Update!

Sorry for keeping you all in the dark!! Things have been busy for the last little while. On Sunday, I had to switch rooms in my hostel, so I took my luggage to storage and then went to Camden Market. Very cool place, and apparently the 4th most popular tourist attraction in London. It's a HUGE marketplace in what was once a stable and horse hospital for horses that pulled barges along the canal. To commemorate this history, there are horse statues and enormous horse heads everywhere. Here is some photographic proof.

HORSE HEAD.

There are hundreds of stalls, and they're mostly pretty cool. They're full of clothes, books, shoes, purses, antique luggage, old military uniforms, art, jewelery, all kinds of stuff. Very cool.

The market is also full of super weird crap. You need to embiggen that picture. Click on it. I dare you.

What the?

The cool thing about the market is that most of the stores have decorated fronts and ENORMOUS versions of what they sell attached to the buildings.

After I'd exhausted the market, I wandered around and found a very nice little residential neighbourhood. Super pretty. 

On Monday, I went to the orientation thing for the SWAP program that I'm travelling through. It was pretty good, but mostly terrifying. Also, they spent most of their time telling us about holidaying and stuff, which is not really what I'm here for. I mean, I want to travel a bit, but I also am more about the working and the experience of that than anything else. That and the concerts. But more on that later...

View from the building I went to for orientation.
Classic London, right? Love it. 

So, now I'm looking for work. And that was the rest of my Monday, and all of my Tuesday and Wednesday. I spent that time at the library, because I couldn't get the wireless at the hostel to work, a situation I have thankfully remedied. I met some interesting people at the library (read: likely crazy). I sat across from an older dude named Les who is a motorcycle courier that was injured a while back and hasn't been working. He was an interesting character, and I ended up at the table across from him yesterday too. A strange man, but nice.

Last night, I met up with a friend of a friend who's living in London and we went to a Frames concert. SOOOOO good. Glen Hansard is insanely intense. Like, SO intense. And I love fiddles and banjos. I really do. But first, the opening act.

Man, did this dude EVER take himself seriously. I liked his music well enough, even if some of it did make me laugh out loud (he tore up a note and threw it into the air during one song...right...). He ended his set by singing Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, and I actually liked his version better. Just him and a piano. Really cool. Also, there was a disco ball that went on every time he sang the chorus. Gotta say that was pretty great. I tried to take a picture of the guy because his hair was so hilarious, but I couldn't get it to work, which is a shame.

And now, on to the Frames. AMAZING. We were in the third balcony, general seating, but it was close enough to feel how intense Glen Hansard is. There were some dickheads in the back of the balcony that talked the entire time, but I stabbed them later, so it's ok.

Coolest part of the show was how interactive it was. He had us singing things all the time, and at one point he actually stopped singing because he saw a guy in the audience singing along and was like, "I bet you know the next verse. You sing it." And then he made us all be quiet and let this guy sing it. He screwed up the words a bit, so a couple of other people joined him and it was just these three people singing while the Frames played the music and the rest of us listened. It was crazy. Then people just kept joining in until everyone was singing. It was one of the most amazing things ever. Fantastic.

**Update** This is the song that he let the guy sing along. It was amazing. 

Here's the song that I liked best from last night. If you think he's intense in this clip, you should see it in person. Amazing.

And now it's my birthday, so I thought I'd blog and then go maybe do something touristy. Or finish a few more job applications. Lordy day, these take forever.

Oh! And here's a few things you should know about London:

It is colder inside than outside. For reals. I don't wear my jacket outside except late at night, but I take it with me to the main hostel building and to the library so that I can keep warm when I get there. There's no snow in the city right now, and it's generally around the -3 or -4 range, so it's very weird to see people all bundled up outside, while I wander around in a cardigan. Just wait until you get inside, though.

My nose is so cold right now.

Keep warm, everybody!!!