First Two Days of Orientation

Hi everyone! So since the past few days have really been divided between day time orientation and night time raging and fun, I am going to write a "day" blog to get you updated on the more school related info, and then a "night" blog about the social scene!
Day One of Orientation:
Everyone on the IES program arrived on Wednesday morning. My roommate Keetin got in around 10 am and I was relieved to learn that we are basically soul mates and get along so well! She goes to Indiana University but is from North Carolina and has actually lived with her family in Surrey for awhile, right outside of London, so she has the lowdown on all sorts of things in England! I hung out in the room with her and Alexa before we had a short orientation meeting with our floor and two other floors. It was pretty basic info for the most part and was done in less than an hour. We were given the rest of Wednesday off, and hardcore orientation started bright and early on Thursday.

For Thursday's orientation, we were all split up into different groups. My group was pretty fun, and we started off with a short walking tour of our neighborhood in Chelsea, which I was already quite familiar with because of Alexa and I's wandering around the past few days. After that, we walked with our group to the South Kensington tube stop, where we will be catching the tube to the IES Center everyday for classes. It's only about a 10-15 minute walk to the tube, and if it isn't too crowded, its about a 15-20 minute tube ride. We can get off the tube at two different stations that are right by our IES class building, both within 5 minutes of it. The area we are taking classes in is called Bloomsbury- it has a ton of cute shops and restaurants and is full of young and working people. We are also literally 2 minutes from the British Museum- it is on the same street as our building, only a block down! It will be so fun to go there in between classes, for lunch, to study, and look around whenever we want!

We had a health and safety orientation, an academic orientation, as well as a tour around the Bloomsbury area. There are a bunch of beautiful buildings in the area that I am sure I will get to learn more about in my architecture of London class! At the end of the day, we had a quick reception to meet our teachers! We were able to pick up all our syllabi for class and quickly chat with some of our professors to get info on what books to buy etc.

Day Two of Orientation:

Today was a lot quicker, more enjoyable, and exciting! To start off the day, we headed to Brisbane, one of the many London universities, since it had a large enough lecture hall to accommodate all of us. Here, they held a two hour orientation. Included were two faculty speakers, a speech by the head of the IES program, and also a visit from two British "bobbies" or police officers. Keetin answered the first question correctly, and had to go up on stage where they proceeded to put the police hat and handcuffs on her as an example- quite entertaining.

After the orientation, we headed to the IES center for a travel fair and to sign up for field trips. There were several different companies offering trips to places like Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, Amsterdam, Spain---pretty much everywhere in Europe you can imagine and you've ever wanted to go. I decided to wait until later to sign up for these big trips so that I could check my schedule and plan what weekends to go where.

After orientation, Keetin, Alexa, and I went over to the British Museum for about an hour before their next meeting started. We didn't even cover 1/10000th of the museum- it is enormous! Everything we looked at was absolutely incredible though...we even made it a point to go see the Rosetta Stone since we were all dying to see it. It truly was an amazing thing to witness firsthand. We also looked around the Egyptian tombs exhibit a little bit which was equally as interesting to see. I'm sure I will be making MANY trips to this museum between classes, when I have breaks, to study, eat lunch, or anything. I cannot wait!

I will be blogging soon to update everyone on the nightlife scene so far in London! It's the best :)

I'm here...and I'm loving it!

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay on my first blog post from London. I've only been here for about 36 hours, but have already accomplished so much, gotten lost a few times, and started loving the city of London!

I got here really late Sunday night, so I guess you could consider it early Monday morning. My journey to the dorm was pretty simple- I had a driver holding a sign with my name on it waiting to pick me up right outside of security (I felt pretty special since I was always jealous when I was little of the people who got their names on signs). The drive to my dorm was quick, only about 20-25 minutes and my driver was really chatty, talking about how great London is because everything is open 24 hours unlike the United States. When I got to my dorm, I just had to do a quick check-in at the front desk and then struggle with my bags up to my room. Luckily, I was only on the third floor and there was an elevator, but dragging the bags down to the end of the hall where my room was proved to be a bit more difficult than anticipated.

