big Ben. Did you know that Big Ben is actually the name of the bell and not the entire tower? But since the bell is hidden and you can't see it, most people just refer to the whole thing as Big Ben.

Westminster Abbey which has like 1000+ rooms in it. That's so many!

View of the Thames from the bridge.

London Eye, which called the London Eyesore when it was first built, but has now become a really important part of the London landscape, especially since they don't have too many tall buildings.

Then I walked back towards Anna's school but took a break to sit on a bench, read a little, and listen to the Beatles on my iphone. Anna met me when her class was out and we decided to walk to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

We walked past Buckingham Palace on our way there.
The V&A was a really cool museum, in an awesome old building and it's also the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design. Unfortunately they seemed to be kind of in exhibit transition mode, because a lot of their spring exhibits weren't open yet. And they had some really awesome special exhibits but you had to pay to get into them and Anna and I didn't want to spend more money. We got to see this cool fashion exhibit they had as well as this really great movie exhibit that had so many costumes and memorabilia from shows and films. And we got tea and cake as a little snack, which was delicious. Oh, and Anna bought this cool poster in the gift shop for her room.

For dinner that night, Anna found a great fish and chips place (my one food request) for me to eat while she went to swim practice. It was delicious! Then we tried to go to Anna's friend's birthday party, but there was a huge miscommunication with their reservation and the lounge wasn't letting any of her guests in so that was kind of a birthday party fail. Instead we went back home and finished the Sound of Music!

London: Monday

Anna had class Monday morning, so I decided to take a "London Walk," which is a company that offers really affordable (5pounds for a student) walks of different parts of London. I picked the "Old Palace Quarter" tour, which started at the Green Park and covers all of the area as it was developed by King Henry after he married Anne Boleyn and built a palace in what was the countryside outside the city of London. Our tour guide was really great and showed us lots of fun little tidbits, like where the Bowler hat was invented, where supposedly the last duel in London took place, told us about the different men's clubs, showed us where Prince Charles lives, etc. The tour really got interesting though when an older woman fainted midtour. We were outside a hotel though, so they got the doctor on staff and I sure she's okay.

After the tour I stopped at Fortun and Mason, which is now the official store of the Crown (it used to be Harrod's but apparently they made certain allegations about Prince Charles killing Princess Diana, so that tie was obviously severed). Anyways, I spent like an hour just browsing all of their foods - teas, jams, cookies, chocolates, coffee, Easter candy... and then spent probably way too much money on some tea for myself. Then I happened upon Hatchards, which is a bookstore that Dad actually suggested that I visit (though I had no idea it was the same place when I went in). It's a cute little bookstore, but I couldn't bring myself to buy any books because I figured I could find it back in the States for cheaper.

I can't really remember what I did for the rest of the afternoon after Anna got out of classes, I think we might have just hung out for awhile in her room. Anyways, that night, one of her really good friends at LSE, Nabil, had his family in town and he invited all of his friends out to dinner with them. I was included, which was great and I got to meet all of Anna's friends and Nabil's family (they're were all really awesome). It was a lot of fun, tons of Indian food was eaten, and Nabil's mom sufficiently embarassed him to make up for all of the time that she hadn't seen him while he was in the UK.

And we ended our night with a little more Sound of Music :)

London: Sunday

Every Sunday morning Anna teaches swim lessons. So while she was busy doing that, I decided to take a walk to the British Museum, which is down the street from her flat. I was only there for like 30 minutes because I woke up kind of late, but it was pretty cool. It kind of reminded me of the Museum of Natural History.

Then we spent the rest of the day at a soup kitchen that Anna occasionally works at. The premise of the organization is that they get donated food from different markets and grocery stores in the morning and then create a meal with that stuff to feed about 30 homeless people, using a church's donated kitchen. The two other people working in the kitchen also go to the London School of Economics but are full time students, so it was kind of interesting to see their perspective on things (like they think that college is super hard and intense, but all of the study abroad students kind of thought it was a joke compared to their colleges). It was really tiring and reminiscent of my days at the ice cream store, but overall a really fun time and not really something a normal visitor to London would have gotten to experience.

