I can't believe that it has already been a month and a half into my study abroad experience! It feels like it has been much longer but at the same time seems to have gone by quickly. The things that I have noticed recently are things that have been striking me odd since I first got here and now that I have lived here for a while I feel that I can comment on some of them.
First, the fire hydrants are underground! to me that doesn't make much sense seeing as how the fires are above ground but it wouldn't matter anyway because people don't generally get out of the way for the emergency services when they come flying down the street. There are so many cars in the road that it generally is nearly impossible to make a hole for the ambulances and such to come through. Also, apparently even though they have national healthcare, getting in to see a doctor is completely ridiculous. It might take days for you to see one even if you are sick today, unless you go to and A&E which i gather is the same as an ER at home.
Second, everyone is in such a rush all the time, I may have mentioned this before but now i am starting to notice that i have somewhat adapted to their pace, which was more like my own speed walking pace anyway but somehow all together more rushed. And the Tube!!! I am starting to understand why people complain about the tube. In the beginning of my journey the tube was an amazing creation that i wished we had at home (well where i live anyway) and now while i still love it and love not driving, I have on more than one occasion been completely squished and desperately wanted to get off, also if you attempt to make it to Algate or Liverpool Street around 9:00 in the morning, don't plan on getting there fast. I realize that you don't know where those stations are but I will help with that. Anyway, that is where a number of people work and that is about the time everyone tries to get there. It is also the time that i have to go to school 2 of the 3 days a week. I can't complain about having school only 3 days a week though. Especially since i generally only have one class a day.
Here is a tube map in case anyone gets ambitious and wants to find out where i am.
Let me tell you about my campus, if you could call it that. It is a mixture of buildings that are scattered from Algate East to Algate and are not easy to find, there are in some interesting looking areas and are interesting looking buildings themselves...not some place that i would think is a university. Each campus (north and city) has a bar as the student center and people start drinking far earlier than 5pm...so Jimmy Buffett, feel free to drink whenever you want!!! One thing I will say that I love about the university is the library! I know, me loving a library! but the library is fully stocked with the textbooks and supplementary materials for each module (class). There is one textbook that I will eventually buy but that is only because i want to, and even then it is soooooo much less expensive than it is in the states.
All of their sandwiches come with mayo on them and i discovered that I like cheesecake! There is also something else that i have been eating but...oh, tortellini and wine, and chocolate, oh my gosh the chocolate here is amazing and I love it so much, I don't think that i have ever eaten this much chocolate in my life!
Now on to the stuff you all really care about! My adventures! I will start from 19th of February and bring you up to speed! Wow it really has been a long time since I have blogged! SORRY guys!!! I will try to be better about keeping up with it J
Saturday 19th February was the day that we went to Windsor Castle. It was pretty awesome because somewhere in there the Queen herself was in residence. I tried my hardest to look through the windows when our guide pointed out where her apartments were but I was unable to see her. It was amazing to be walking around in a real life, working castle. I told my friends that I wish I was important enough to see the rest of the castle not just the tourist parts! I can only imagine what it looks like knowing what the part we were in looks like. It was much larger than I imagined and you just felt royal being in there. My pictures have been up for a while so I think some of you will understand my feeling, I didn’t want to leave it was so beautiful!
Sometime in the month of February I purchased my train tickets for Paris which I will be leaving for on the 25th of March and coming back to London on the 27th. The 20th of February I went to Hillsong Church London for the first time and was completely blown away! It was like being at church at home except on a much bigger level! The people there were so nice and made me feel like I belonged from the moment I walked in which was a comfort because I had no idea what I was doing. It is in the Dominion Theatre where during the week they show a musical, We Will Rock You. The music is fantastic, the atmosphere is great and the messages are really uplifting and just what I needed! I haven’t been in the past two weeks because of Scotland and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade but I will return this week and see what is in store next!
The theater where Church is...craziness right?
On the 23rd, I went to this place called the London Trocadero which is this crazy arcade, cinema, laser tag, bowling food/bar place! It is quite fun to be in there and to do some of the things there as well, while I have not fully indulged in all the Trocadero has to offer, I will be back to investigate further!
