Still Getting Used to This Blogging Thing: January 19-25

Ok I might be slacking a little at this blog. But, in my defense, I've been having trouble thinking of other posts to do because I only really do things on the weekends and I don't feel like I'm enough of a London aficionado yet to really give you guys advice on what to do here or what I've learned so if you want to give me advice on what to do for another post throughout the week my ears are open!

I love the brightly painted buildings of Shoreditch

Monday, January 19th:

I use Mondays to get out and explore the city. So when I was deciding what to do I realized I hadn't been to Shoreditch yet. There was a street art tour there that some of my flatmates did but I couldn't go because I had class and they said it was cool so I decided to go there. 

Shoreditch definitely didn't disappoint. It's lined with cute vintage shops and street art that I wandered around for a while until my feet hurt. While I was wandering around I found a CAT CAFE which made my entire life. I make lists of things that I like in places that I find and Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium is pretty much number one on the list. Although you have to make reservations to actually play with the cats so I didn't get to experience the beauty of the cafe, I can only imagine. I think I'm going to wait until Lern comes back to go because it'd be a little sad to sit in the cafe by myself playing with cats. Not that I didn't seriously consider it the day of. 

found a peaceful area in the middle of the city

As I continued walking I found a street filled with these beautiful brick buildings with a park in the middle. I sat there for a while contemplating life before I realized I was cold and went toward the Underground to explore a different area. But as I got on the train I realized I was cold and a little explored out so I decided I was just going to go home and have dinner. This would have been easy if I took the right train from London Bridge but I got on the wrong train, not just once, twice. 

Needless to say, once I got back I was tired and hungry so I hung out in the kitchen for a while before Lauren got back and we decided that we wanted to go see a movie. If you live relatively near Greenwich and want to go to a movie I highly recommend the Greenwich Picturehouse. If you bring your student ID you can become a student member for 15 pounds which gives you two free movies, five pound movies on Mondays (student tickets without the membership are 11 pounds) and 10% off concessions. I think Lauren and I are going to make Monday night movies a regular thing, which I'm super excited about. 

Tuesday, January 20th: 

I always feel bad when I do these Tuesday - Thursday days because most of the time the only thing that happened was I had class. This Tuesday was a little different. I did have class, British and American Musical Theatre, where we talked about the evolution of early British Musical Theatre. We got a list of the four musicals we are going to see as a part of the class which is exciting because, similarly to London Theatre, I like that we get out of the classroom and explore the city. I'm also excited about the shows we are seeing: Miss Saigon, The Scottsboro Boys, Assassins, and Beautiful. All four look like excellent shows and I'm excited to see them (count the number of "excited's" in the last two sentences). 

After class when I went to make dinner one of my flatmates came in and asked if I wanted to join her and her friends at a club called XOYO in Shoreditch for students night. It sounded fun and I don't have class until 4:30 on Wednesdays so I went in a big group of people. The club was alright, they really liked the fog machine and more electronic music with beats and no words which I wasn't a fan of. As a white girl, I like to sing along to top forty music at the club. I had a fun time otherwise! I was exhausted afterwards from dancing.

Wednesday, January 21st: 

advert of my fave on the way to the Gate Theatre

Today in London Theatre we discussed the show we saw last week, A Series of Increasing Impossible Acts. The discussion opened my eyes to some of the things that I missed about the show. The one thing I don't like about the class is that we go from class to another show, so it's hard for me to keep some of the discussion straight because I have to remember what happened in the new show and the discussion in class and write two separate reflections. It isn't a big deal, I would just prefer some time in between to write what happened in class. 

Anyway, today we saw The Chronicles of Kalki which was about the Hindu god Vishnu being reincarnated as a teenage girl and her two friends having to retell the events of what happened the week she was with them after she's reported missing. It was interesting and starred someone who was also in Game of Thrones which was amazing. 

