A Weekend in London Town

The past week and a half have been pretty non-stop for me, but I think it is high time that I take a few moments out of my suddenly busy life to update you all! This post will focus on my time in London for my study abroad provider’s Orientation, and the next will fill you in on what my life is like in Oxford!

First of all, my mom wouldn't let me leave home without taking a million pictures to document every moment, so here I am with all my luggage, ready to go! Right about now I was thinking: wait, this weighs as much as me, how am I supposed to carry all this? Anyway, I flew out of Newark, New Jersey last Wednesday night, and I was nervous because I don’t fly much, but I flew with the group flight provided by my study abroad provider so it was really easy! I actually ran into the other student from Stonehill, Alana Landano, going to Worcester with me at the airport, and then also met about 28 other American students going to a couple different colleges at Oxford. So I really wasn’t alone at all! We sat in a big group and chatted, until it was time to board. I somehow ended up with a seat on the plane next to Alana, so it was nice for us to be together (and now she is living on the floor above me, so it is still nice to have someone familiar from home to freak out and complain and stress with!) Anyway, I was in the very middle of the place at the way back, in between Alana and my first British friend, Steve, an older man coming back from visiting family who moved to the US. He was friendly, chatty, and helpful! It was nice. Landing in London, arriving at the hotel and just being there for the first day was so crazy; it was still so surreal to me! It wasn’t until I took a moment to really take in my surroundings that I noticed that cars were being driven on the wrong side of the road! And as silly as this sounds, it was the one thing that made me realize I wasn’t in American anymore! Even now, after being here for a little over a week, it’s the little things that are different that are actually tough to get used to.

For our London Orientation we all stayed in the same hotel and actually had a lot of free time to go exploring! There was one day when we heard from all sorts of people about academics, safety, the political scene in Britain, etc. One night we also got to go to the theater as a group, I can now say I have been to the theater in London! All of that information was really helpful, but I was itching to see some iconic London tourist-y things! My new friends and I were able to set out on our own for the majority of Saturday and Sunday and we went everywhere! We saw: Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, walked along the Thames, enjoyed the Tate Modern for a couple hours, the Globe Theater, the London Bridge, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and of course the coolest and most expensive department store ever: Harrod’s. The pictures throughout this blog post show all these tourist moments. I also already started on my adventure of trying new things and tried Japanese food and Indian food in one day!

Being in London was really exciting at times, but at others I was feeling pretty homesick. This is especially because with the exception of Alana I was surrounded by completely new people, and in a completely new place. I was also living out of two suitcases in a VERY small hotel room with an even smaller shower. I was getting very, very anxious to get settled in up at Oxford, and I was hoping the accommodations would be nicer and that the water would taste better!

Another difficult part of the London Orientation for me was that I was constantly questioning myself and my intelligence because the group of American students on the program with me are all so intelligent and I feel like they all have had more experience traveling, or living!, in Europe and/or the UK before. This is my first time overseas…EVER! I kept reminding myself though that these are the type of people that I would like to surround myself with, and I learned a lot from being around them for even just a couple days. What is also really cool is that the group of American students was so diverse. There are students who were born in Finland, China, Korea, Georgia the country, and Georgia the state, and they live everywhere from California to Texas to Arkansas and go to colleges such as Vassar, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Wake Forest, Duke, Brandeis, Harvard, and Carleton. The picture below is of Alana and I and the girls I spent the most time with in London: Maria, Rebecca, and Tiina; with one of the street performers along the Thames.

In the end, I was really glad to have a couple days to overcome jet lag, settle into life in the UK, and just see a lot of the city of London before going up to Oxford. I am planning on going back to London for at least one more weekend organized by my study abroad provider for some more city fun! But at the end of the weekend, I was just really anxious to settle into my room at Oxford and FINALLY get the semester started!

Cheers!

P.S. I have learned that “cheers” can mean hello, goodbye, thank you, or be what you say before a toast, as we would use the term. But there may be more uses out there…