Jit - CS #1

The day only becomes interesting when Jit finds us. Jit is our first CouchSurfer host! He is from India and lives half an hour outside of downtown London in an adorable little town characterized by boutique shops that make me salivate and a nice park. He lives in a gated community a ten minute walk away from the Tube. His employer pays (or at least helps pay) his jaw dropping monthly rent of 1,400 POUNDS! His condo is nothing short of fantastic; Laura and I have a room to ourselves sharing a bed; there is free wifi; and the toilet even has a bidet. It is wonderful. We got there around lunch time, and Jit happily offered to make us his mother's homemade chicken curry recipe! YES PLEASE. Hands down the best Indian food I have ever had, including the food I had in India (this required no Pepto). He also served me a delicious Indian tea which I am 99% sure is the same delicious tea I drank when I was in India. Amaaaazing.

I need to rave about CouchSurfing now, and this will be a little sappy. I LOVE IT! I wish everybody could be open-minded about it. Yes, you need to use common sense with who you request to stay with. But there are GOOD PEOPLE on it, travelers and adventurers who want to help other people travel, and more importantly, learn and share cultures and stories. CouchSurfing, I truly believe, has the power to bring the world closer together via individual points of contact. Well meaning people trusting strangers and letting experiences happen to them. It renews my faith in humanity and gives me hope that the world is slowly becoming a better place with every positive CS experience. It is about building connections, and not just visiting places but getting to know a local, their story, how they fit into the places we visit, a personalized glimpse of culture, an opportunity to learn countless things that aren't and never will be in guide books. It is so, so, so amazing. Phew. Now, on with our day.

Jit has been in London since August, so he is still learning the city too. This is fun for us because we get to explore the city with a new friend! He gets to learn his new town, and we get to all be tourists together. He ventured out with us after lunch and we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I loved the museum - not your typical stuff. They have a lot of sections that fall under the "Materials and Techniques" heading, where you can see sculptures, stained glass windows (and a video on how to make stained glass!), silver, fashion, photographs, etc. A few notes: 1) Sculptures: they had basically a whole room of Rodin, my favorite sculptor. This is great news because I adore the Paris Musee de Rodin, but if all these sculptures are here...they're obviously not in Paris. So now I've seen them, for free; 2) Museums in London are all free due primarily to a gambling tax - what a great use of money!; 3) Photographs: the V&A Museum was the first museum to ever exhibit photos. Their photo wing was awesome!! Some pictures I really liked for their artistic value as well as their stories (if you want to look them up...) are listed below:

a) Chris McCaw's "Sunburned, GSF #084"
b) Nicholas Hughes' "In Darkness Visible"
c) Tim Walker's "Lily Cole and Giant Camera"
d) Wang Qingsong's "Night Revelry of Lao Li"

From the Museum, we walked through the Kensington neighborhood through Hyde Park / Kensington Gardens, saw Kensington Palace, then took the Tube to Westminster. By this time it was dark, and we got amazing night-lit views of the London Eye, Big Ben, and the Parliament building. From Westminster we walked up through Trafalgar Square and eventually found a cheap British restaurant that I'd read about as having food for a good value (i.e. cheap and edible). I got bland pasta that was made up for by my British sounding dessert - a Steamed Chocolate Pudding. I ate the whole thing, but it's okay because we walk a million hours a day. Dessert was a great decision. Tired and full, we trekked back on the Tube to Jit's town, where he bought us each a beer which we sipped in his living room while watching the thoroughly trashy "American Pie" movie and making plans for tomorrow.

Accomplishments:
Found Jit!
Confirmed that there are, in fact, red double decker party buses in London, with full on dance parties happening on the top level that spill out of the windows.
Confirmed that pink limos do exist! How come the US isn't that classy?

Travel Tip:
Don't let guide books fool you if they say spring is a bad time to go to Europe. The cool weather makes it so that you a) don't get stinky; b) don't get too hot walking around; c) your backpack doesn't stick uncomfortably to your back; d) wearing your warm clothes = less to carry!

Today I thought of:
Christina Tran - give me some Art History lessons, woman!
Mary Waters - remember the tea in Erode? IT WAS LIKE THAT!

Nice People Alert:
Kebab Shop Man kindly let us use his random hidden internet cafe in the back of his restaurant for free as we desperately were trying to find Jit. Two thumbs up, Kebab Shop Man!

Exciting things are planned for the week ahead! Weather has been good and all are in good spirits.