Day 2- London



Last night was a lot of fun. I went on the obligatory walking tour, where I was slightly embarrassed walking in a large group of Americans behind a woman yelling, "Follow the water bottle!" as she held the water bottle high above her head and walked us around to all of the places we'll probably need to know about...like the Tube and groceries, the computer lab, etc. Of course, I'd found all of these things within the first 4 hours of being here, so not only was I embarrassed by being in a herd of obvious Americans in busy downtown London, but it was pretty boring too.


The National Theatre is right down the street from here. We ended the walking tour there, where we could either split up and have dinner on our own, or stay with the group and have either pizza or seafood at these over-crowded restaurants at the foot of the Waterloo Bridge, on a saturday night.



I opted to keep walking with a friend who is also in my program, Rachel. We just met, and she's really nice. She got her MA in creative writing from Lancaster so she lived here in the UK for two years to write a novel and finish grad school. I think we connected because of the mutual humiliation of being in a crowd of americans as a woman yells, "And if you start to get home-sick, there's the McDonald's". Both of us were red and attempting to fall behind the group at that point. ARGH!


Anywho, we walked all the way down to the Millenium bridge, which reminded me of when my sister and CJ (her boyfriend) were here in 2004 and he freaked out while going across it. We also passed the Tate Modern, which is huge and not all that attractive from the outside. And of course we passed the Globe, St. Paul's was across the river, and the sun was hitting the dirty Thames River in a way I've never seen before. I kept looking at the water and imagining all of the disgusting things it's been through. It's beautiful, but if anyone fell in I would give them a 50-50 survival rate. haha!


We had dinner at a place on the river. I had Fishcakes (98% cake, 2% fish) and rice. It was pretty good. The best part of the meal was the Hendrick's Gin and Tonic I had. The gin tasted like cucumbers, and they put a cucumber slice in the drink. It's an expensive but entirely worth-it type of gin. Yum!


After dinner Rachel and I continued to walk all over Southwark (aimlessly as it ends up) for about an hour. Then we ended up back at the dorms, where we rested for a bit before going to this little pub called HITW (Hole in The Wall). It's right across from Waterloo station. We picked up another person from our group and had a few pints there. We met some great people and laughed alot. Even met a girl who lives in Yorkshire who offered me a place to stay if I would like to come visit over my mini-break.


So in short, the trip so far has been great. I still need to find a hair-dryer, so my hair may look goofy in pictures for a while.

:o) More to come! Here are some pictures so far.

Above, you'll see a picture of my teeny tiny room, and fridge.

Here's a view of the building I'm staying in on Stamford Street.

Here's a view of the building across the street, which is where I am right now. It has classrooms, auditoriums, and the all-important computer lab, where I sit typing at this very moment.

This is plain embarrassing. This monstrosity (sp?) is smack-dab in the middle of the roundabout outside of waterloo station. You'll notice it's an enormous Imax theatre with even more enormous Ford car advertisements in the windows. Ick. Looks out of place, and who drives Fords over here?!