Thursday, January 22nd: 

Thursdays are days where I feel like I don't do anything particularly exciting. I went to class at 4 where we talked about the entrepreneurship of the Tate Britain and Tate Modern. We discussed our final project, creating a museum or gallery with the a list of the art you'd like to display along with an entrepreneurial plan of how to make it successful. The way that they do course grades here for most of my classes is that you submit a final essay and that is your entire grade. This is both extremely frightening (MY WHOLE GRADE IS BASED ON ONE THING WTF)and good because instead of cramming for tests and then forgetting the information right afterwards I have to understand and interpret in order to convince the grader that I actually learned and can apply the information from the class.  

For dinner I made pancakes (I can make three things, grilled cheese, green beans, and breakfast so if you notice a lot of grilled cheese and breakfast foods that's why) only to realize that British pancakes are different than American. They were still really good! The taste of a pancake but the consistency of a crepe, would recommend.

Friday, January 23rd: 

Today was the first day that I had a full day of class and the lab for my Computing class. The only thing that annoys me about this class is that the lecture is from 10-11 and usually the seminar directly follows so you have a long class period but you're done early, for example from 11-2 and then you are done with class at 2. Instead, this class' seminar is from 3-6 so I have 4 hours free but that really isn't enough time to do much and then I have to go back to class from 3-6. It's annoying that I essentially can't do anything on Friday until after 6.   

Lauren, Cheryl and I made plans to go out for dinner. We originally had planned on going to this place called The Barnyard because they had warm cornbread on their menu but when when we got there the wait was too long so we looked for somewhere else. 

steak tacos on the left and rajas tacos on the right
just looking at this picture makes me want
 more of their chips and guac

Across the street was this cute restaurant called Wahaca which served Mexican food, as this is my favorite kind I pushed for this one. There was a little bit of a wait so we went upstairs to the bar for drinks. I had one of the best Mojitos ever and as we waited for a table to open I couldn't stop thinking that I was going to have chips and guac soon. The anticipation was killing me. When a table opened we ordered and the food was delicious and relatively inexpensive. We shared chips and guac, I had steak tacos and vegetarian rajas tacos (the steak tacos were better but they were both good).  

We headed back to new cross for one of the orientation leader's birthday party at a pub down the road my flatmates went to go celebrate for a while but Lauren and I weren't really feeling it so we left at like 11:30 and went to bed like the party animals we are.

Saturday, January 24th: 

Lauren and I made plans today to tour the Tower of London and go on a ghost walk which we were both super pumped about. For me, the Tower of London was something that was something that I knew I for sure wanted to tour because I am fascinated by the history behind it. I also weirdly know a lot of facts about it? We got there at like 3:30 and when we bought tickets we were told that the tower closes at 4:30 which I think is so weird because you'd think it would have been open late on a Saturday? I don't know the businesses in London confuse me. Lauren and I still had plenty of time to see everything that we wanted to see. Mainly the world's biggest cut diamond (which we weren't allowed to take pictures of). The Tower was amazing and so interesting. I most definitely want to go again and am seriously considering becoming a palace member which is 46 pounds for unlimited yearly access to the 5 London palaces (Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, and Kew Palace). I love the history behind that stuff though and just walking through the palace made me feel like I was in Game of Thrones or something. Also I've decided that I officially want to move into a palace, preferably the Tower of London.

tower wall featuring London Bridge

the ravens of the tower were so cute

looking down upon the peasants from the tower

When they shuffled us out of the Tower promptly at 4:30 Lauren and I were starting to get hungry but we didn't want to find something right away because our ghost walk didn't start until 7:30 so we walked around tower hill until about 5 when the hunger became unbearable. We ate dinner at this place called All Bar One where we ordered 5 small plates for 25 pounds. We ordered amazing breaded chicken, calamari, pomegranate hummus beef, cauliflower, and some cheese bread that had a weird name I don't remember. It was a great meal for 12.50 and I was stuffed afterwards! 

We walked toward St Paul Station to meet up with the tour guide and we were a couple minutes early and we didn't know who exactly our guide was so we walked around the station looking lost before eventually we found the tour guide. The tour was pretty good, very interesting and informative, my only problem was that I wish that we could have gone into places and gotten a little more scared, we talked outside of places about the hauntings going on inside which wasn't immersive enough for me. Also, online it says that apparitions are guaranteed and I didn't see any. But for 7 pounds it was an entertaining tour. 

