Opened Airspace!

Heathrow's been opened as of 10pm! Sure, its limited flights and things might change due to a second plume of ash heading our way but its open!

Today I went grocery shopping, and bought food for the next few days, including biscuits for the trip home. I also watched True Blood online. I have decided true blood is just the R-rated version of Twilight set in the deep south with otherwise insignificant differences. Its amusing to compare the two. Boy vampire with psychic powers falls in love with girl who's thoughts he can't read, and there's a boy who can turn into a wolf who has a major thing for the girl and would do anything to protect her. Woman with psychic powers falls in love with man vampire who's thoughts she cant read, and there's her boss who has a major thing for her and can turn into a dog and would do anything to protect her. See what I mean?

I also helped Noelle manage an epic feat today. In under a half hour several of us (aka me, Ro, Noelle, Stephanie, Julia) managed to pack all of Noelle's things up, clear out her room, and get her checked out, and checked in for a train and plane. Her flight has been cancelled at least 3-4 times, and she's finally gotten so fed up with it that she caught a taxi to king's cross, a train to edinburgh, a plane to rajkovic, a plane to seattle, and probably another plane to get back to Alaska. She was freaking out so badly when she came knocking on my door to ask for help she could barely think. Then especially when she realized that she would never make it in time if she took the Tube...I gave her some of my leftover stipend money so she'd have enough for the taxi rides. I can't even begin to explain what she looked like when she took the money and realized that it was possible she'd be home in the next 24 hours. She's been homesick for weeks now. I was really glad I could help her out, even a little. I'm really hoping she made it, but I haven't heard back yet.

The other thing I did of note was go to a beginner's parkour class run by Parkour Generations. My friend Eric has been raving about them for a good long while, and they were holding a free class tonight, so I went and oh, man, am I out of shape. It was pretty much all conditioning since it was a class for people who knew little to nothing about parkour ('ey!) so we did running stuff, and crawling stuff (but you couldn't let your knees touch the ground and we were going under bike rack things so you couldn't be up high either) and backwards crawling stuff, and learned how to do martial arts rolls, and a bunch of crunches and push ups and hanstands and chair position. Then we had little stations to go around and do more conditioning stuff, and a relay race which was really really fun. They had these padded obstacles people had to find their way over and under. The leader guys moved so fast, it was crazy! There was this one part they added where you had to go over a thin like...bench or that pole used for the dancing game where you have to go under but don't touch it, or something- anyway, they were running and then jumped and just like...flew over it, and rolled out no problem and bam! they were at the finish line. Crazy! There were also some guys in the more experienced group on higher stuff doing tricks and things which was kinda neat but not my style. I don't much feel like risking my neck just to pull off a cool flip. Everyone was really friendly, and a lot of people were going for the first time. Oh man, and the stretching afterwards....so painful, but so good! I know I'll probably have to stay in bed tomorrow with sore muscles, but it felt nice to be exercising in a really fun and friendly environment, with people of all ages and body types and experience levels all just having a great time.

Lets see...I met a woman from Essex and her boyfriend from Earl's Court, a woman who was also taking poledancing classes but was semi-jealous of her boyfriend who was grasping the concepts and stuff faster (to be fair, he did a TON of martial arts and dance training before starting the beginners classes) and a few other people but I don't really remember their stories. I worked a lot with a guy named Julian, who is apparently and up-and-coming member of the team. He had an interesting accent, but he was a nice guy and kept pushing me to work harder on the conditioning and doing things properly. These guys were all about safety and having fun.

I came home and had dinner and an excellent shower, and currently I'm stalling for time while trying to figure out what to do next. Ah well. I'll think of something.