Discovering Dead People Around the Corner

I just need to start these finals so I can actually feel like I've accomplished something... three weeks of studying and I have no idea as to whether I would actually pass any of these things, if I have actually absorbed any of the information I've been studying, or if I even care anymore. However, I did spend two hours on Skype yesterday making my mom listen to theories of health planning, so that's productivity for you.

This morning, Alina and I hit up one of my favorite brunch places in the city, The Modern Pantry. I had a coconut and cassava waffle with maple syrup and bacon and two lattes. I was impressed because the waffle wasn't sweet and sometimes you get that awful, sickly sweet stuff and it makes you want to vom like two hours later, but this just had a nice delicate flavor. And then the highlight of my day was the fact that the chef from restaurant is releasing a cookbook in June. It's going to be my apartment warming gift to myself, lol.

Then Alina and I walked back to our building and took a detour through Spa Fields, which is behind Exmouth Market, the location of all those adorbz boutiques, cafes and bars. Spa Fields is a park/church yard about a one minute walk from my building. Anyway, families were having picnics and children were playing, even thought the weather wasn't very accommodating - it was a warm 50 degrees. And then there was this sign. And the sign said something about how the grounds that the park is on used to the site of funeral home and graveyard. And apparently, there was room for approx. 2700 bodies. But the men who ran the burial ground wanted to make more money. So they would dig people up in the middle of the night and burn their bodies and managed to cram 80,000 peeps on the grounds or rather, their ashes once they had dug them up. However, their money-making scheme was spoiled when residents of the area began to get sick off the dead body fumes floating into their homes every night. So then the grounds were empty for a while until 2004 when a project began to bring new life (pun intended) to the area. Spooky and gruesome, yeah?

This is the park house, which stands on the site of the old bone house:

Where unsuspecting children play:

So that story went well with my drizzly, lazy day. I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner but got canceled on due to a stomach bug :-(. So I've now finished the last episode of Glee, as well as some brie, ginger beer and black licorice. Loosely thinking about studying since I just walked into the kitchen and was faced by an obviously awkward couple attempting to turn their study sesh into a pseudo-date. So cute. Kind of. Barf.