All the Activities Involved Required Lots of Jaywalking

Since we last spoke...my roommate moved in! Her name is Rebecca she is an affiliate student studying here for the fall term from Hong Kong. I was also able to sign up for classes and take courses that fit into all the categories that I needed. I am taking Regarding Pain (Medieval), Inventing the Americas (Modern), Rome: The Making of Early Modern Visual Urban Culture (Renaissance/Baroque), Representing Others in British Art (Elective) and I am going to be taking some free Mandarin classes. 

Leaving the Neighborhood

Rebecca and I headed out to Chinatown early last week. We took the bus (because we didn’t realize how close it actually was). They have lovely giant red lanterns that hang throughout the main boulevard. After we had a cheap buffet lunch and went through the Chinese grocery we headed back home. On the way back we sat the top front of the bus which was rather thrilling because everyone drives like a maniac especially taxi drivers! The day before Rebecca arrived I was able to meet most of my other flat mates. There is a group of affiliate students studying here from Tufts University and all of the rest are full times students studying here at UCL from Italy, Canada and the UK.

On the top deck

Chinatown

Everybody Jaywalks

Which is exactly what title implies, that and drivers are not at all shy about almost running you over even if you are being a good citizen and crossing on the light which I gave up doing after about a week. In the beginning, I was really worried about getting a ticket, but then I learned that the term jaywalking doesn’t really exist here and everyone basically crosses anywhere at any time.

Another Version of The Neighbourhood

Olivia Harloam recommended that I see a free show by the California band The Neighbourhood who was playing in London for one night. (Olivia, a guy in my flat had heard of them and said they were getting some radio play over here.) I ended up getting lost on my own street because I got really confused about which side of the street I needed to pick my bus up on. (I always found the stop on one side of the street, but there never seemed to be an equivalent stop on the other side of the street because there is a plethora of one way roads). Anyway after 40 minutes of wandering in a circle, I got my bus! It was a small crowd (maybe 60 people) and the band played a 30 minute set which was fine with me because I was planning on leaving so I could get back to my flat early.

The Neighbourhood lead singer

Going to the Fayre

On Wednesday I skyped with Lindsay, explored the UCL art museum and the main library collections. At some point in the week I went to the picnic lunch hosted by the CU. I stayed for over an hour and learned all about the differences between the US and UK military branches and school systems. (Public schools would be like private schools in the US, but public schools are different from UK private schools, which are not the same as state schools, which are further divided between grammar schools and something else). I went to a morning prayer with the CU one day and on Thursday Rebecca and I went to Freshers Fayre! (Involvement Fair). We had to queue for 40 minutes to get in to the first section of the fayre and in all it took us 3 hours to go along the whole path. We got free notebooks, jump drives and pens, and signed up for different “taster” events put on by each of the organizations. Every organization charges a membership fee, so the first fortnight of the school year every org puts on free events for you to see if you are interested in joining after the fortnight is over and paying the membership fee.

Night Out on the Town

On Thursday night I was able to have dinner with the USC professor here in the UK and with a bunch of the other USC ladies studying at Uni’s nearby. We went to Wagamamas and I had a celery, apple, mint and lime juice drink, two entrees which got shared around the table and coconut ice cream desert. We then ran to the theatre just in time to see Matilda and to get really excited about Sherlock related events going on around town while we are here. The stage and set were fantastic (basically lots of giant lettered blocks that spelled out words related to the play if you looked close enough). Afterwards, we walked around together as a group and made it all the way to Trafalgar’s Square.

The theatre.

The square, complete with Lions and a double decker bus.

Two entrees, miso soup and my drink (the green one).

Afternoon Walks

Almost every afternoon during the week Rebecca and I went out with our cameras and went walking in a different direction away from our campus. The first day we went East and found lots of little shops and gardens. The next day we went North to Camdem. We found a graveyard, an awesome building with two giant cats guarding the doors and cats lining the top part of the building, the 99 Pence Store! and a multitude of charity shops. Lastly, we explored south and went down Oxford Street (kind of like Rodeo Drive and Hollywood Blvd. combined). This involved lots of looking stores, but we got free Burt’s Bees, which was pretty random and we got to pass loads of fabric shops and bookstore after bookstore. The streets even further south were small cobblestone boulevards that looked lovely at dusk.

