London, Baby!

         The bus driver that took us to our hotel in London looked like the actor who played Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter movies. His finger nails were SUPER long and his teeth were a little sticky outy. This was my first impression of London. I didn’t think much of it because I was horribly sleep deprived but what I did think was “Oh my god I’m going to Hogwart’s.” And then I might have fallen asleep with my eyes open. It’s really all a blur. They gave us our room keys for the St. Giles hotel and I made my way to my room. No one told us for sure if we were going to have roommates while staying at the hotel but the two beds in the hotel room made it pretty obvious that we did. My roommate did not take the group flight over so she arrived later than the rest of the group. During the time before she arrived, a group of us set out to find pay as you go phones so we could finally call home and let them know that we are alive. We all bought the cheapest phones we could find which ended up being like 20 dollars. It doesn’t flip or slide or have a full keyboard or touch screen or anything. It’s pretty much exactly the same as my first cell phone ever, but it gets the job done.

 I was very nervous about who my roommate was going to be but once I walked into the room and introduced myself I found out that we were in the same boat. She had her friend who was studying abroad with a different program come over early with her so he was going to be staying in our room as well. Both of them were super nervous about studying abroad and one of the first things we bonded over was the general feeling of “what have I done.”  Here is where I would have liked to post a video clip to help you better understand how I was feeling during this time. However I probably would get sued for copyright infringement or something so I will just tell you how to find it.

STEP 1: GO TO YOUTUBE.

STEP 2: TYPE IN THE FOLLOWING INTO THE SEARCH BAR : Tangled Mood Swings

STEP 3: WATCH THE FIRST ONE FROM THE MOVIE Tangled

STEP 4: UNDERSTAND

We quickly discovered that we had the same intentions while in London which were to see all of the major landmarks and generally explore the city. So as soon as we had free time away from the numerous orientation meetings organized for us we began to plan out our few days in London. We found all of the landmarks and their locations relative to the tube, decided which ones we could walk to and set out the next day to go find Piccadilly Circus. 

Well Piccadilly Circus quickly turned into a full trip around London. We still aren’t sure how but we seemed to make all of the right wrong turns. We found Piccadilly Circus, explored a little bit, kept walking in a random direction and ended up by some pretty cool statues. So we decided to just keep going towards the park we saw nearby. Once we got into the park we looked down the street that was closed off for a triathlon that was recently held there and saw a pretty cool arch structure. Thinking the map across the way could tell us what the arches were we checked it out and happened to see Buckingham Palace listed on the map. We thought this was a little weird because we hadn’t walked that far from our hotel and during our planning we decided we should take the tube to get there. So, what else was there to do but go find it! It turns out that was a pretty simple task…we turned our heads and BAM. PALACE. 

At this point we just started laughing at our luck, we didn’t even know how to get to Buckingham Palace and here we were standing right in front of it. After walking around and taking it all in, one of us, I don’t remember who, looked over and said “Is that Big Ben?” Now we were all really shocked. Could we really be that close to all of these things? Apparently we were, we started walking in the general direction of where we thought we saw Big Ben until we popped out of the park onto a random street. We couldn’t see Big Ben anymore so we thought we had gone it the wrong direction when all of the sudden, I kid you not, Big Ben just flew up from the ground and was right in front of us. 

This was unbelievable. Still laughing in disbelief we continued to take in the complete beauty of Big Ben and the Parliament building. This was easily one of the most impressive buildings I had seen since arriving in London. From Big Ben you can very clearly see The London Eye. You know, the gigantic Ferris wheel on the River Thames. So naturally we had to go see it! So we strolled on over to the Eye and bought our tickets and hopped on. We somehow got to jump the line, still not sure why but we didn’t complain! It was a pretty clear day so we had some awesome views of London. 

We saw the building that was designed weird and the reflections of the sun made it melt cars…that was pretty cool. After the Eye we were super tired so we went back to our hotel and slept. The next day Mitch and I went out on our own and saw the London Tower Bridge and the outside of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. 

