Arrived

Hello to everyone from London!!!!!! I landed Friday afternoon and have already been to quite a few places. Here is a quick summary:

Friday night dinner with home-stay couple. They are in their very late seventies but they host students from the states every year and are very pleasant. Then I was invited out to a pub. This was both a good idea and a bad idea. Good because I got to go to a pub and see the British in their natural habitat and listen to sweet accents; bad because I had been up since Thursday morning in Cali, I had been on a plane for ten and a half hours, I was cold and hungry, and everyone that I talked to wanted to hear my California accent so I spent quite a bit of the night talking. But I was glad I went.

Saturday was orientation here at school. The school is called University of London Union and a picture of the school is below. Orientation's are always boring. But for some entertainment, a couple of bobby's (that's what policemen are called here) came and talked to us and they were colourful enough to keep everybody awake. Then it was workshops (yes, plural) on how to be safe while in a foreign country. COMMON SENSE!!!!! Then a couple of us wandered around Leicester Square which is a pretty cool tourist spot. Tons going on, or at least on a Saturday night. The sun was out the entire day and was almost warm.

Sunday was the sightseeing tour on a coach in the morning and boat cruise along the River Thames (pronounced Tims) in the afternoon. We hit all the tourist spots like Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. The pictures below are just some of the spots but are the really, really cool spots. I was still extremely tired and my eyes were bloodshot the entire weekend so I went home right after the cruise and had a very early night. Did not see the sun once and the cruise was pretty cold with the sea spray and lack of sunshine.

Monday morning, this morning, I went grocery shopping. It was actually a ton of fun and as far as cost goes, it was quite affordable. And some things are the same in every country: go shopping early in the morning. Way less crowded. Sun was present this morning but so were the gray storm clouds. I am now at the student center waiting for class to start in about forty-five minutes so we will see about how those will go. Two today, two tomorrow.

Big Ben from the River

One of the famous guards outside Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Westminster Abbey

Royal Albert Hall

University of London Union, where all my classes will be held.