Halloween

Last night was Halloween! Kalen and I had to work until 5:30 and therefore couldn't go on the walking ghost tour that a lot of our friends/other IES students went on... so we were in charge of making our own fun. We made some mixed drinks for ourselves and went through our closets trying to find a costume. All we had to work with was our real-live everyday clothes (as opposed to having at our disposal a basement full of costumes from halloweens past), our everyday makeup, and some bobby-pins/hair ties etc. I think we were very resourceful and dressed up as CATS!


We just wore black (yes, I DID bring a lot of black clothes to London. I know that might come as a surprise to most of you) and put our hair up in side bun things for the ears, and used eyeliner for whiskers and a nose! Genius.

We walked to the tube station (getting only a few weird glances, but we thought, 'hey, we're in Chelsea, maybe more people will be dressed up in a less posh area) and got on the tube. We then realized that not a single other person was dressed up. (exact opposite of getting on the el on halloween.) A woman next to me had a princess wand sticking out of her purse and some people had some funny shoes on etc. but it's hard to tell what's a costume and what's normal in London. Every once in a while I would forget that I was dressed as a cat and I would catch our reflection in the tube window and be like, "oh crap. I'm in a very public place in a foreign country with eyeliner whiskers drawn on my face."

So we were feeling a little bit out of place, but then the train stopped and Satan walked on with a fairy and everything was cool.

Later on that night we of course saw a bunch of other people who were dressed up, but for a while we only would pass the occasional vampire/zombie or werewolf of sorts, give each other a nod of solidarity, and continue walking.

We couldn't find the place we actually meant to go to (on Brick Lane) but a dead bride passing out fliers pointed us in the direction of another bar having a Halloween party so we just went there instead. There's about 3 bagel shops per capita in that area, so we got a late night bagel for the trip home and it was AMAZING. Oh my god I've never had a bagel so good and the beef on it was so amazing too. I don't even like beef that much. The place looked a little shady (but it was packed even at 1am and Kalen had remembered reading about it in a guide book so we went anyway). The whole time I was thinking, I don't even care if I get food poisening, this is so damn good. But alas I didn't get sick, so it must not have been that shady of a place (aside from the men working in the back meowing at us while we waited in line. But you'll have that I guess.)


(Kalen and I standing in front of HUGH GRANT'S house, you can't see it though)