Just outside the entrance to the group of cobblestone streets and more buildings like this. 

The Big Adventure and All Things Touristy

Rebecca found out that Buckingham Palace was closing Oct. 7^th and all the online tickets were sold out, so we decided to go early Saturday morning and see if we could get tickets at the door. We left our apartment at 8:20AM and walked through Piccadilly Circus and part of St. James Park to the Palace. We were way too late for tickets, but we decided to keep exploring and exploring we did. We did not get back to our flat until 7:40 at night and we figure we stopped walking for an hour and a half total the entire day. This is the route we took: around Buckingham Palace, up the Mall back to Piccadilly Circus, back to the Mall, to the Horse Guards Parade. We watched the change guards and then continued walking through the Admiralty Archway, down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, down to Lambeth Bridge back up to Westminster Bride, saw the London Eye, went and looked more closely at Westminster Abbey, walked down Victoria St. to Westminster Cathedral, explored the Cathedral, stopped for the first time since we left for ice cream at a very posh McDonalds (they had live roses in vases at each table and lots of plants), continued walking up alongside the Buckingham Palace gardens to Hyde Park Corner then walked across Hyde Park and around it. At 5:40ish, we bought chairs for an hour at a pound fifty and sat down to watch the sunset. It got really cold so we kept moving our chairs into the ever fading patches of sun. On the way back we saw a place called Fortnum and Mason which has the official Jubilee Tea Salon and which has hosted the Queen and the Duchess of Cornwall. (All these pics are on my FB page).

Post Adventure

On Saturday evening, we thought we would get up at 5am on Sunday to queue early for tickets to Buckingham Palace, but either my alarm didn’t go off or it did go off and neither of us woke up, so we woke up too late to head over. This worked out because we ended up going to Chinatown for the Midautumn Festival and ate mooncakes. I did laundry by hand in our sink because it is ridiculously expensive here. In the evening I made guacamole for our flat dinner and then went to Church with the President of the CU. It is a very small congregation and the Rector and Curate were very nice as were the four other staffers that I met. The Church was celebrating the 10 anniversary of when the Rector was planted in this congregation and old congregation and the new congregation from the main larger local church merged. There were two “charismatic” worshippers which I had never seen/heard of before, so that was interesting. After the service, everyone went to the kitchen and had tea and biscuits and after that I went with 3 other members of the CU to dinner at the local restaurant.

Dragon in Chinatown.

ReCap: This Week

This week I started classes which look like they are going to be fantastic! I am really excited by my Representing Others class, the professor seems especially great. I also went and had dinner with the University Chaplain at the main Anglican Church for our parish area and I went to the CU general meeting which is similar to Thursday Challenge except it is a different guest speaker every time. I got to meet a couple more girls from the CU and we had tea and snacks back in the flat next to mine. Tuesday, I had lots of reading to do so I started working on that and in the afternoon two of the CU girls who I had tea with invited me rollerblading and we went all the way around the center and outside of Regents Park. At one point we finally hit a patch of smooth concrete so I starting “blading” (is that the proper verb?) faster, but didn’t realized that we were on a hill so I was flying down and I couldn’t stop myself. We were approaching a crossing and all I could picture was a crazy taxi careening through the intersection one way and me flying across the opposite way, so I ended grabbing a pole, my legs flew out from under me and I swung myself into a bush which was not as painful as it sounds, but I was successful at stopping myself and I will live to survive more instances where black cabs will try to run me over.

When out walking anywhere you inevitably run into things like this. 

Yesterday I continued reading, got some Swiss francs and had tea with the Chaplain which I think is going to be part of my weekly ritual. I then went to the Writers Society Meeting and went with a girl from my flat and her sister to the Book Club meeting. They went on a pub crawl and we all went to the first pub because its previous patrons included Virginia Woolf. It was very crowded so we left after a bit and went to Tesco Metro to buy all the ingredients to make a Nature’s Own Cocktail (heavy whipping cream, nutmeg, and ginger ale [courtesy of the Cat Who cookbook]). We then chatted in the flat, I watched Downton Abbey and then today I went to class and came back to write this.

