London Day 8: A Recap of my First Week in London

So things have been busy, and I didn't have an Internet connection for my first few days, so I'm just getting around to writing in this now. Hopefully once I write in it tonight I'll be able to keep up daily, but knowing me I will continue procrastinating and never get around to it.

My first week in London has been great. I'm starting to learn my way around near my flat, and have also had the chance to explore some of the surrounding areas. For anyone that knows anything about London, my flat is located between Bedford Square and Russell Square, about halfway between the Russell Square and Holborn Tube stations.

During the week we did a lot of Orientation activities (mostly uninteresting) and also went out to the pubs a bit. Friday night was particularly fun because some of the student guides planned a night for everyone in pre-arranged housing. We started at a pub called Shakespeare's Head, and after a few hours they brought us to a club called 'Sway' and got us in without a cover! (Yippee!) We danced there for the remainder of the night before retiring to our beds.

On Sunday I went on a bus tour of London which ended in Greenwich, where we were given time to explore. I went to the market and bought some things (including Boston Terrier earrings!!) We also had the best fish n' chips I've had thus far. In Greenwich we were also able to see the Prime Meridian and the British Observatory, where the official time of the world is determined. Overall, it was a nice, relaxing afternoon.

Monday was my first day of classes, and I had my first class at 3:40 p.m. It was my Communications Law class, which should prove to be relatively harmless. Before class I woke up and explored the University of London area, and signed up to be able to use their Student Union (we are eligible to as SU Abroad students). After class I met up with Claire and Christine for dinner at Pizza Hut before returning to Faraday House (SU's campus in London) for the Travel Seminar. The seminar was pretty overwhelming, but generally informative. Hopefully we can get our trips for the semester planned out later this week so that the stress of planning will be over with. After our meeting, we went back to Pizza Hut for ice cream (we hadn't had time earlier) and brought our friend Alex with us as well. After ice cream we came back to my [freezing cold] apartment (the heat had been broken since before the weekend) and hung out. We were all discussing how it stunk that we couldn't watch the Syracuse vs. Georgetown basketball game, when I remembered that a bar we had gone out to earlier in the week had ESPN. I called them up, and sure enough, we could watch the game there! Tip-off was 7 p.m. EST, so we arrived at the bar around 11 p.m. GMT for a midnight tip-off. It was awesome. Everyone else at the bar was really confused at first, but we managed to have a really great time and even have some of the people in the bar rooting for us at the end! (We ended up winning 73-56!!!!!!!) By the time we got back home, it was 2:48 a.m., but I think we were all glad to say that we got to watch the game.

Today I had my first class of Race, Gender, and the Media, and I must say that I am really excited for it. It's going to be a really interesting class, and I've already learned a lot about the differences between the media in the United States and the United Kingdom. After class, I met up with Christine for lunch at a cute cafe called Cafe Nerro, and then we came back to my apartment for a little while. A few more people came over, and we decided to go on a walking adventure to a part of London none of us had been to before. So, me, Christine, Claire, Sam, Halley, and Chris all headed towards a small road near Faraday House that had looked intriguing. We walked through a bunch of different parts of London (or so it seemed) with little flat buildings, shops, cafes and pubs. Eventually, we realized we were close to King's Cross Station, and being the Harry Potter nerds that we are, made our destination Platform 9 3/4. We all got giddy once we reached the inside of the train station, and we followed signs until we found it! They had labeled it and put a cart halfway through it, so we took some incredibly nerdy tourist pictures before catching the Tube back to Russell Square.

Once we returned, Christine and I decided to head to the Faraday House computer labs so that we could work on our papers for Ireland. We ended up meeting up with Claire, Alex, Dave, and Ramon there, which meant we didn't really get much done. Christine and I had a lot of excess energy for some reason, and spent a lot of our time moving around the room in our rolling chairs and playing on Facebook. We don't get out much.

Now I'm procrastinating doing reading for my classes tomorrow and writing my Ireland papers, but at least I'm doing something relatively productive. Tomorrow I have classes straight through the day, but I'm planning on trying to organize a group to go to Trivia night at a pub near the University of London! (Shout-out to Jim and Andy!)