Catch Up Everyone!

Hey all!

I would have posted way sooner, however BU has decided they wanted to be cheap when it comes to internet, so I have very very limited access. But let's try to catch you up on what I've been up to...

Last Saturday me and the girls walked to Buckingham palace, it was a beautiful day, bright and sunny (extremely rare!). We're really close to the palace, and we passed Harrods on the way, which is really huge and I plan to go back to. The palace was beautiful, although not nearly as big as I thought it would be. We just missed the changing of the gaurds, but we're going to go back one day for that too. I took lots of pictures! After that, we took the tube to the British Museum. Soooo many famous things are there, including most of the Parthenon, and the Rosetta Stone! Exciting! (Nerd Alert::Nerd Alert)

Sunday we went on a bus tour of London, and we saw Westminster and London Bridge and lots of other touristy sights.
The tour ended at the Tower of London. Inside houses the Queen's jewels, which are basically all of the crowns worn by past and present monarchs, the sceptors, the all other famous jewelry. The sceptor contains the world's seconds largest uncut diamond, and let me assure you, it was HUGE. About the size of a plum. It was really amazing to see. The Tower itself was just OK, I was expecting more gore and horror stories, but really all it was was a tribute to English armor and weaponry. We went into the dungeons, and on the walls there was scratchings and messages carved into the walls by the many prisoners that were kept there. Creepy, but also really fascinating. I love learning about all the English royal history. I found out that I'm actually already pretty knowledgeable about the order of the kings and queens and all the fun trivia. As per usual, the bulk of my knowledge comes from one of my favorite TV shows, the Tudors, and the many many MANY period movies I watch. And who said TV is bad for you...?
After that, classes started again on Monday, and they were filled with field trips. We had to read Oliver Twist for my pop culture class, so they decided it would be a good idea to take us on a tour of 'Dickensian' London. Well that was a waste of FOUR HOURS.
We walked all around London in the cold just to listen to our guide, Mr. WORST TEETH EVER OMG GET SOME BRACES AND CREST ALREADY, tell us about how it was rumored that Charles Dickens once sat on this bench, but no ones really sure. But whatever, it was still interesting to see the different parts of London. We went to Fleet Street (no Demon Barber spottings...). Also, I've realized that they absolutely HATE the Davinci Code here. Everytime we pass a place that the movie was filmed at, the guide mutters something to himself that sounds suspiciously like "bloody Dan Brown and his bloody books...". (INSERT CUTE STORY) --> That reminds me of a cute thing that happened at the Tower of London! One of the 4 towers there is called the "bloody tower," and as 'bloody' is a pretty substantial swear in England, this little boy was sooooo excited about the tower's title. He must have been about 8, and he just kept looking up at the sign, tugging on his mother's sleeve, and shouting "But mummy! It's called the bloody tower! The bloody tower! But you said I couldn't say the word bl-", at which point his 'mum' kept covering his mouth. It was one of the cutest things ever. I WILL have British children...

Anyways, then Tuesday was of course the big inauguration. For some reason, the British LOVE Obama. Whenever we actually get a chance to talk to some British people, the first thing they'll say, without a doubt, is something along the lines of "So, Obama eh? What do you think of 'im?" Well, I wish I was more involved politics (but not really) so that I actually had something interesting to say in return. On Tuesday, they let us out of class a half hour early so we could go downstairs and watch it live. It happened around 5pm our time, and the American students filled up about 3 huge rooms, there must have been about 150 people crammed around the television watching. Some people laughed, some people even cried. I'll never understand that, but whatever. The highlight of the night for me was, of course, free food! They brought in about 30 boxes of pizza. WORST PIZZA EVER, but I ate it anyway. The bottom was literally crusted with salt, but it was free, so hey!