This is going to be my last huge blog post hopefully. I am going to work at making them much less of a long catalog of what I have done and more entertaining like I said last time, but until next time thank you for reading this!

Finally, in the coming weeks/tomorrow, I am looking forward to visiting Michelle this weekend, listening to the full release of Skyfall by Adele and the UK release of Sweet Nothing by Calvin Harris feat. Florence and the Machine!, watching more Downton Abbey and standing outside of the Royal Albert Hall for the Skyfall world premiere!

 Ah!

Best,

Amy

5 Days of Adventure

Dear Everyone,

(Forgive me if this is not up to par when it comes to what a blog post should be or could be, but it is my first one so hopefully I won’t bore anyone too much. Haha, that sounded very proper. Anywho, back to the post.) (Also I thought it would be cool if each of my headings were a British song title or lyrics, but then I ran out of lyrics to go along with my paragraph, hence that stopping after paragraph 2)

For the First Time-The Script

For the first time in my life I left the United States of America! Last Monday, I flew out on Air New Zealand and arrived in London on Tuesday. The flight was great, I didn’t get much sleep, but that was because I didn’t know about all the cool things you could do with your seat. A couple from Germany was sitting to my right and a very lovely lady who was from London, but now lives in the valley was to my left. The lady from Germany had to show me how to tilt my seat back and the lady from the US showed me how to put my pillow on the cool adjustable head rest thing. Before I knew it I had watch 3 movies, slept 2 hours, ate 2 meals and had landed in London.

The Crown! on an UK red telephone booth.

Lost Her Behind the Station- The Kills

Heathrow is huge! I kept getting lost and by the time I found the Heathrow Express I was exhausted. Luckily, I had a pre-printed ticket (first-class, Thank you Dad!) and I just caught the train just in time. I arrived in Paddington, found a taxi and arrived at my house. A wonderful lady checked me in and I went to my house, but I could not for the life of me find my room! My paper said I was in Flat C, floor 1, but Flat C was on floor two and I was in room C1, but the rooms along the corridor in flat C started with C2. After rampant exploring, going up and down stairs, lugging my suitcase upstairs, counting and recounting the numbers along my hall I found a door that I could open, which wasn’t a bathroom or a locked electrical cupboard. This door led to a stair case, and what! Another door! (which did not lead to a shower [subtle Clue reference for David]). This final door led to rooms C1 and C7, which still makes absolutely no sense to me, but there we have it. I have a huge twin room facing the street with lovely Victorian molding, huge windows and a non-working marble fireplace, which I found out the other night is home to a little dark grey mouse. I named him Johnny Town-Mouse, after the Beatrix Potter story. My getting lost didn’t stop there. I got lost trying to buy groceries and a phone, but everything worked out in the end. I slept from 6:00PM to 7:40AM, minus an hour from 1-2am when I woke up and worked on making up US country phone codes until my call to home finally went through. (The country code for calling the US from the UK is 001 if you are interested).

This is about a third of the room. A bit messy from all the handouts I got at orientation. 

A room with a view.

I Don’t Think They Like Affiliate Students that Much

On Wednesday, I attend a very lovely orientation session. I met a couple of people studying abroad from US and a couple of people studying here for all three years from Malaysia and the US all of whom were really sweet. I registered, got my ID and internet!!! All the sessions were funny, uplifting and kind of cheesy, but really encouraging. I left feeling very happy and ready to start a good semester. When I came back the next day I found out I had attended the whole wrong set of sessions and that the previous day was actually meant for full time undergraduate international students (which is strange, because they specifically had affiliate students raise their hand in the session). I re-attended the first two sessions from the previous day, only to come away a depressed and tired. The sessions were boring and daunting and can be summarized as: Hello, you are here, this is going to be hard, here’s how hard, goodbye. The one good thing was that I was able to meet a wonderful master’s student who went to Cal Baptist and I actually knew where and what that was because of Fall Discipleship Conference. Later we went on basically a private library tour (because no one else showed up) and I tried a custard tart! They are delicious and I have a feeling once I find them in the grocery store I won’t stop eating them. Finally in the afternoon I went to meet my department and select my classes, but unfortunately my tutor (advisor) was at a conference so I couldn’t make my schedule and I found out that course listing is entirely different from even the packet of course listings I had received just the day before. I have a meeting with my tutor on Monday and if all goes well I might be taking the equivalent of a Masters Course here. We shall see… Also the downside to the UK registration process is that it is really hard to find the schedule of classes or “timetables” and for registering for classes outside of your department and it seems that all Art History classes are either early Monday or late Friday which is going to make traveling on the weekends very difficult. Later on I went to Primark, which is like an awesome Forever 21 and Home Store combination and I found Boots, which is like a very nice CVS with super helpful employees. I then checked out Sainsbury’s which is the competing grocery store to Tesco (aka the original Fresh and Easy).

