The weather yesterday was amazing - jeans, a sweater, boots, and sunshine! Today it rained all day and was miserably cold! My first full day and I got a full taste of how the not so fabulous Janruary weather is in London.
We met early this morning and went on walking tour with one of the staff members of the Chelsea area, purchased British phones (got the cheapest, little guy they had $7 baby!), got tube (subway) passes, and then walked 15 minutes, took the tube from South Kensington station to Holborn (~30 mins), and then walked 10 minutes where we finally got to the beautiful IES academic center located in the heart of Bloomsbury. It's a gorgeous, huge white/cream building with decorative architecture on a corner of one of the main streets in the burrough.
We were greeted by British and American staffers who are over the entire program and began with a welcome and lots of background about London and it's culture. We learned everything from how to cross streets and when (they drive on opposite sides and certain places you have right-aways where others you don't) to standing only on the right side on the escalator while people walk on the left - if you stand on the left side you will probably get bloody cussed out. We learned about the layout of the city and basic cultural aspects. Then we took a shitty as hell and miserable walk around the Bloomsbury area. A local student from Queen Mary college showed us around which was great, but it was so miserable everyone was silent and the forever long walk was just no good. On a happier note our student-guide pointed out tons of spots where tons of Harry Potter scenes were filmed, showed us many of the local hang outs, and even the building Batman lived in in one of the movies which was awesome. We then grabbed lunch at a local restaurant and headed back for guess what? more orienting! They talked about safety and all the crap no one wanted to hear followed by getting our class schedules and more academic info. I have class Monday - Wednesday....4 days weekends all semester??? YES YES YES PLEASE!!!
I'm taking Media and UK Politics, International Marketing Management, History of London, British Youth Culture, and Management in a Multicultural Environment. My favorite part of the entire shitty day of bad weather, orientation, and exhaustion was the professor social at the end of the day. All of the professors set up in different rooms throughout the building and we could just walk around and meet and greet with them. My Intl Marketing Management professor is on the board of directors for the European Bank - specifically the investment advisor for Bulgaria, Poland, and Albania....totally normal right?! He has that full-time job and then teaches this class on Monday nights. The rest of my professors are professors for other universities or also have full-time jobs...they're all British and so so awesome! After that we all left and headed back to our dorms in Chelsea and the other students in this program are awesome! Probably at least 85% of them are from Penn State, Indiana University, or the Chicago area and then there's 3 of us from the South out of the 80 IES students here. What's even more interesting is that the building has 300 students with only 80 being IES students; therefore, I've been able to meet students from all over rather than just the U.S.
After getting back we headed to the grocery store and ended up having a lovely dinner composed of hummus, chicken salad, and a very large bottle of wine. :) YUM!
I even bought some true British tea to have in the morning....so pumped! After only being here for about 24 hours I am still pretty exhausted, so that cot of a bed is going to feel amamamazing! Kathrine actually just walked out the door to meet some of our new friends to go out and I turned it down...me not going out? I feel like one more night of good sleep and then I'll be 100% and then every pub's bartender will know this southern girl's name in no time! goodnight! :)
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