After the tour Lauren and I were going to meet up with my friend from home, Maggie, who was in London for orientation before she leaves for Spain. But, the genius with directions I am, directed us to the wrong hotel twice. At 11 the tube starts closing so we gave up trying to get to the right hotel and decided to get something to eat. Lauren had never been to a casino before and there was one attached to one of the wrong hotels we went to so we decided to go in there for a little while. I was underwhelmed by the selection (Nowhere near Mystic Lake standards) and they had this weird thing where you could reserve a slot machine and all of the slot machines that didn't have people at them were reserved so we played roulette for a little while before Lauren realized that gambling isn't that fun. We were still hungry so on the way back to the bus stop we were on the lookout for something to eat that was still open (it was about 11:30 at this point) and we found a diner! We had midnight shakes and fries and it was amazing before heading back home to bed after a long day of walking (over 6.5 miles).

Sunday, January 25th:

Today I actually have homework to do. Yuck. It's almost like I'm actually going to school in London. So I'm going to get that done and watch something on Netflix. It's going to be a pretty uneventful day featuring some grocery shopping, typing reflections, and attempting to understand a coding assignment I got on Friday, so I'm going to go ahead and publish this before the day is over so that the people that want to read it and are badgering me about not posting things on this blog (Hi I'm talking about you Mom!) can read this. But if something eventful happens tonight none of you will know until next week. It's something you'll have to live with.

I hope everyone back home is having a fantastic week! I know Drake starts spring term this week so if you're someone that starts school tomorrow good luck to you! Have a good semester and I'll talk to you for sure next Sunday, hopefully earlier!

          

First Week of Classes: January 12 - 18

So I might have been a little too ambitious about the whole two posts a week thing, but this was the first week of classes so I was figuring my new schedule. Hopefully I'll get back to the two posts a week thing next week. But I thought I wouldn't leave you completely hanging and tell you what I've been up to this week.

Monday, January 12th:

I originally was supposed to have class today but I decided that I didn't want to have class on Monday so I spent the morning wandering to different departments to switch from a history class into a drama class and a different history class. Afterwords, I decided to have some lunch and went to Piccadilly Circus. I walked around for a while, went to a bookstore, ate a donut, got some postcards that I keep meaning to send out to the tribe but haven't yet (sorry tribe, look forward to those kind of soon). It was raining and typical me has an umbrella and always forgets it, so I returned damp and cold at like dinner time. Afterwords, Lauren and I hung out for a while and then I watched the Vampire Diaries before bed.

Tuesday, January 13th:

Today was the first day of classes omg so scary. I don't have class until three so I spent the day just hanging out and getting ready for class (more Vampire Diaries heyo) before I left at like 2:45. Something that I don't get about classes in the UK (or maybe just my school) is that if a class starts at 4 people normally don't show up until like 4:05 and class starts at 4:10. I don't get it and I don't like it because I always show up to class way too early but I don't want to be late and it's very frustrating. But, when my first class, British and American Musical Theatre, finally started I really enjoyed it! In this class we discuss different aspects of musical theatre, it's origin and techniques. We see four musicals throughout the semester, the only one we know that we are for sure going to is Assassins, which is currently starring Catherine Tate (I won't get to see her in it though sad day) but it looks really good. My class goes until about 6 so afterwords I did dinner and Vampire Diaries before I went to bed (This is an exciting week if you didn't already notice).

Wednesday, January 14th:

This morning I woke up and had breakfast and hung around waiting for my class to start and at 10 to 4 I walked over there only to realize that it actually started at 4:30 so I waited in the hallway with a couple other confused people for a while. This class was London Theatre which is similar to British and American Musical Theatre. We talk about the theatre in London (shocking!) and it's effect on society. After every class we see a show. On the way, we stopped at Nando's but we only had time to get chips to go which was a disappointing because it smells really good in there. After 'dinner' we saw A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts which was an interesting show, I didn't really get most of it, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Afterwords I was pretty tired I just went straight to bed.

