London Day 10: Dance Party!

Thursday morning I have my 9 a.m. class. It turns out it's going to be really awesome. My professor is a 34-year-old Australian guy who is in a band. We only have to stay for the second half of the class every second week, and we only have to do the readings on those weeks as well. After class, Christine and I had a lunch date, and Sam and Alex came along as well. We went into this cute little sandwich place called 'Onion'. We'll definitely be going back because the service was really good and so was the food (yum!). Random fact: English people like to put corn in their tuna salad. I'm still undecided about whether or not I like this.

After lunch, we all went our separate ways (most of us to work on our papers for our Ireland class). I had to shower and get ready for my interview with the Encompass program (more information to follow below).

//Edit: I forgot to mention that we stopped at Barclay's (bank) to take out some cash, and the ATM decided it would be fun to eat my ATM card (the ATMs here, more colloquially referred to as "cash machines" or "holes-in-the-wall", suck in your card, rather than having you swipe it). When I tried to ask the banker to get it out for me, he told me it had to be destroyed since it wasn't a Barclay's card. I had a minor panic attack (although apparently I stayed composed, according to Christine) before a lovely gentleman called me over and said he would break the rules and open the ATM for me since I wasn't just "here on holiday." I cannot express how much I love this man. So now I have my card back, but not without an extreme fear of ATM machines. Oh lordy.

A little background: the Encompass program is a program that takes 4 students from a bunch of different areas (England, US, Israel, India, Iraq, etc.) and brings them together in Scotland (all expenses paid) for a week to learn about each other's cultures and break down cultural barriers. You get to do hands-on physical team-building during the day, and at night, you have lengthy discussions regarding different sensitive topics. I'm really interested in cultural boundaries and things like that, so I was really hoping I'd get it.

My interview went well, although I wasn't exactly sure what they were looking for in a candidate. It turns out I wasn't what they were looking for because yesterday I found out I didn't get it :(. It's okay though, because now I can travel over the two weekends that I would have been gone. I'm not totally disappointed, even though it would have been awesome. Ho hum.

So anyways, after my interview I sat outside the Office of Student Life so that I could sign up for some Love London events. Love London Weekend is a weekend that SU London sets up for students where there are 20+ activities over 4 days that you can attend that helps you see different parts of London. All of the activities are either free or subsidized, so it's pretty awesome. I signed up to see Billy Elliot the musical (for only £15!), do a walking tour of Royal London, the 'Old City', and a Beatles walking tour. I also signed up for a Brewery tour with Brian from my Ireland prequel, and I'm going to sign up for 'Bowling with Brian' on Friday night as well. Yeehaw.

Afterwards, I went back to my flat and worked on my papers until 7, when we had an Ireland prequel reunion pizza party! It was really fun, and I missed the group from Ireland terribly. We had really good chemistry, but since we've been in London and have branched out to different people it's been harder to see each other as much. Wolfgang force-fed us pizza and dessert (I think I gained about 15 pounds from it) and all was lovely. We also discussed the trip and how it could be improved/changed, and we found out a few people wrote on their course evaluations that Wolfgang and Brian act like "an old married couple." I don't think I could have said it better myself. They also presented us with a gift! Brian had burned us all a copy of 'The Merry Ploughboys: Live in Concert' (the little Irish band that played when we were in Dublin).

Afterwards everyone came over to my flat to try to plan our Spring Break, but when that got too complicated, we just ended up pre-gaming. Then we decided we were lazy and didn't go out, so Christine, Claire, Alex, and I just had a dance party (90s music, classic rock, and Lady Gaga!) in my flat all night and hung out and it was lovely. Except for the fact that the dance-party was ended by the security guard on watch (apparently we were being too loud) at around 2 a.m. (we had to be at Faraday house at 8:30 a.m. for our trip to Stonehenge). Oh well... it was a fun night regardless!