Well here I am, in Grandma's homeland, in a dormitory, in the most posh neighborhood, in London. I arrived Wednesday morning, early and jet lagged, of course. Since then I have had two days of orientation, one IES-sponsored bus tour, stressful friend searching, some beer, and a night of swing dancing. Wednesday I got my unlimited week transportation card (an Oyster card) for way too much money, 33 pounds. I got a new SIM card for my phone. I got an adapter for my electronics. Bought some groceries. My roommate was delayed in Dublin so I didn't meet her until Thursday evening, after too many orientation sessions at the IES center in London. She is an actress who studied abroad last semester in Dublin. Friday we had another orientation session in the morning and then the afternoon to run more errands. I blew out my computer charger so I was without one for a while. Friday evening the program took us ice skating at the Natural History Museum not to far from our dorm. That was kinda cool but it had been raining all of that day so there were way too many puddles for an ICE skating rink. I called upon my skills from elementary days past to make it around the rink. Saturday we went on a bus tour around the city and saw the main sights like Parliament/Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, some other great church of somthing someone's marriage, and the Roman traditional entrance to London including some random old bricks/ruins, and the Tower of London. Of course we didn't actually go in anywhere, we just saw it from the outside. Slightly anti-climactic.
I've set up my class schedule and I'm taking six classes and one as Pass/Fail to ensure early graduation. I am taking a community learning approach class on the British social welfare policy, a class on the past 300 years of women's history (this will be my p/f class), an introductory class on theater in london that requires us to go see plays every week, a class on the modern British novel, a class on women writers worldwide, and the creative writing workshop. It might be a lot of work but who knows. They are IES classes after all. If nothing else, it is a lot of time in class since each one meets once a week for 2.5 hours each. Thats fifteen hours in class every week and equals 4.5 UPS units (one semester at UPS is usually about 4 units).
Friday night I went out with my roommate, one of her friends from home who is studying at a different program in London, and three other girls from my program to Leicester Square and got some tapas and sangria. Leicester Square is definitely a happening place, full of casinos and clubs. After all the discounted international nights at clubs in Milan, I refuse to pay a cover fee. So after the Spanish tapas bar, one other girl and I went to a pub for a bit, then walked around Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, and almost back up to Picadilly Circus until we found the night bus that took us back to the dorm. Saturday night I was determined to go to this swing dancing event I found online. I found one person to go with me and we went. It was at a pub called "The William Blake" and it was mostly a beginners' night so it was a bit small and I'm not much of a swing dancer but I still had fun. They played a few bluesier songs that I found some beginner blues leads to blues to with. We met some people though to give us recommendations of different music venues, British bands to check out, and favorite pubs. One of them was married to a teacher so I did a little "I'm a tutor of everything!" self-promoting. I think I'm going to go to a blues lesson and small social dance on Tuesday so I'm excited to tap into the swing and blues community here.
Today I didn't do much. I slept later than I meant to and ventured out on an epic and long journey on the tube to find the street everyone told me had all the computer stores so I could buy a new computer charger. So I did and its about 9:35 pm here and I think its time to make some dinner. Classes start tomorrow and its my brothers birthday and this is the first time...ever??? that I haven't been in town for it. Happy 17th little bro.
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