The UCL Quad and Main Building and Library.

Custard Tart!

I am officially an international student. I didn't like the picture, so I am a cat!

To the Continent!

Thursday night I stayed up late and figured out how to fly to Geneva to see Michelle. If I end up taking/ getting into the masters-like class, then I am going to have 2 hours and twenty minutes to get from the door of my classroom to the door of my plane. I booked my tickets Friday morning and I am already trying to figure out how to make the trip to the airport as quick as possible. Friday, I attended a Living in London session, learned about how to get around and safety and saw my first police officers on the streets since my arrival. Then I went to Christian Union International welcome luncheon and made plans to go to church on Sunday and then I went on a tour of campus.

Rain is Lovely

The weather so far has been really lovely, cool, but mostly sunny. There are always lots of little storm looking clouds in the sky, but the wind moves them right through. Yesterday evening though I had my first rain and it was beautiful. There are so many lights, people and colors and you just want to keep walking. And I got my first copy of the Evening Standard.

Colorful restaurant near Russell Square.

The Evening Standard I got by the tube.

Euston Station: Like an Awesome Dream Airport, Except it’s Not

I went out at dusk and I found my way to Euston station which is a tube and a national rail station. The first thing I noticed was all of the food. Indoors and right doors there is probably upwards of 30 different places to eat. Inside the station were tunnels leading in every direction to different platforms and hundreds and hundreds of people bustling through. There were information kiosks and hundreds of people waiting in the main hall looking up at arrival screens getting ready to take their train. I ventured downstairs and got my oyster card. It was raining when I came out so I walked home and got my raincoat and headed to Russell Square to find STA travel to get a railcard. Turns out they don’t have railcards, but it was a lovely walk and I popped into the four story bookstore on my corner and never wanted to leave.

The very, very left side of the station. It goes on and on to the right. 

Waterstone's bookstore on my corner. It is like Vrooms, only with giant wood staircases. 

Tourist Moment! [I will take pictures for you Olivia]

The first day I was walking on my street I thought in passing that my street looked out of Sherlock (the news Sherlock Holmes BBC TV series). I especially thought the houses looked like where Sherlock and Watson’s flat, but I just assumed that was how a lot of places in London looked which I just happily found out is NOT true. My street looks straight out of Sherlock Holmes because…it is! The house used as 221b Bakers Street is on my street! and if anyone looks through my window while I am typing this, they will probably think I am crazy because I am smiling and laughing way too much. Unfortunately, they are not going to start shooting Series 3 until January! But, I am here for two days in January, so guess where I will be…

Walking By History

There are bunch of these random little tidbits, historic or contemporary, like that around the streets here. Today, when I went and got my rail card and went looking for the post office, I found a couple more things like that: I passed the home of the founder of the YMCA and a square where Virginia Woolfe would walk through near her house. Previously, I found out that Charles Darwin lived in the building across from mine and a suffrage movement leader lived down the block. I can’t wait to find out what else is in the neighborhood!

There are beautiful parks everywhere. This one is just down the street.

From in the square. 

The End

This has been a very long post. I promise the rest will be shorter and more interesting!

Right now there is a line of Mercedes/BMW’s parked along the street dropping students and their stuff off for move-in. Hopefully, I will get to meet my roommate soon!

I miss everyone back home and hope your semesters are going well!

Amy