Hmm, what else...Thursday we went to the Natural History Museum for another field trip. We went to see the Charles Darwin special exhibit in honor of his 200th birthday. I never realized how much the British worship this man. I worship him too, but I thought I was just weird... He's actually on the back of their money. Yup, Charles Darwin has top billing (literally! tee hee) with the Queen of England on the British money notes. Imagine how much of a scandal it would be to have Darwin on the back of money in America? People would torch the capital! I like how England is so low key in their religious zealousness (is that a word?). That night we went to Zoo Bar, which was an ultra trendy night club in Picadilly Circus. It was really cool, and the doorman let us in for free because we were Americans. SCORE! British guys are way more, let's say, 'free' in their dancing that American guys are. They are not afraid to get up and dance with each other, which American guys would never do. It's pretty awesome, I'm in love. (But we already knew that).

INSERT APOLOGY --> Sorry this entry is sooo long, but you missed a lot!

Friday we ventured to Trafalgar square, which is absolutely beautiful. Took lots of pictures there. Then we ate some traditional English Fish & Chips! I don't normally eat too much fish, but this was pretty spectacular. They serve it with mushy peas, which were not the greatest, but I'll live, because this fish was HUGE (it hung off the plate), and we only paid 5 pounds for it! After that we went to Imperial College, which is the English college right on our street, because they were having a 90s dance party. It sounded fun in theory, but we didn't recognize much of the music. But we made a night out of it anyway. Me and my friend jumped up as soon as "Gettin Jiggy Wit It" came on, and danced like crazy. It was really fun.

Yesterday we went to Portobello Road, which has a huge outdoor market where you can find anything you'd ever need in life. I didn't do any shopping, but I'd like to go back one day and shop for real.

OMG I forgot the best part of yesterday! Before we made it to Notting Hill, where Portobello Road is, we took a trip to King's Cross Station! (Any nerds out there realize where I'm going with this yet? If you do, I love you). Of course, this is where the famous Platform 9 3/4 is! (That's Platform Nine and Three Quarters for those out there that do not read Harry Potter). It was the highlight of my trip so far, even though it was only a sign on a wall.
They have a cart set up that is cut in half so that it looks like it's going through the wall! Of course, nerdy pictures were taken... (if only I'd brought my Gryffindor Scarf and Potter glasses...)



Well I think that pretty much catches you up to speed in my life! I'm sure you all wanted to know every last detail that I provided...I'll try to post more often, so the posts are not quite this long. But now I'm off to go to some homework and make some dinner.

Here are some other pictures that didn't really fit in the post, enjoy!






















Cheers!

Hello again!

So this week has been going by pretty fast. It's all been pretty overwhelming, it's a culture onslaught... I keep bumping into people on the sidewalk, because apparently like they drive, they also walk on the left side of the street, which I keep forgetting. You can totally tell who are Americans this way. I went to the BU welcoming party last night which was held at a club downtown. Similar to all of my other experiences so far, as soon as the horde of BU kids came into the club, the British people left. It's quite sad really, but I'm sure I'll be able to track some down eventually. We walked around a little after that, then took the tube home and decided we wanted Burger King. As the bunch of us (about 6 giggling girls) made our way up to the door, a group of British people walked by and sighed to the person next to him, "ah, good 'ole Americans..." That was embarrassing, but oh well!

I've had all of my classes so far this week. I only have two. One is a clinical psychology course to prepare me for my internship at the hospital. The professor is a sweet old man who crosses his legs like a girl when he sits, but I love him anyway. The classes are four hours long (shoot me, please), but they tend to break them up with lunch breaks and field trips. Yes, I said it, FIELD TRIPS. I feel like I'm in high school all over again, and I'm loving it... The first day of that psych class we went on a field trip to the science museum, which was pretty awesome. I'm finding it really interesting to see common history from a British perspective. They think Americans are a bunch of overweight, loud, hero-worshipping cowboys, but I'm determined to represent the country a bit better than that...

I had my other class today, which was the history of British popular culture. Basically we sat around and talked about the Beatles, the Spice Girls, and Harry Potter for four hours. As the British would say, it was quite lovely! I think I'm going to go on a tour of Kensington Palace tomorrow, which should be fun. That's where Princess Diana used to live, and it's supposed to be beautiful. Until next time,

Cheers!

