An unorganized look at my first several days in London:
I’ve been gone for less than a week and yet it feels much longer. I don’t think I’ll get homesick for a while. There’s so much to do! I’ve been running around non-stop and getting to know new people and making new friends. I was so lucky that I formed a handful of friends traveling over here. It’s really been a relief knowing that there are people here who I enjoy spending time with.
So far I’ve explored Camden Lock, the birth place of the punk scene. The market was incredibly crowded, but there were some fun stores. And my friend Nathan and I took a ton of “cheesy tourist pictures” in front of things like Buckingham Palace and with the guards and so on. I will make sure to post examples. And a night walk along the Thames makes for a perfect evening, I’ve found. There’s more, but I’ll wait to post pictures to get into all that.
My friend Sonya and I got lost our first night here. We were trying to find our way back from Regent’s Park (where our school is) to our apartment building, which is about a 12 minute walk on average. We got lost for two hours, wandering here and there, essentially circling the area in which we live. One lesson we learned: when lost, ask a cab driver for directions. They have the best maps.
I live in the Middle Eastern section of the city, which means that there is a surplus of Middle Eastern shops. There’s a great one across the street called Al-Muhammad that sells Mango juice (my favorite!) and they also sell some really tasty Middle Eastern pastries that a friend and I indulged in the other night. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were delicious! One of my flat-mates and I found a really great Indian food restaurant a couple blocks away from our place. It’s called The Ganges and the food is divine! And at the end of the meal they gave us complimentary decorative plates complete with a display stand. Also, as it happens (dad, this is for you), I live a couple blocks away from where John Lennon used to live with Yoko Ono. In fact, it’s a flat that Ringo lived in for a while and then rented out to people like Jimi Hendrix and eventually became the Lennon/Ono home.
I had my first day of classes at Regents today—was in class from 11am-9pm with two one hour breaks (eek). Mondays are a blast. Fortunately I have more luck with the rest of my schedule save for an evening class on Thursday. I found out that Regent’s College and the park surrounding (Regent’s Park) is owned by the queen. So I’m going to a royal school. Here’s how I feel about that: (…). In other news: I have a crush on my Scriptwriting teacher’s suit—olive green corduroy—that’s the kind of suit that I want! There are so many good suits walking around this city, it excites me.
I’m out of classes by 12:30 tomorrow, so I’m going to do some more roaming.
