Lovely

I met up with Chris at the glorious Globe theatre and we headed into Brixton (the "Brooklyn of London") and he bought me delicious Japenese chicken curry and then took me out for dancing and drinks at the Mango Landing. A great little bar that plays reggae hip hop music. The taste of liquor is bothering me less and less, which is good in some rights (I will be 21 about 2 weeks after I return to the US) and bad in others (I have probably inherited an addictive nature). The best I can do is be careful not to over-indulge, but isn't that all aspects of life?

We crashed around 1-2am and got a little sleep before waking up and hurrying about to get ready for rock climbing in Bowels. His friend, Stephen came and picked us up and we then picked up Steph and Alex. The weather was cold and cloudy, despite BBC's assurances that it would be warm and brilliant. However Steph let me borrow her extra sweater and after we got to climbing I wasn't so bothered.

I impressed everyone (or so they claimed) by scaling my first route with minimal difficulty. Feeling accomplished, I was okay with watching everyone else climb different routes and reaching the top or bouncing back to the bottom, but I did attempt a second, much more difficult course. After I fell I decided to call it quits because I was so tired from the past couple nights' activities and I had a distracting headache. I had already hit my goal. So I wandered around in the sunshine which did finally come out and collected flowers for people or talked with Steph and just enjoyed my day outside. I will definitely rock climb again one day, if only because the people who do it are so cool and they form a sort of community as most people who share a unique interest do.

We were climbing well past the end of the festival at the Globe for Shakespeare's birthday, but I wasn't bothered. However I did hurry back to Cynthia's house in a whirl, to take out my contacts and shower ASAP. I feel badly about leaving Chris so abruptly, he wanted me to go to a pub where they play jazz, but I was just ready to get back to my temporary home.