Traditional London phone booth photo.
So much has happened in the last few days, I don't even know where to begin. Here are the most recent events:
Saturday/Sunday:
I left California at 4pm. It was only a ten hour flight from LAX to the London Heathrow Airport. While I had planned on sleeping on the flight, I did not. Each person had their own screen and we had a choice of about 80 movies. I was watching so many movies that I forgot to go to sleep. I arrived worn-out and had to adjust to an eight hour time change.
Luckily, the school sent people to come pick us up. It took several escalators, a train ride, UK Boarder Agency, a few more escalators, baggage claim, customs (where I met up with my guide from the school), a lift (elevator) a ten minute trainride, an uphill hike- I don't know why there was a huge hill in the middle of the airport, and long walk just to meet the shuttle from my school. Keep in mind, this is with at least 150 pounds of luggage. We got to the school and they gave me my room allocation. I was fortunate though. The way school works here is that final exams for the semester fall the week after Christmas break. So some of the UH (University of Hertfordshire) students hadn't moved out of their rooms yet. There are over 50 exchange students in emergency housing, which is basically cots set up in any empty room.
After unpacking and taking a five hour nap, I went to this pub on campus called the Ele House for dinner.
Monday:
I have a kitchen that I share with people in my "flat." From what I gather, normally flat means apartment. However, flat in my case means that twelve people in single rooms share a kitchen and 3 single showers and 3 single toilets. I wouldn't normally say toilets but that really is what the bathrooms are called here. I think it's a little crass.. but I'm here to learn new things, so they are toilets. I didn't know why for the past few days no one was coming out of their rooms, now I realize that they were busy studying for finals.
I made my way to the store all by myself! I asked someone how to get there. I figured out how to take the bus, how to use British coins, and figure out my stop. I didn't get very many things, but I did get enough food to eat my first meal in a day and a half. I went to a store named ASDA. It is literally WalMart with a different name. It has "rollback" prices and everything. I think Europeans must shop a lot more often than Americans. You can't buy whole pineapple, all you can buy are 200 gram packs which consist of five or so slices. Everything is in really small packages and portions. At this point culture shock began to set in. It didn't help that I was starving and tired. I was just thinking about how no one would come out of their rooms in my hall, worry about how expensive everything is, anxiety for getting the classes I wanted, and that I don't know how to get anywhere. The metric system is confusing, and the dollar is very weak versus the pound. Each pound is about 1.5 American dollars. This is unfortunate since most of the things here are priced fairly in number if the numbers symbolized dollars. However, they don't so basically you pay 1.5X what products are actually worth.
Things looked up that night though when there was a gathering of exchange students at the art gallery where they served snacks and wine. I can't imagine a school-sponsored even in America where they would serve alcohol, but they did. Here I tried lamb which I don't know that I've had before. It was amazing! I also tried these biscuit sticks, chorizo, and olives. Neither were good. Then all of us went to the Ele House again. Except this time they let in British students, it wasn't a closed event. Here everyone mixed and mingled and I made a lot of new friends who I constantly hang out with now.
Tuesday:
I met with Stacy and Janshir who I just met before we left San Jose State and we went to ASDA again. We knew we were going to split a taxi back to school so this time I loaded up. I needed kitchen stuff in addition food. I also got a mobile phone. It only calls within the UK, but now I don't feel so isolated from the people I know here. We were having to set up times and places to meet and if someone was late, we couldn't call each other. I got a lot of stuff and luckily it wasn't too expensive. We live very close to the store, so our cab back was only 4 pounds.
This was also Barak Obama's inauguration, which was on a 5pm here. It surprises me how little the U.S. cares about any politics besides Middle Eastern and our own, yet everyone from Britain or exchange knows more than I do about our politics. Everyone we ran into all day, the first thing they said was so... Barak. BBC covered it so I did get to watch part of his speech. Everyone internationally seems really excited for him to come into office. They believe his motto of change and think he's just the man to do it.
For our nighttime activity, the exchange students could go on a school sponsored dinner to a town near us. But for ten pounds, my friends and I thought we could have more fun. So instead of taking the school-sponsored bus, we rode the public bus. We had to figure out what bus it was and where to get off. Well... I kinda lied when I said figured out, I make it sound like we did it on our own, actually we just kept asking people and a guy volunteered to tell us when to get off. Someone else showed us where the bus was going to stop. The bus driver helped me count change, he was very patient, then he quizzed me and said "How much are you going to get as change, and what coins could I give you?" His lesson helped, because I answered correctly. They have so many coins here. 2 pound, 1 pound, 50 pence (basically 50 cents), 20 pence, 10 pence, 5 pence, 2 pence, and 1 pence.
We got off the bus and asked a nice couple where we should eat in St. Albans. They told us a low priced restaurant called Kashu. We were freezing so we quickly made our way there. We ended up staying at the restaurant for 3+ hours. The food wasn't bad. It was actually a sit-down restaurant with a nice atmosphere and candles. Our waiter knew we were foreign so he sat down and gave us a run-down of what we should see. I like the group of people I met. They are very set on doing something this weekend. We've already talked about trips to Prague, Austria, Rome, Ireland, Paris, and then of course to all the sights in England. We also met some German boys and on our three week Easter break, we want them to show us around Germany. Dinner here is more relaxed than in America. The food took a long time to come out, it took a long time for the waiter to bring out bill. I don't think it was because it was bad service, because our waiter was at our table talking to us, I think it's just the culture not to rush patrons along by being to fast with service. For less than 10 pounds we had an amazing time.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday, Stacy and I went to get our classes switched around. I'm going to be taking Writing in Britain before 1945, Intermediate Spanish, Principles of Immunology, and Ethics in Journalism. Classes here are strange. You only have each class one day a week. There is a huge lecture, and then four seminars for each class. You must attend the lecture and one seminar. So on each weekday I only have 1 class because all of the classes begin at 11 so there isn't a way to schedule more than one class in a day. It's really strange. What do students here do the rest of the day? I'm used to having class eight hours a day. Unfortunately, I have 1 class each day, but have class five days a week. This is not conducive to long weekends traveling.
In the afternoon, we went bowling through the school. It was in a town about 45 minutes away. It was so fun! We bowled for a few hours, then the buses didn't leave for another few hours. We went to a local pub. Apparently the English aren't big on mixed drinks. There wasn't a fruity drink to be seen, but they had about 25 beers on tap. We were in group of about 9 until another 9 people showed up. Some drunk man was screaming about how Obama should be assassinated and equated Michelle Obama to a prostitute. It was strange. With one nod from us though, the bartender had a talk with him and he didn't bother us again. Mostly, the pub consisted of a bunch of old really really really (really really) drunk men. We got back on the bus and came home. We weren't ready to go to sleep yet though. We ended up meeting up with the RA of my building and his friend and went to the "disco" on campus. When my friend Stacy heard that there was a disco, she said that she didn't bring any disco clothes, not knowing that that is the English word for club. That was fun. The fashion in general but especially club-wear is a lot different here. They also played a lot of American club songs, and that was funny to see the English talking about how that was their new favorite song when usually the songs were at least a year old.
Because of all the orientation activities that have limited my interactions to exchange students only, I haven't really met any natives yet. However I have met people from Nigeria, Germany, Holland, Norway, Australia, a lot of people from India, and people from all over the U.S. I didn't realize that even the U.S. was so diverse. On Sunday I will be taking my first trip to London with a free bus provided by the school. However, we have to show ourselves around. That will be fun. I don't always plan to write this much. As soon as school begins, I will be doing a lot more work and a lot less play :(
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