Thursday, January 15th:

I once again don't have class until 4 so I just hung out for the morning again. I got some food and then watched some more of Vampire Diaries before heading over to the library where I hung out and wrote my review of the play I saw yesterday. At 4 I walked over to Museums and Galleries as Social Entrepreneurs. This class is really interesting as it explores the ways the museums and galleries here in London have to be entrepreneurial because most of them here are free. We spend a lot of class time at local galleries like the Tate, Tate Modern and National Portrait Gallery which I think will be really fun. A couple of my friends were planning on going out but I have class tomorrow at 10 and seeing as all my other classes aren't until 3 I am a little worried I won't wake up on time.

Friday, January 16th:

I made it to computing class this morning--score! My morning lecture is only and hour (10-11) and I usually have a lab following from (3-6) but today there was no labs so I had the rest of my day free. 

Lern and I on Trafalger Square

that typical tourist thing
at King's Cross

Lern came into town today for her orientation before she leaves for Wales so I met up with her at about 1. We did all the touristy stuff from Piccadilly Circus to Trafalger Square. 

Then, we went to Kings Cross to stand on platform 9 3/4 before she had to head back to her hotel for more orientation. So I went back to my flat where a couple of my friends and I went to another friends flat and hung out for a while before I came back and went to bed.

Saturday, January 17th:

My uncle is here on a layover from Chicago so we met up for lunch at a tavern off Piccadilly where I had a club sandwich, which was ok, not the greatest thing I've ever had. Afterwords, we wandered around near Piccadilly Circus and Green Park before we hopped back on the underground toward home. It was really nice to see him and catch up. I accidentally missed my stop (of course) so I made an unexpected detour around the stop of Canary Wharf. 

Canary Wharf is beautiful

Canary Wharf was beautiful, but very under construction (like all of London) so I expect it'll be even more beautiful when it's finished. There's a very pretty view of the London skyline where you can see all the major buildings from the shard (tall one on the left) which is the tallest building in eastern Europe. and the Gherkin (middle with the different colors twisting around it) which I don't really know what exactly that is but apparently it's important. They also had a shopping centre which I spent some time at buying some more necessities before getting back on the tube toward St. James Park to meet up with Cheyenne and Matt for dinner. 

We went to this tavern where I had a strawberry and lime cider which may have been the greatest think I've ever tasted. Afterword, we hung out for a while before I rode the train back to my flat.

Sunday, January 18th: 

 Today was a productive day. I didn't actually leave my flat until 4 and was in my pjs until like 3. I went to get groceries at like 4:30 and was there until well after Sainsbury's closed at 5 which tells you how bad I am at grocery shopping. It's kind of sad to watch my wander the aisles mumbling to myself trying to figure out not only what I need but where things are, except this is extreme because I walk around like "I need sour cream, does England have sour cream? In America it's next to the cottage cheese. Where is that? Does England have cottage cheese?" Turns out that England does have cottage cheese but I gave up on trying to find sour cream. Every day is it's own struggle. 

After that I pretty much left right away to get on the tube to meet Lern at her hotel so we could walk together to meet two of our other friends from home, Nick and Ethan, at a restaurant about 10 minutes away. 

Nick, Lern, me, and Ethan. Photo stolen from Nick

We went to this place called the Byron on Wardour street which was the best burger that I've had here so far and I ordered a chocolate and bailey's shake which was amazing. Lern, Nick, Ethan, and I were there for like 2 or 3 hours just catching up and then we decided trying to find a pub that was playing the Packers-Seahawks game. We eventually found one and watched up until the last five minutes because the pub was closing and the Packers intercepted the ball, basically it looked like the Packers had won. It wasn't until I got home that I learned that the Seahawks beat the Packers in overtime--go hawks! Now I have some stuff that I wanted to do today that I never got around to because I was too busy laying around in my pjs to get done so I'm going to finish that and go to bed.

I'm hoping next week I will actually get two posts in but we'll see how that goes. Having one class a day and watching The Vampire Diaries is exhausting. I'll see you next week!