I really wanted to go inside but there was a performance going on so we only got to see the outside. This was another very long day of walking and exploring so we very quickly made it back to our hotel, ate dinner, watched movies and went to bed. Somewhere in those days we went to see A Doll’s House which was good, the main actress was VERY odd though and kept like spazzing out through the performance which was very distracting. However, it was still a good experience and I met a really nice woman from NYC which was weird but entertaining. I had a really good time exploring London, but I was still very excited to be going to Wales and to be able to finally settle in at Cardiff and start my Semester Abroad. More to come about arriving in Cardiff! I am almost caught up! Then you will get to hear about my random thoughts throughout the day. Lucky you!

Until Next Time! 

Flying Away

I finally made a blog! I guess I am a little late to the start as far as blogging goes but, better late than never! (If you know me you will know that I NEVER say this and in fact, I often believe that it should be better never than late). However, studying abroad has already made me open my eyes a little bit and forced me to rethink some of my views on how things work, or at least how I think they should work. Seeing as I did not start this blog before I actually left for Wales I am going to back track about a week and talk about the leaving home and arriving experience, which was an experience worthy of blogging let me tell you what.

          During the application process for studying abroad I just jumped through all of the hoops that were put in front of me and waited to hear back from just about everyone from both schools. When I was finally accepted into the program to study in Wales I was mostly just relieved to be done with the application process and didn't realize the magnitude of this event in my life. All summer I made lists in preparation for leaving, what to pack, what to buy, what to buy in Wales, where to go in Wales…everything. This soothed me and kept me focused on something other than the fact that I would be leaving home in four months. Towards the end of summer after my last day of work the realization finally hit me that I was actually going to leave. It didn't just hit me a little bit that I was leaving..No no.. it hit me like a sack of bricks. That was a really hard two weeks, but I got through it with the help of some really great people in my life. So eventually all of my bags were packed and it was Friday the 13^th….the perfect day for getting on a plane to London, wouldn't you say so?

          Getting to the airport was stressful at times but Mom and I really know how to whoop it up on a car ride so we had a good time! Once we got into the airport I had to constantly stop myself from thinking about leaving and just focus on getting my bags checked and getting my ticket. These things were done fairly easily and then it was time to say goodbye. At this point I was thankful that my mom was the only one that was able to come to the airport with me. As much as I love and miss my whole family it would have been too much for me to say goodbye to everyone right there in the middle of the airport. After a very tearful goodbye to my mom and Mitch’s family we were on our way to security. It was at this point in the journey that I realized just how thankful I wasn't going abroad alone. I had my best friend right next to me to make me laugh, guide me through security and find our gate.

          Waiting for our plane to arrive was pretty hard. I felt like I could easily just get up and leave the airport and go home and not have to leave. I knew I actually couldn't but the idea was there. We wandered around and ate dinner which took up most of our time until the plane finally arrived. Once we were actually on the plane I became very calm. We watched Identity Thief on the plane which was probably a bad choice because everyone was asleep while we were trying our best to not laugh loudly and wake everyone up. The movie was pretty funny, not the best movie I have ever seen but it was good enough to keep me from thinking about leaving. Eventually I fell asleep which was very nice but still did not do much to prepare me for the time change once we landed. After we landed and got all of our things together….we had so many things….we had to wait in line at customs. I would like to take a moment to kindly ask you all to start humming the Jaws theme song in your head..Duh Nuh…Duh Nuh…DUH NUH DUH NUH DUH NUH!!!!! It was that bad. We waited in line at customs for 3 hours. Did you catch that… 3 HOURS. It was horrible. It wasn't like the line was so long that it should have taken three hours. Oh no, we could see the end and we weren't moving AT ALL. Not an inch. Well except for when the people keeping us in the line told us we had to stand closer to make room for more people, that was fun. So for 2 hours we just sat there and then finally they hired more people or something because the line started moving again. I wouldn't be surprised if they just picked random people from line and hired them on the spot so they could get everyone through. Once we got through customs successfully…VICTORY!!...we had to go find our luggage. Thankfully it was still there and we were able to go find our group and get to our hotel in London. It still hadn't hit me that I was actually in a different country. The combination of no sleep, terror and confusion will do that to you I think. So far on my trip I have only had two real moments of “oh my good god what have I done”. Since I am still catching up with blog posts I suppose the next one will be ALL ABOUT LONDON. LUCKY YOU. Oh there is only one picture of us at the airport so I suppose I should at least put that up here for proof or something. ANYWHO..Ta-ra!! (That means goodbye I guess)