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!