The First Week

The first week has consisted of just trying to settle in and get used to the time change.

Getting in was easy enough, all my flights left on time and I arrived in London early. Immigration was easy, they didn’t ask for any proof of documents. I was able to catch the shuttle train into Victoria station easy enough. The problem came when I got into a taxi and didn’t know the exact address of where I needed to go. I ended up at the right place after some wandering and waiting.

I am living in what we call the Sorbonne house. It is directly across from the Natural History Museum, about a 10 minute walk from Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, and about 15 minutes from Kensington Palace. The Kensington area is kind of its own little world. I haven’t had a chance to really get out.

On our first day we went on a boat tour along the Thames River and that was the most I’ve seen of the city other than Kensington.

The first 3 days we had introductory lectures about British history and culture. Thursday and Friday we had the first two classes. They are four hours long, but thankfully we have breaks, or I would lose it. My first class is British Politics and we learn the basic facts about the British political systems, etc. My second class is on London Popular Culture over the past 200 years. On Tuesday we are going on a tour of Dickens’ London and we have to have Oliver Twist finished. I have loads of reading and no desire to really do it. I’d rather walk around London. I feel like I’m going to be the only person in this place that will end up doing all the reading. Anywho, I have yet to hear about my placement for my internship. I had a meeting and the woman I talked to said she was trying to get me something in an NGO that deals with refugees. I’d really just like to know.

I really haven’t been doing much besides eating (attempting to cook), sleeping and trying to meet people. To a certain extent its like freshman year all over again, trying to meet new people, yet they already have friends here. I sort of joined the Backgammon club at Imperial College (UK’s version of MIT) and I am attempting to join the swimming club, but we’ll see. It feels like I have been here a lot longer than a week, but I’m behind on the things I want to do and pretty behind when it comes to homework.

Anyways, there’s a quick update, I hope all is well!