And then we went back to Anna's place and started watching the Sound of Music. It took us like three nights to watch it though since it's so long and Anna falls asleep pretty quickly...

And here's the view from Anna's window:

Salzburg

I got to spend my spring break with in London with Anna who is currently spending a year at the London School of Economics. But before I really saw London, we spent a weekend in Salzburg, Austria, which really means one thing.... Sound of Music!!

Anna in front of the Festung (fortress), which we then climbed up to. It's a steep walk...

View from the top of the fortress of the mountains
View of Salzburg. Notice all of the churches. There are 35 of them in the city.
Anna and I on top of the Fortress
The house where Mozart was born
Streets of Salzburg
Commence the Sound of Music tour... Anna and I with the back of the Von Trapp house in the background. It's not their real house.
In front of the gazebo, which used to be in the backyard of the above house, but was moved after all of the visitors caused too much of a disturbance. It's also locked because so many people hurt themselves trying to leap from bench to bench a la Liesl.
Front of the Von Trapp house from afar. It's behind the trees. And looks much more yellow than it does in the movie.
The trees that the Von Trapp kids were climbing. Anna and I tried unsuccessfully to climb them.
Snowy Anna
Snowy Austria
Church where Maria and the Captain were married in the movie
Inside of the church
Then I ate strudel at a famous strudelhouse across the street. It was pretty good, but nothing spectacular. I also tried grog, which is by far the most disgusting thing I've ever drank. It was like warm orange nail polish remover. I wish I was kidding...
Do-Re-Mi park in the dark. It was locked by the time we got there so we could only take pictures through the gate.
And a giant pretzel in a beer hall before we left.

SNOW DAY!!!!

We got a snow day today (even though it's a Friday and I didn't have class anyways). But it's still pretty exciting because NYU hasn't had a snow day in like 25 years or something ridiculous. We also got a snow half day a couple of weeks ago and my only class of that day was conveniently in the afternoon, so I didn't have to go. I hear there's a snow ball fight going on in Union Square right now but that's too far for me to go in the snow. Oh well... I'm sure there will be pictures on facebook in like an hour.

Concerts

Sooo, as you can tell, I've kind of been slacking on the whole updating my blog thing. Anyways, because of that, it's allowed me to write one giant concert post about all of the shows that I've seen this school year. Here we go...

In the fall, Lindsay and I went to the Mika concert (he's this really awesome British singer who's just so peppy and upbeat and colorful). You can see how fun the set was with all of these hanging balls.
And then all of these kids stood in front of us so we couldn't see...
I don't know you if you can really see it in this picture, but one of his backup singers was wearing the coolest skirt I've ever seen. It was layers of different colored neon tulle. She's on the far right.

And then I got the chance to go to John Mayer's "Battle Studies" album release concert at the Beacon Theatre. And even though my seats weren't that good (there was a problem with the online buying website), it was a pretty small venue, so basically everyone's seats were good.
The concert was awesome, as his usually are. And they aired it on Fuse. Maybe you can see me...

And then last night, I went to another John Mayer tour (this makes 8, not that I'm counting...). I had floor seats at Madison Square Garden, which was kind of cool. It was also almost exactly 2 years since I had gone to his last concert at Madison Square Garden (with the same person too - how weird!). Annnddd, I bought this awesome moleskine journal that was made especially for his tour and is one of 1250. Sure to become a collectors item.

And just cus I'm still pumped up after the concert last night, I'm posting a video of JM playing I think my favorite song (definitely top 2) from his new album at the Beacon Theatre. It's like the most amazing finale song and he used it to close both shows, as well as his album. (The very end is the best part). Also, you'll get to see the AMAZING faces that he makes when he sings. They're the best.