Where did I leave off....
Well I arrived in London on September 14th. Things did not go as planned, but I survived! My flight was delayed and I didn't get in until late that night. My bedding didn't get shipped so I didn't have anything to properly sleep on, it was kind of a mess. Fortunately I got things mostly sorted out on Sunday in preparation for the first week.
This is part of the canal that's right outside my dorm. I'll put in more pictures of inside my dorm room and all that once I clean up a bit.
My first week here I didn't do too much besides try to adjust and get everything settled in. I needed to do a lot of shopping around for supplies, checking into academic things, getting food. Campus was pretty rowdy as most of the first-years had never been away from home before and they thoroughly enjoyed their "Freshers' Week". I mostly just tried to sleep... I'd never felt like such an introvert/old cat lady until I was surrounded by the freshers. Finally once some other Wellesley students and I got ourselves settled in, we started to be a bit more adventurous.
I'm going to apologize ahead of time for the lack of pictures. It is almost always raining here, as you probably know. When it rains, taking pictures can be pretty useless and miserable. You end up wet, your camera ends up wet, and all the pictures are dark and gloomy. I'd much rather just look and listen if it's raining out than try to take pictures that I know won't come out well, so a great many things that I'm done don't have photos that go with them. I might find some from the web, or just let you use your imagination.
During the first week, the college offered us a bus tour for a really decent price so I went on that. It rained. No photos! =[
Olivia, Sabrina and I (all Wellesley students) went to the mall to pick up some things. It was our first time taking a double decker bus, which was exciting for like 30 seconds. I'm pretty sure it's only really exciting when you get front row seats on the top which has only happened once so far, but we're pretty good at taking the bus now! Not having a phone in one of the biggest malls ever was terrifying. We almost had some incidents where I felt like I was 5 years old because I was lost and my cup broke... (long story, but good news, they replaced my cup!), but once again I survived and we all made it back to campus together.
The first weekend we decided to go do the tour of Buckingham Palace before it stopped being available. The tours only go on during the weekends in the summer when the queen isn't living there so we had to be quick.
Outside Buckingham Palace with the very elaborate gates.
We couldn't get very close to the guards but my camera has pretty good zoom.
While inside the palace, we weren't allowed to take photos, so I don't have any pictures but it was a pretty interesting experience. We had an audio guide so we got to hear what was relevant about all the fancy things inside. I'd say it probably wasn't worth what we paid for it unless you're very very interested in seeing elaborate decor and vases worth more than your house. It did help me learn a little about the role of the royal family in the UK so that was helpful.
Before heading into the palace, I had my first fish and chips lunch!
This isn't the best fish and chips I've had but it was decent.
On our way back, I spotted a photo opportunity I couldn't pass up.
Don't worry, I didn't get caught.
Olivia and I went on a trip to Harrods, the ridiculously huge and expensive department store. We wandered around in there for a few hours. There's not too much to take pictures of in a giant department store but we found a few things!
GIANT TEDDY BEAR!
Apparently, it's already Christmas season at Harrods... in September. It was nice to pretend it was Christmas for a little while though.
We were planning on heading back to Queen Mary after our adventures in Harrods... We were both pretty tired. Since we were so tired, we figured we should just get dinner and not cook. Great logic! So we headed to Chinatown for dinner. It was actually a pretty neat area. The food was nice and it was dark by the time we got out of the restaurant. While looking for a tube station, we got our second wind. We realized we were very near to Trafalgar Square so we walked through at night. My camera isn't the best at taking night photos but here's my best attempt!
The National Gallery
A glowing fountain... It's so hard to photograph fountains...
I looked up and realized I could see Big Ben. That definitely gave me the energy to start walking towards it. It was so beautiful, I couldn't resist!
This photo seemed to turn out alright!
This photo isn't so great, but it gives you an idea of the view from the bridge we were on.
After taking a million photos (for ourselves and for other tourists who wanted someone to take their photo together), we walked up to the London Eye and continued on along the water until we got to another bridge, which we crossed to catch the tube. It was a beautiful night, the weather was really nice, and we got to see a lot of London this way.
After this, our adventures in London have slowed down a bit. We don't have a lot of work for class, but I've kept myself busy with making travel plans and learning on my own. I've spent a LOT of time working on my resume, which never seems to get better. Oh well, it's a work in progress! The classes here aren't as good as the ones at Wellesley, but I really like my Interaction Design course and I've met some really sweet people in it so far.
A Wellesley alum hosted an event for the Wellesley UK Club at her house in Westminster. All the current students that came were blown away to say the least. It was a beautiful home and a nice event. We're looking forward to a few more events with the Wellesley UK Club in November, so that should definitely be fun.
I have a few more adventures I'll post about when I get a bit more time. It's probably better to keep these posts somewhat short, although this one is a bit long. Please feel free to post questions or comments on here or on Facebook! Let me know if there's anything you want to hear more about or if you have suggestions of things for me to do! We're starting to realize how short our time here is and I need to start making the most of it. I've accepted the fact that I probably won't get to finish a fraction of the things that I wanted to do while I am here, but I'm still going to try to do as much as possible! I will hopefully post again before the end of the week with the rest of the things I've done over the last month.
Thanks for reading everyone!
PS. I've finally booked my flight back to the US! I'll be arriving in Boston on the evening of January 1st.
No comments:
Post a Comment