          

London Orientation: Jan 6 - 11

I think I'm going to become more ambitious with this whole blog thing and move up to have a goal of two posts a week. One being like the ones previous giving advice/anecdotes about an American living in London for the first time and another like this one that summarizes what I did each week. I think this is the best way to keep this blog interesting but also keep it as a semi-diary for me to look back on when I get back to the US.

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I want this blog to be so bear with me.

*** Update: I had been writing this all week but blogger deleted it and I was too tired to rewrite the whole thing so I wrote it today still pretending I wrote it the day it was happening but shh pretend I wrote it the day it was happening this will be our little secret***

Tuesday, January 6th:

I left for London on the 6th at about 6. If I could give you any advice about traveling abroad it would be to weigh your suitcases a bunch of times because one of by bags was so full of stuff (necessities!!) that it was about 4 pounds overweight, oops. At first I was ok with paying a little extra for the overweight bag, thinking it would be like $35 bucks max so when the gate agent told me it was going to be $100 dollars I was shocked and quickly removed some stuff. I originally had my rain boots packed but I ended up wearing them on the plane and adding some stuff to my backpack in order to get everything back to an acceptable weight. Finding the gate was pretty easy because all I had to do was follow the college students ready to study abroad (this might not work if you aren't going to London). It wasn't to long before I got on the plane where I could only sleep for one hour because I was so excited. Unfortunately that hour was dinner, just my luck right?

Wednesday, January 7th: 

I got into London Heathrow at about 8:30 in the morning, I was exhausted and starving but still had almost a full day of travel. I spent maybe 45 minutes in customs which wasn't bad at all and was on my way to meet my group. We were told to meet in terminal 5 and I had landed in terminal 4 so to my horror I was going to have to take the underground to the other side of the airport with two bags and no idea where I was going. Thankfully everyone I asked (at least 3 people) were helpful in telling me what to do and I got on with almost no trouble. I was in the middle of a conversation with another student who was studying abroad for the semester when suddenly the train stopped, at first I thought we had reached the platform but the doors weren't open and everyone was looking a little confused. After a while of sitting there someone announced over the intercom that the train had to stop due to an "unexpected fatality on the line." Upon further research I learned that a man had been hit by a train at one of the other stations. What an excellent welcome to London. 

Eventually the line started moving again and I got to the other terminal where I waited for my group for about an hour and half and then we got into taxis to get to our schools. The taxis would have been an excellent sightseeing opportunity but I was just so tired and dehydrated that all I wanted was to take some Advil and lay down.

Finally, we got to Goldsmiths and went to our flats. One thing I never thought about was that my flat wouldn't have an elevator, but it doesn't so three of us girls stared up the stairs in horror as we thought about how exactly we were supposed to get two 50 pound bags up to the top floor. I had been planning on making two trips but then a really nice guy from a couple floors below us helped get our other bags up the stairs which was awesome. 

My flat leaves a little something to be desired. It isn't bad, and maybe Drake has spoiled me with their excellent dorm quality but there's some stuff about that's ugh. Instead of sitting here complaining in paragraph form, I decided to make a cute infographic about the pros and cons of my room:

One thing that I forgot to include in that handy infographic is that the price of my view of London is that I am right above the train, so I am lulled to sleep my the soothing sounds of trains going by every 10-20 minutes and woken up when they start again in the morning. Hopefully once I'm here for a while I won't notice it as much.

Lemonade at Giraffe

We ended the day by taking the London Underground (tube) to a restaurant called Giraffe which was pretty good but after a while everyone was exhausted from a long day of travel so we came back at like 8.30. I had been planning to start reading one of the books I had downloaded for the flight but fell asleep the second I got into bed.

Thursday, January 8th:

Today we started Goldsmiths orientation. I was nervous about the fact that I had to be there at 9 am. If you know me at all you know that me + early morning anything = not a good equation, especially because 9 am is like 3 am back home. So I had set like 5 alarms and to everyone's surprise didn't need any of them because I was wide awake at 7 am. For the first time ever I had time; I had two hours to do whatever I wanted! I could conquer the world! I could go for a run! I could get breakfast somewhere! Instead I sat in bed on Pinterest (not a spon, wish it was) and made the header for this blog before eventually getting up and leaving for orientation.

view from my flat at 7 am

The orientation for international students is pretty much the same as any other orientation, we sat in a theater (theatre) and learned about the trains and id cards and security on campus, it was all very exciting, thankfully drinks were provided. After about an hour of listening, we took a break and me and a couple of my flatmates went to get breakfast. We went to a place called Café Crema where we got toast buttys with jam (buttered toast with jam) and headed back to the orientation.

