Trafalgar Square & Chinese New Year

Today was the day that London celebrated Chinese New Year and it was supposed to be a huge event with parades, street performers (& everyone knows those Chinese street performers are sick xx), vendors, and performances.

Lazy sloths that we are, we woke up too late to see the parade at 10 AM and I ended up just going to Trafalgar Square with Laura & Ilana to see the afternoon performance there and the whole set-up was insane. There was security, the whole square was blocked off, a huge stage set up and there were sooo many people. For me, Chinese New Year has never been a huge event since the US doesn't throw super big parties (at least I've never been to one, haha) and at home we'd just have a nice dinner or watch a show...nothing big

Trafalgar Square was PACKED though. And not just with Chinese people! There were so many people there and the decorations, the vendors, and the stage all against the backdrop of the National Gallery and around the statues...it was amazing :)

 stage that was set up right in the middle of the square

 backdrop of the National Gallery

 around sunset, isn't it so pretty??

 soy sauce blow up thing 

 literally at the foot of the National Gallery

PS. stayed up late to watch the Super Bowl for the commercials and turns out all the commercials are British....

Week 3 roundup & Chinese New Year

Wednesday night
All the Praed girls + Mark & Charlie all went out to the Loop bar/club and had an awesome type playing beer pong and hanging out together cuz I think this is the first time we all made it out together to the same place at the same time.

 Cuban cigars!

"I don't want to get technical or anything, but according to chemistry alcohol is a solution"...they're not wrong

Thursday 

We had our Ancient Egypt in London class at the British Museum again and we spent the entire time looking around the Enlightenment Gallery/King's Library. Apparently this room has looked more or less the same since the early 19th century (when it was first built) and it also used to be the home of the British Library until 1997.

 the entire gallery is organized into 7 different, uh, themes. religion & ritual, trade & discovery, archaeology, art, classifying the world, ancient scripts, and the natural world

 First sarcophagus the museum had- apparently it's been around for just as long as the museum has 

Friday 

It's Chinese New Year! I didn't have class today and it was cold and rainy out, so I spent most of the day studying physics and going over some virology lectures. At night we went to Chinatown near Leicester Square and had dinner at Little Korea.... yep I clearly didn't choose the restaurant haha. At dinner we did fake sake bombs (apparently sake bombing is NOT a thing in the UK) and afterwards we headed to O'Neills. We went to dinner super early & got to O'Neills super early, so me, Laura and Sami left O'Neills for a while. We browsed through a couple Chinese grocery stores, were only slightly disruptive, and ended up at Candy Cafe...which was amazing. Then afterwards we headed back to O'Neills and spent the rest of the night there :)

 rainy day & Chinatown decorations

been craving ice cream for weeks :)

& today I'm just staying in to catch up on work, writing this and relaxing :)