Since I am in a positive mood currently, I will describe my room as exceptionally modest or petite. But to be quite honest, if you caught me at a different moment, I would probably just say that it is very... very small. Even though I panicked a little bit at first sight, I was able to get my bed lofted a few feet off the ground so I have a TON of storage space underneath my bed. It definitely makes the room look a bit bigger. My roommate gets here tomorrow so I'm sure we will finalize all the arrangements on the room!

So yesterday (Monday) Alexa got to our dorm around 11 am. I was very very happy to see a familiar face since the rest of my group does not arrive until tomorrow. We decided to explore our area, mostly walking up and down Kings Road and Fulham Road. The Chelsea area is so cute and hip, though very expensive. I'm really excited that we are living in such a well-known and fun area! All of the streets and houses look like they are straight out of the Parent Trap movie with Lindsay Lohan haha. Alexa and I's main adventure of the day consisted of trying to find Primark- which supposedly would have hangers, rainboots, and sheets, our main shopping goals. Since we are not quite experts on London transportation yet, we ended up taking a few too many tubes, walking the wrong way a few too many times, and spending a few too many hours on actually finding the store. Sadly enough, when we got there, they were out of hangers and rainboots. I managed to beg the lady behind the counter to give me some used hangers before we left. We were planning on going out later that night, but found ourselves absolutely exhausted and ended up calling it a night after a quick dinner at a random restaurant by the South Kennsington tube stop.

Today was much more successful in terms of getting around! Alexa and I took a short tube ride to Sainsburys, a giant supermarket (very similar to Walmart). We bought a ton of food to keep in our kitchen back at the dorm so that we could start cooking our own meals instead of spending so much money on eating out. Tonight we are planning on making some stir fry! Since this was our first shopping trip, we each had like 8 bags and ended up having to take a cab back to our dorm, which was pretty quick and cheap. After that, we wandered to Carphone Warehouse, where I somehow managed to get a sim card for the same phone that I used while in China. I am going to temporarily use that phone until our family friends, the Reids, who live about an hour outside of London, give me my other phone which I'll use for the remainder of my time in London. I also got to explore the other half of King's Road, down to Sloane Square, which I absolutely loved! There are a ton of stores and restaurants, and everything is crowded and exciting.

Everyone on my IES Program arrives at the dorm tomorrow and I cannot wait! I am a little bit nervous, but am really looking forward to meeting a ton of new people to share the next few months with me! I'll keep everyone updated on how that goes :)

Five day countdown!!

It is hard to believe that I am leaving for London on Sunday. I feel like it was just the other day that I was preparing for my junior year at Mizzou and my trip to China. But now, that has all come and gone, and I am heading off to England for 4 months!! The past five months have been some of the best of my life that I can't even believe how privileged I am to be jetting off to London for another amazing semester.

I will try and keep everyone as updated as possible on my travels, so in order to do that, here are the essential details about my trip:

I will be staying in an area of London called Chelsea. It is known as a very classy and nice part of the city, and supposedly Hugh Grant lives just down the road from where my dorm is! I'm going to be assigned a random roommate in my dorm where I will be staying with a large number of other students on the IES Study London Program.

I got extremely lucky with my class schedule and only have classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesdays (aka 4-day weekends every single week). I'm hoping because of this I will have a TON of time to get to know the city of London and even travel to a few other countries! My 5 classes include: The Architecture of London: 1600-Present Day, British Youth Culture from 1950 to the present, The History of London, International Marketing Management, and Passions and Repressions: Cinematic Representations of British Identity in British Cinema

This first post is going to be a bit short since the next five days will be jam packed with packing, tearful goodbyes, and a lot of nerves and excitement. I cannot wait to experience a whole new country and culture and am really hoping to go out of my way to try new things and meet new people.

My flight leaves Chicago Sunday morning (the 11th) and I will be arriving in London late that night. I can't wait to share all my new adventures with my family and friends through my blog!