Back at orientation we learned that we needed to go to something called departmental meetings in order to find out when and where our classes are, apparently here in England the way they register is to go to different departments and request a class and then see what time the class is and it may fit but if it doesn't they may have to run to a different department to request a different class I don't know it sounds like a stressful experience I would much rather go to these meetings.

At about 3 we ended orientation so a couple of my flatmates went to get some groceries, I needed to get a plate and silverware (see my packing tip post, don't buy silverware like me!) and we ended up getting chicken and green beans to attempt to cook for dinner later. But first, I had two departmental meetings. First with the drama department for my class called London Theatre. I am super excited about this because every week we see a show (for free! score!) and reflect upon what we thought of it in class. The second was for a computer science class called Creative Projects where we learn about HTML and C++ encoding which I am also excited about.

adding classes to my calendar & drinking tea #1 from my new mug

After the meetings there was a speed meeting activity as a part of orientation where you could meet all the study abroad students and talk to them about their major and where they're from, about half way through they gave us a break to get some drinks and regain our voices which was nice after all the talking we did. Overall I think that the speed meeting thing is a good idea but it's a lot of information thrown at you so retaining information is really difficult.

Finally, my flatmates and I went back to cook dinner which ended up being really good. We were thinking of trying to find a pub near the London Bridge but we were all pretty tired from another long day so we just went to bed. So far I'm leading a pretty exciting life aren't you wondering what's going to happen next?!

Friday, January 9th: 

This morning I was once again wide awake at 7 am. I am blaming the trains because I am consistently up at the same time each morning. I didn't have any meetings until noon so I had plenty of time to do whatever I wanted (I stayed in my room and wrote the blog post you saw yesterday, very adventurous of me). At noon I went to the History meeting for a class I think I'm going to try and switch out of into a different lower level course, then I hung out for a while and met again for another meeting, this time with the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurs to discuss my class about the entrepreneurial aspect of the museums and galleries in London. What I really like about both this class and the London Theatre class is that it's a part of the class to get out and explore what the city has to offer and I think that by the end of the semester I'll know a lot about a variety of different areas of London.

outside Big Red Pizzeria

After the meeting, I had about an hour to hang out in my room (I feel like I've been doing a lot of hanging out in my room, I promise I'll actually explore soon) before our orientation went out to dinner. We ate at this place in Deptford called Big Red Pizzeria which served pizza on a converted bus.

pizza so good I'm drooling over the photo of it

It was amazing! The pizza was so good I wanted to die and the place was so nicely decorated I took like 400 pictures of it. A+, 10/10, would recommend. We spent a little time getting to know the rest of the study abroad students before a smaller group of us headed to one of the local pubs where we bonded some more. One thing that I never would have thought about was that they card here, I don't know why I thought they wouldn't because there's still a drinking age, so for some reason I left my id back in my room because I was paranoid about someone stealing it and then not having proof of identification, but in London if you look under 21 they card to make sure you're 18, luckily my travel insurance has my date of birth and my picture on it so security had a good laugh at me before letting me in. Needless to say I have put my id back in my wallet. 

some motivation on the way to the pub

A couple hours later we switched pubs to New Cross House which is where we found the rest of the study abroad students, my flatmate and I were getting kind of tired so we just ordered some fries and continued bonding with our new friends. At like 10:30 we felt kind of over it so we came back to our flat and went to bed. Tomorrow the program I studied abroad through, CIEE is taking us on an open top bus tour and a river boat tour so I'm sure I'll have some more touristy pictures tomorrow.

Saturday, January 10th:

Today I had to get up at 9 because we had to be at Mabledon Place at 10 for CIEE orientation, surprisingly I actually had to wake up to my alarm because I slept through the train! I'm on my way to being the old Shelbie sleeping through the end of the world!

