I smell like smoke . . . and probably old paper.

Ugh. People can still smoke here in bars. How vile. And so of course I was also surrounded by people puffing and it's quite disgusting. I hear that in April all this will change and London will join the civilized world. Sigh.

So, yeah, this evening I went with the girl who rents the room above me to a bar in Richmond (a city just outside London and near Kew). It was fine, but the people weren't nearly as entertaining as my Toronto friends. Also, tequila is gross, but the lemon actually does help. I did, however, get up the nerve to dance! (First time since DC.) Afterwards we hit up the local food mart (Tesco) for some munchies. I bought Digestives! Yes, the real kind!! Yay.

But the most exciting this today was of course the archives. It's open on Saturdays, unlike the College Park archives, and so of course I couldn't not go. I admit it: I am an archives junkie. In fact, last night I was thrilled thinking how I might get to go to the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster for a spot of dissertation-related research. Too cool, that.

After work my housemate and I had a lovely dinner together (yes, a Kew version of FN!). Red Thai curry: mmm. Oh, and with some kind of Indonesian fruit salad and regular salad (my specialty). Yummy all 'round.

My brain is a bit scattered at the moment, so apologies for the lack of chronological sense of this posting. But now I will tell you about how yesterday I discovered that the man I've been sitting next to at the archives since Wednesday is a prof. in Kingston, Ontario! I mean, what are the odds? I asked him yesterday morning where he was from---I figured he was American because he didn't have an accent when he said "hello" to me---but no, "Canada." "Oh! Me too." Crazy. It's almost like I'm not even overseas ;-). We've chatted a bit over lunch the past couple of days, and it's nice to have a bit of human contact to break up a day of flipping through old pages.

I must tell you all more about my research adventures another time. Now I must away to bed. I am going to try my darndest to do the tourist thing tomorrow!