| London Calling ♥ |
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Howdy!
I am Pascale and will be living in London for a while. You can read all about my brain-dead tourist situations, embarrassing cultural mistakes and see all the pictures and videos I make. I will also post some proper blogs about the work I do to please my parents and teachers. I'd appreciate it if you left a comment. Use the links underneath the top picture to navigate.      
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London; never boring.Saturday 26 March 2011 20:45I only read about the protests on twitter; apparently students were taking over the city with protests against the cuts on education and what not. Things had gotten quite voilent (smashing windows, bombing buildings with paint, randomly creating fires everywhere etc.) but I decided to go and have a look. Oxford Street seemed to be full of marches, so I went there for some pictures. Oxford Circus  Protecting the fashion!  Paint bombings left their marks on the pavement  They had music! Someone was rapping along as well.  Litter set on fire at Marble Arch  They were handing these papers to everyone  Fire right in the middle of the Oxford Street/Regent Street crossing  Police at Marble Arch  They were pretty much just going up and down Oxford Street the entire time... It was pretty awesome! Felt quite liberating, stopping cars and marching right down the middle of the streets. There were loads of camera crews everywhere and at some point two news helicopters with camera men hanging out were flying up and down oxford Street as well. Apparently Topshop had kicked in windows (didn't see any of that) and was heavily paint bombed (I did see that). There were protest groups all over London who all damaged the city quite a bit... have a look at these articles; Anarchists blitz the Ritz and occupy Fortnum & Mason: Yobs break away from anti-cuts demo as HALF A MILLION peaceful protesters march on London Huge turnout in London for protest against austerity measures London marchers protest massive spending cuts in Britain Anti-cuts march draws hundreds of thousands as police battle rioters Pretty eventful that was. Now, I'm off to Brixton for drinks with Suzanne! LATERGATOR! Bizarre Night OutThursday 24 March 2011 17:28Yesterday I went to a free gig type of thing in a club (oohh Miss Pascale went out on a school night - naughty!) at Piccadilly Circus. Initially I was gonna go with Elena but two other Dutch girls, Robin and Suzanne (who I had never met before, but they had both approached me via social networking websites) joined us. Olly, Mike and their mates were there too and I hadn't seen them since I was homeless so that was pretty cool.The event was organised by The Sun (apparently they do these things more often) and you apply for tickets. This evening girlband Parade and my favourite band McFly would perform as well as a couple of DJs. The club Piccadilly Institute is fairly new and has about 7 different 'rooms' that all play different music - Suzanne and I already decided to go back there another time to do some random clubbing. Parade were on at 11 and played three songs... then we waited three full hours because McFly's tourbus had broken down so instead of 1am, they arrived at 2am and played four songs. Now, this 'stage' they were on was about 20 cm high and there was only about half a meter between the crowd and the band - if I wanted to, I could lean over and hug them. Needless to say I got some amazing pictures and I filmed their acoustic cover (this was completely improvised but very awesome) of Tinie Tempah's Pass Out. Then at about 2:30am Elena and I said goodbye to Suzanne, got in a taxi to Elena's place and quickly went to sleep... and four hours later we had to get up. I thought I'd be far more tired than I actually am so that's not too bad. Also, Elena made me some Italian coffee - holy crap, I absolutely love it! Today it was Open Morning at school - BIG DEAL! Parents (with little children or even babies) came to visit the school from 9am til 12am. All children had to look their best (uniforms straight, collars sorted out etc.) and they were all told to be extra sensible because there were visitors in school today. I didn't have to do a lot, I only had to tell children to behave when parents were given tours by the Year 6 girls. At break time I had a nice chat with Justin (the Year 3 teacher) and David, one of the music teachers who is here a couple of days each week. We were discussing the differences between the English school and Dutch schools - especially the outlook of schools and the behaviour of teachers towards pupils. Justin is from South Africa and he too finds that the schools here look, from the outside, as if they aren't very strict (every little bit of wall is covered with bright, colourful displays, it's nearly impossible to see which colours the walls are originally painted in) but in reality, English schools are much stricter. Justin told me that he recognised a lot of the things I mentioned since he felt the same way when he came to England for the first time. He thinks the displays might not be as distracting to pupils as he initially thought because they are used to it, but sometimes it really is visual noise - that's one of the reasons why he's the only teacher in the school that keeps his windows free and clean. David was telling this super complicated story with lots of long difficult words and then went; "How about you Pascale? How does that work for you?" I didn't understand the question, so how was I going to produce an answer that would make sense, let alone be intelligent?! So, I just stared in space, thinking that if I wouldn't move or look at them, they might forget that I was there and carry on their conversation without me. Justin then went; "Well, what do you like more, Dutch or English?" which is a question that's got no big words, so I understood and was able to answer. English. Justin then leaned back and said "I knew you were gonna say that. You look like you prefer English over any other language. You drag it along with you." So either Justin's a mindreader or a flirty creep. He also complimented me on my English and said that he finds it has changed a lot from since I first got here. That's a first - I don't think my accent has changed much, but he definitely detected change. Apparently I now speak much softer (not volume wise though... my voice will always be loud) and it's 'got a nice flow' to it. Nice. Also! Today Helen told me that Liam Gallagher's stepson, James Kerr (whose father Simple Minds singer Jim kerr was previously married to Liam's now ex-wife Patsy Kensit), used to go to St Christina's School and that Liam used to drop him off and pick him up. How glamorous! Thought that was worth a share!
Famous for the lipstickMonday 21 March 2011 18:36Yesterday I had lunch with Elena at Covent Garden. We went to an Italian Restaurant and sat outside in the sunshine. It was really nice - we got to gossip about all the teachers and the food was amazing! I also learned that Italian restaurants in England make up 'Italian words'. Basically just words that look very Italian and impressive but that don't actually exist in the Italian language. Scammers! Afterwards we went to see Black Swan at Leicester Square - I had already seen the film, but Elena hadn't. Now that I've seen it twice, the story definitely makes more sense to me, so I spent the whole film just explaining everything to Elena to the annoyance of the people behind us. I spent the rest of the day in Nursery because Anna was out. The children were transfixed with my lipstick. About every child that approached me was looking at my mouth - some even tried to touch it. When everyone had to go inside after playtime, Mary told me that 'I was getting famous' for my lipstick. She'd overheard a group of children during maths who were discussing if their mummy's looked 'as good as Miss Pascale with lipstick on.' I FEEL SO APPRECIATED.
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