Everyone else has left for Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle, an excursion that I opted out of since I've already been to Hampton. Most of our trips are subsidised because we've already paid an advance $300 for a variety of activities that they have lined up for us. The price of each trip you decide to go on is deducted from your total. At the end, any money left over in your fund is given back to you. Therefore, this money is quite precious and I'm trying to be thrifty!

I really wanted to just go to Windsor today, but I haven't heard back from the girl I was planning to go with. Dickon told me that Eton, the most prestigious and expensive prep school in the UK and also where Prince William attended, is just a short walk away, so I was hoping to stop by there and take an obscene amount of pictures. Oh well. Even if today doesn't work out, I'm sure there's another day that I can go. And to be honest, it would be really nice to have some alone time today so I can update THIS, send out a few e-mails and get some homework done.

Early Thursday afternoon, I headed off to High Street Kensington to meet Perry for lunch. I took one wrong turn, quickly realised it and turned around and made it there without any other problems. Quite impressive. :) As expected, when I saw him, I gave him the biggest hug ever. He gave me his extra phone which is SO NICE - he said it cost him £150, but he couldn't find the charger to it until recently, so he just bought another one. He helped me top it out (pay for minutes for the phone, which you can do at nearly every convenience store) and then we headed off to Chinatown for lunch.

We ordered sweet and sour chicken and rice, which was served to us with chopsticks. I think chopsticks are one of the reasons that Asians are so thin. It's impossible to eat fast, or in my case, at all. Perry gave me a brief tutorial, but when that proved in vain, he asked the waiter to bring me a fork. Pathetic.

After I left Perry, I hopped a tube back home to get ready for my evening out with Dickon. I knew he would be coming from work, so I thought I had better dress up. I finally decided to wear Amy's favourite outfit - the khaki safari dress - with brown heels. I was so nervous about meeting him! I saw him from across the street because he looked exactly like his pictures. He was reading a newspaper and I walked up and was like, "Dickon?" And he looked up and... yes, he did... he shook my hand. Haha. Hello, awkwardness.

The rest of the night was really fun. We spent over 2 hours in the drawing room of the hotel, me feeling completely uncivilised because everything was so nice. The meal itself - tea, finger sandwiches and various pastries - cost around 40£ ($80!!) and Dickon paid for it all. He said he had stayed up until 2 a.m. the night before working as a doorman at his friend's party and so that would cover the cost. How nice.

He walked me home and was pretty much gushing about the area that we're staying in. I found out the other day that the flats next door cost 2000£ ... per WEEK ... to rent. Oh, my Lord. I am living up this trip because there's no way I'll ever be able to afford to come back!!

So the night with Dickon was fun - albeit slightly uncomfortable - and we might hang out again this weekend! Yay!

I'll have to update on yesterday a bit later because I just decided that I want to return to bed. Goodnight!