Autumn in London '06

Borat, Fulham, Wimbledon, and some Natural History

Hey All,

Well what an exciting weekend it's been! Where to begin?

Thursday night was the special premier of the Borat Movie. If you're not familiar with Borat, he is a character played by British comedian Sacha Cohen. Borat is a journalist from Kahzakstan who is sent by his government to America to learn cultural lessons to fix Kahzakstan's problems. What follows is a searing satire of the closed-mindedness of the West and of the world in general. It's great stuff.

Our movie viewing party consisted of myself, Kevin, and two of the other Hansard Scholars: Ehmad and Shaun. We first tried to go the Odeon Cinemas at High Street Kensington. To our dismay, however, the tickets sold out while we were in line! So we ran to a nearby internet cafe and went online in search of another theatre. It was 9:00 pm, however, so it looked like our search would fail. But then we thought to check the theatre at Surrey Quays, and of course there was a 9:30 pm showing. So we bought the tickets online and rushed to Surrey Quays. Somehow, we made it just in time for the film to start (it's about a 45 minute tube ride from Kensington), but boy was it worth it! One of the funniest movies I've ever seen!

Friday was just a boring laundry day, and almost completely unremarkable. Saturday, though, was much more exciting! Kev and I bough tickets to see a Barclays Premiership Football match between Fulham FC and Everton at Craven Cottage in Fulham, an area of southwest London. The kickoff was at 12:45, but we had our tickets waiting for us at the stadium. Since the e-mail that I was sent when I bought the tickets said that the ticket office closed at noon, I figured we had to be there by then. But we woke up late, and didn't arrive until about 12:30! Luckily, the e-mail must have been lying, because the office was still very much open. And as it turned out, our seats were amazing! They were four rows back of the home-team net, and although the sun was brutal, the view was amazing! And so was the game. Fulham, which boasts two former U.S. soccer stars--Carlos Bocanegra and Brian McBride--won 1-0. The atmosphere was so intense, and the whole experience was a blast!

Afterward, Kev and I decided to go explore the Wimbledon area of London which was nearby. Really, Wimbledon is very quaint, with lots of little shops and restaurants and cute old fashioned architecture. It was very nice.

Today, all we really did was go to the Natural History Museum located only a few blocks from Kevin's flat. The museum had free admission, and was situated in a gigantic building with beautiful architecture! The main exhibits were on dinosaurs and mammal evolution, and the whole thing was pretty cool.

Keep checking the picture site for more updates as we can upload them, and thanks as always for reading!

posted by Zachary Nicholson @ 8:36 PM