So I've only been here for 3 days but it already feels like I've been here for weeks. The area we live in is amazing, it's so classy, although everything tends to be expensive. I've officially started pub-crawling! We've been to 3 so far, and they've all been so cute. People in the pubs immediately recognize us as obnoxious Americans though as soon as we walk in, which sucks cause we havent really gotten to meet any British people yet!
We had massive amounts of lectures today, which the majority of students slept through, including me. It was like the history of Great Britain, which I hate to say is not the most interesting material, especially coming from an 80 year old man who has been lecturing for 2 hours about it. Moral of the story, I took a 2 hour nap during that, which was pretty nice. Then for lunch we ate at a french bakery, and they had Croque Monsieurs! I couldn't believe it. Mrs. Sunny (french teacher in High School) would always rant and rave about them, to the point where there were questions on our exam about them, and I finally got to see them! All it is is basically a grilled cheese with like ham and egg, but it was still funny to actually see.
We walked by Hyde park, which is 2 seconds from out dorm, and it is the most beautiful place. America is so lacking in historial monuments/places, so coming here, history is everywhere. And everything is so fancy, I'm talking gold plated buildings, greek statues, it's crazy! And people just walk by them like they're commonplace, while I'm just gawking at them with my mouth open, trying to not get hit by a car long enough to wip out my camera and get a picture. (Can anyone say TOURIST?)
Yesterday we went on a cruise on the Thames, and we say a lot of the famous sites in London, like Big Ben, Parliament, London and Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, and a lot of the famour architecture. After we got off the cruise, we took an tour of Westminster Abbey, which was one of the most beautiful places I think I've ever been. So many famous people are buried there, from Henry VIII to Jane Austen. I love history...
Then we went shopping at the local supermarket, which was crazy confusing. First, they don't refrigerate their eggs here, which made me a bit skeptical. They have like EVERY SINGLE cheese known to man kind, and I really want to attempt to try them all! They have absolutely no form of macaroni and cheese, which is a major dissapointment, so I got lots of pasta and tomato sauce. The peanut butter is way different, and not in a good way. They also have insane amounts of sausage, and some of them I really didn't want to know what they were...nasty.
That's basically been my last 2 days, tommorrow consists of more lectures (yawn) and I think one of the dance clubs in Picadilly circus.

Also, I'm attempting to upload pictures/video, hopefully it works...

Cheers!

Traveling and Arriving

I'm here! Yay!

After 16 hours of traveling, I finally made to my dorm. I massively lucked out with the weather, by the time my flight took off there was only about 2 inches of snow on the ground, so no problems there. Except we had to wait on the plane for a full hour while they defrosted the wings with hot water. But the plane was HUGE. 10 people across, I got a window seat (score!). They served us a full course meal, including beef stew, mashed potatoes, salad, chocolate cake, and tons of little snacks. Every so often the flight attendant would come around and in her sweet little british accent ask if anyone would "like a spot of tea?" Adorable... I slept through most of the flight, and watched half of Tropic Thunder and half of the Duchess (they had an awesome movie selection).

When we finally landed at Heathrow at 4am (9 am in England), we got the bags no problem then searched for the shuttle service. After a half hour of walking around, and making the British people hate us, we finally found it, and made our way to the dorm. Apparently Kensingtont is the second most 'posh' neighborhood to live in in London, and it definitely reflects in the scenery. Every flat looks like a mini mansion! I am living on the 1st floor, which is not actually the first floor because in Europe they have the ground floor, then the 1st floor, so I'm really one flight up. This dorm is the only dorm that has elevators, but it's not like I'm going to need them.

My room is awesome. It's called the "Darwin flat", how cute is that? It's a triple but it's really roomy. The windows face the back of the street, so not the greatest view, but it's still really nice. We have our own bathroom, complete with a HEATED towel rack!! Amazing! Today I'll probably go on the local area tour at 2, then hopefully take a much needed nap, then who knows what. Fun things are happening tomorrow, more to come...