The CIEE orientation was informative and not very interesting so when we broke for lunch I was excited to move around a little. After some debate the group of us decided that the one place we wanted to go for lunch was McDonalds. How American of us. The McDonalds here is pretty much the same but it tastes slightly less cancerous which is good, I guess. 

When we got back from lunch, CIEE booked us on an open top bus and river boat tour. Both of which I highly recommend if you want to look around the city to see what things you want to spend more time at during your stay. Here's a collage of photos I took during the tour:

The eye from the water

tower bridge

dragon that guards the city of London

parliament

parliament

friends & big ben

Later, a couple of students I was with wanted to continue walking around downtown London so we walked around Green Park toward Buckingham Palace. Overall, Buckingham Palace was cool but there wasn't a lot to see although there were people offering to sell us tours of the state rooms which would have been more exciting than staring at it from the outside, but those tickets were probably expensive.

After a little bit of walking around the Buckingham area everyone in the group was getting tired and sore from doing so much sightseeing so we decided to go back to our flat where I made some crepes without measuring utensils or a spatula which was a challenge but they turned into pretty good piles of crepe mountains. I would make them again but I would probably wait for a spatula. We ended the night bonding with the people across the hall.

Sunday, January 11th:

I had most of the day off today! I didn't have to wake up early! I stayed in bed until noon! Shelbie is back! 

St. Paul's cathedral

views from the observatory were to die for

Once I finally rolled out of bed, my flatmate and I decided to take a trip to Greenwich which was SO PRETTY. I definitely want to go back some other time when it's warmer and just spend the day chilling at Greenwich Park with all the cute dogs that were just running around. Lauren and I had a moral dilemma of whether or not it was a faux pas to ask people if you can pet their dogs here (turns out it isn't, YAS) so we refrained. We wandered through the Greenwich Market which sells any type of food you could want from sushi to italian to jamaican. It smelled so good, I wanted to eat it all. But it was really crowded and I kept running into people so we went off to look for the Greenwich Meridian Line (the prime meridian that separates the east and west hemisphere). We climbed this massive hill to the Greenwich Observatory and during the walk it didn't seem worth it but once you get to the top, the view is amazing and well worth the climb. 

I was casually in two hemisphere's today

We walked around the observatory looking for the meridian before we realized that you had to pay to go through the museum in order to take a picture on this fancy line with a view of the city in the background and we were bummed that we weren't going to be able to take a picture on the line, until, we followed some people into this other area that has a less fancy line to take pictures in front of. So, London tip #1: if you don't want to pay to stand in two hemispheres you can take a picture in front of the peasant prime meridian like me.

After we climbed back down the hill, we walked around Greenwich some more before heading back to our flat to get ready for CIEE dinner in Piccadilly Circus. I think that Piccadilly Circus was so cool (maybe because I've never been to times square) but there was so much activity like there was a dance battle going on, it's like in Piccadilly, even though it's like strictly tourists, you can tell that you are in this huge city while other parts can feel like a medieval town, which I think is one of the best parts about living in London. 

Piccadilly at night

We ate dinner at this chain restaurant called Pizza Express, which was pretty good but relatively disappointing after the phenomenon that is the Big Red Bus, and after that we went to a comedy club which was pretty good too but I was tired and some of the jokes (being geared toward the British, duh) went over my head so I wasn't as into that. Then we went home where I fell right asleep because I was so exhausted after climbing that mountain today. Technically, classes start tomorrow but I'm trying to switch my Monday class so hope that class doesn't start until Tuesday for me. Have a great week!

          

Packing 101

Personally, I found that two things freaked me out the most about studying abroad. One was customs (what happens if they don't let me into the country?!????), the second was packing.

Luckily now we have this magical thing called Pinterest where I was able to search my heart away for "London study abroad spring packing" and I found a lot of packing lists for spending 30 days in Europe which was kind of helpful but I couldn't find anything for spending 5 months. Because of this I had to take the 30 day lists and times by 5 which was overwhelming (what part of a study abroad process isn't apparently?)