On the 26th, we had a group GSE trip to Oxford! I was so nice to get out of London for a little while and see what life is like in a ‘university town’. Apparently there is a difference between living there and visiting because if you are visiting then you are at Oxford but if you are living there you are in Oxford. The more I think about it however, the more I feel I may have gotten those two mixed up. The most wonderful thing of the day, besides the amazing architecture, was all the Harry Potter sites!!! We went into the Great Hall, stood on the stairs in which the first years did while waiting to enter the Great Hall to be sorted into their houses, and Sarah and I were in awe the entire time and couldn’t stop giggling! What was better was as soon as we entered the room with the stairs someone started whistling the Harry Potter theme song and it was like we were in the movie! My pictures from this trip have also been up so feel free to relive the moments as I am in my head right now! Got to wander around the grounds of some of the colleges that make up the University of Oxford, because much to my surprise the University of Oxford is an umbrella term for something like 23 different smaller colleges in the town that all receive degrees from Oxford upon graduation. I am sure there are other things that I am missing from this trip but I don’t remember right now…
Then came March! Oh how time flies! The first weekend in March, GSE headed off to Edinburgh, Scotland! This trip was so incredible!!!! To be out of the city and see countryside and get some fresh air, we were still in a city but it is far less crowded and city like than London. We got there by train Friday night and checked into the Best Western Edinburgh City, before going to get Italian for dinner. After dinner we went to a pub called Seven Sisters and had a drink and enjoyed being in Scotland! There were so many Hen and Bachelor parties there that we didn’t stay too long and left by 11:30pm. Hen parties are the same as Bachelorette parties except everyone is dressed way cooler! We returned to the hotel for the night and slept in our amazing beds and watched some crazy TV before finally turning in for the night. Saturday we went on a bus tour of Edinburgh and saw most of what the town had to offer and then went in to Edinburgh Castle and wandered around taking crazy pictures and soaking in the view! When we decided we were done in the castle we went and saw a street performer that swallowed a sword and had a guy stand on top of a bed of nails on top of him while swallowing fire (I hope that made sense!). When he was finished we met up with Sarah’s friend Sarah who is studying in Edinburgh for the year…we ate lunch and walked around and went to a few souvenir shops too. I got an awesome sweatshirt to add to my collection! We also went to the café were J.K. Rowling wrote the first couple chapters of some of the early books! We went back to the hotel to relax for a little while before heading out to dinner at an Indian or Thai restaurant. I was surprised at how much I liked the food! It was good and we had fun trying to explain to our program director Mike what Twilight was all about. It broke down something like this…there are veggie vampires and non-veggie vampires, somehow a human gets pregnant and there is some fighting, the sparkle and live happily ever after. We were the loudest in the restaurant and it was hilarious!! After dinner we went to the University of Edinburgh student union pub and had some drinks to celebrate the birthdays of two of our group members who happen to be best friends! On the way home we walked through a graveyard and it was not spooky even though some of the group thought it was lol. Sunday we when down for breakfast and then packed and got back on the train to head back to London; it was kind of sad to leave Scotland because there was so much that we had left undone but what was weirder was feeling like we were going home, and thinking London was home.
Monday the 7th, I went with my class to the German Embassy and learned about what they do in terms of Public and Cultural Diplomacy and that is pretty much all I will say about that other than my directional skills rock and I got us back to the Tube from the Embassy when we were done!
Wednesday the 9th we (GSE) went to the theatre! We saw Blood Brothers the musical and it was good! It was a British comedy and was funny until about ¾ of the way through when it started to get repetitive and I didn’t like it when they grew up. The mom was singing about Marilyn Monroe in her songs and now it seems like everywhere we go, Marilyn Monroe is somewhere to be found. We got to get all dressed up and had the first row of seats in the balcony so we didn’t have to look over anyone’s head!
Saturday the 12th, we took a bus tour to Stonehenge and Bath. It was absolutely brilliant to be outside in the countryside and see blue sky, fresh air and grass! Sarah and I were taking random nature pictures all day! This day was the day that I was the sickest since being here and while I was blowing my nose all day, the fresh air was amazing! Anyway back to the stones. Surprisingly they were smaller than I imagined but magnificent none the less. No one really knows how they got there, whether it was aliens or some ancient civilization or something, either way they had to be strong and have some pretty good way of rigging those stones on top of each other. We spent around 45 minutes in Stonehenge and then traveled on to Bath. Along the way we were travelling through some land owned by the British Military and saw some tank crossings and a ‘secret’ training village that had been bought out and the people were asked to leave to that when training the soldiers can have a more real life experience. I was hoping to see a tank or hear some shooting but I had no such luck L. Arriving in the city of Bath I felt very much what I imagined Italy to be which was weird because we were still in England. The buildings were gorgeous and everything was just so beautiful! My pictures are up as well so you can see what I mean. We went on a tour of the Roman Baths which was cool, not really sure what it actually was other than some kind of bath thing, but it said that you weren’t supposed to touch the water because it was untreated but of course I had to and I stuck the tip of one of my fingers in! I still have it and nothing bad happened so I’m glad that I did! We wandered through there for a while before leaving and embarking on a trip around the city before we had to meet up with our tour again. Sarah and I went to the circus, which is just a fancy way of saying a grass patch with trees that people can sit in, but it was great! I sat on a tree and took some bark that had fallen and soaked in the freshness. I didn’t fully understand how nasty London was until I got here (to Bath and Stonehenge). Don’t get me wrong I still love London but am glad that when I go home in June I do not live in a city. After spending a little time here we went to the Jane Austen Center and had tea in the tea room upstairs! It was splendid! I had the Dashwood Tea with the Jane Austen blend which meant that I got lovely toasted tea cakes with butter and strawberry jam and the Jane Austen blend of tea which was delicious! After this we walked back to the meeting point and waited for our bus and started the two hours journey back to London.
Sunday the 13th was the St. Patrick’s Day Parade! It was so awesome! We, Nikki, Kait and I, made our way to Trafalgar Square and into the crowd that was forming for the parade and festivities! They had a music stage set up and knick-knack stands set up where we got scarfs. They also had bar tents lining both sides and Nikki and I got Guinness’ and were happy. The parade came through and we started snapping pictures all over the place! I think I might have taken a few too many because after when I looked at them I realized that it was basically a panoramic of the entire parade. After coming back to Nido, Nikki and I watched P.S. I Love You because that is the only semi-Irish movie that we have!
That pretty much brings you all the way to today and up to speed on everything that has been happening lately. There are things here and there that I have left out but I figured this was long enough so I will leave it for another blog. I promise to write sooner next time and will probably write when I get back from Paris! Unless something exciting happens between now and then J. So for now I will say goodbye and that I miss you all! –Meghan
P.S. – If there is anything else you wanna know about send me a message or an email! Cheers!
