“Yes, so I have heard!”
And, then, inevitably, they would add, “Very expensive, though.”
And I would laugh and, just as inevitably, rejoin, “Oh, trust me, I’m used to expensive – I’ve lived in NYC for over two years!”
Oh, how ignorant the Anna of two months ago was.
An average pub meal with a drink here is around fifteen pounds. My weekly grocery run comes to about twenty-two or -three pounds. A one-way ride on the tube within central London costs two pounds and twenty pence (for comparison, a one-way ride on the NYC subway is two dollars and fifty cents). A morning tea or afternoon coffee costs two pounds. My phone plan of 100 minutes, 400 texts, and 1GB data comes to ten pounds per month.
Now, all of this might sound pretty reasonable at first. It did to me. But let’s not forget that a single pound is equivalent to more than a dollar sixty. So when I get excited about the fact that my £1.95 tea at Costa Coffee is equivalent to my $2 tea at Starbucks, I must correct myself that I’ve actually just paid over $3 for my tea. Basically, most things in London have the same numerical value as those in NYC, but cost more because of the extra weight (yes, pun intended) of the pound.
Oh, except the laundry at my dorm is three pounds a load. There is absolutely no American equivalent to something that outrageous. Never again will I complain about dollar loads in NYC. But I will spare you my full-blown harangue about the modern society’s abuse of confused college students.
While I can’t say that I’ve learned to live frugally, I’m getting better at cutting corners. I’ve started cooking a lot of my meals. This might not sound like a big deal, but for someone whose biggest culinary accomplishment two months ago was knowing how to scramble eggs, it’s huge. Even huger is the fact that, despite my many juvenile mistakes (forgetting to wash fruits, neglecting to oil the pan before boiling my rice, attempting to cut root vegetables with a regular knife, etc), I’ve found that I enjoy cooking. It’s a creative outlet; I now use cooking as a homework break.
On the subject of homework, school dominates a fair portion of my daily routine. This should not come as a huge surprise to those of you who know what a nerd I am. Although I don’t feel as though I have an ‘average’ day in this city, my somewhat-average weekday consists of homework in the mornings, class in the afternoons, and theatre in the evening (two of my classes visit theatres semi-regularly).
To keep myself from becoming a total academic hermit during the semester that I am supposed to be exploring a fantastic European city, I have decided to make my studying an exploration game: I am determined, within the four months of my stay, to find the best café study spot in all of Central London.
So far, my favorite is Timberyard, a darling place about a mile away from my dorm. It has everything one could possibly desire from a studying café: plenty of tables, ample outlets, free Wi-Fi, friendly staff who don’t mind if you camp out all day, clean bathrooms, and reasonable prices (well, as reasonable as this stupidly expensive city gets). They even bring your drinks and food on a tray, accompanied by a bottle of water, and take your empty dishes away when you’ve finished. If you order tea, they even bring you a little timer so you know how long the leaves have steeped. I find everything about this place adorable, even (perhaps especially) those bottles of water and tea-steeping-timers. And yes, I am often delighted by the little things in life.
[image of my Timberyard tea, water jug, and tea-steeping-timer, taken by me]
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