Clothes I packed:

• 2 skirts
• 4 shorts (this might be a lot especially if you are planning on staying in London but I have plans to travel to warmer countries so I thought I might need this many)
• 5 pants (2 pairs of jeans, 3 other kinds)
• 4 jackets (winter jacket, rain jacket, columbia and fall/spring jacket)
• 5 dresses (also might be a lot but I am in a class where we see a theatre show every week so I didn't know the proper attire for that)
• 5 cardigans (I like cardigans idk about you)
• 3 flannels (I also like flannels sue me)
• 31 tops (this includes nice shirts, sweaters, and t-shirts) (maybe went overboard in that department)
• 2 pairs of sweatpants 
• 2 pairs of leggings
• 7 pairs of shoes (I chose to bring rain boots even though apparently you are shunned if you wear them here, whatever)
• Various accessories (2 scarves, a couple necklaces, different earrings, hats, etc.)

Things I wish I would have brought:

1. Silverware!!!!

Ugh, a knife, a fork, and a spoon. So simple and easy to pack. If you have a flat style dorm with your own kitchen this is something you'll need and silverware is really annoying to have to buy because no one except me wants just 1 knife, 1 fork and 1 spoon so I had to go buy a set of 4 which sucked. Although now that I think about it I could have stole some from the dining hall (not suggesting you do that but it's another option)

2. A notebook

It's just kind of annoying to buy here because you have orientation which takes up a lot of time so spending extra time looking for a notebook that you could have pretty easily brought from home is something to think about.

3. Foreign currency

I brought this but I think it's something that's easily forgotten. Don't forget to get some of the country you're going to's currency because it's easy and that way you don't have to worry about credit cards right away.

Well, that's all I have for packing advice (I've only been here for a couple days so I'm sure I'll figure out more that I forgot to pack) but keep coming back, I'm currently in the middle of writing about my first week here! Aren't you proud of me for keeping this up?

          

Predeparture

So I had this idea about a whole pre departure post that listed what I was packing and tips for students before they leave and I was so excited to start this blog and then I got so busy packing and looking up tips for students that I forgot to make the post until now.

Just pretend I'm still home in MN typing away in the snow.

3 tips for getting ready for the journey of a lifetime:

1. [Make a list of what you want in a school abroad and prioritize it]

When I was looking for schools to apply to it was very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of decisions to make. Where do you want to be? What type of school do you want to go to? Do you want to apply through a program, or just to a school? Can you afford to go? Will studying abroad fit into your curriculum? etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. I found that it was easier for me to write down what I FOR SURE wanted from my study abroad experience and then I find something that matched. For example I knew that I wanted to be in a big city (I had been leaning toward London because I had wanted to go for a long time), go a regular British university as opposed to an American university abroad, attend a good media/communications university, be able to afford going, etc.

2. [Do your research]

After I had narrowed my search I started researching each university until my fingers hurt from googling "is (insert school name here) a good school?" I think that picking a study abroad university is way harder than picking your full time university because you don't know the reputation of your school, you don't get to tour it, or really talk to anyone who attends it. You're going in relatively blind here so I recommend looking for study abroad blogs of other study abroad students attending your university or looking at reviews online so you kind of know the environment there. 

3. [Keep in constant contact with your study abroad office] 

This is something that I can attest to being ABSOLUTELY VITAL I had a bit of a miscommunication with my study abroad office where I thought I had applied for a program affiliated with my university (so that I could keep half of my original scholarships) and it turns out I hadn't so in September/October I was frantically running around, calling and emailing people hoping I could switch into a a different Drake Affiliated program and still go to the same university abroad. It was a mess and added a lot of stress to my life, I would not recommend that. So even if you think that you're on the same page with the people in your study abroad office make sure you continue to clarify what you should be doing at every step of the process to avoid the migraines and potential hair loss I endured.  

Thanks for reading! Stick around and I'll give you some packing tips so that you don't have to read millions of Pinterest articles like I did (although if you're anything like me you will anyway, I'm not judging you at all... Pinterest=bible in cute lists and houses I can't afford)