Stonehenge & Bath

Yesterday we went on a free trip to Stonehenge and Bath! As I've previously mentioned, going to Stonehenge has been on my to-do list for a long time and being there was incredible. At first we thought you could only take so many pictures of rocks but we got pretty creative with it. I really couldn't believe that I was finally actually there and it made me think about how lucky I am to be studying in another country. I'm getting to do so many amazing things here and I'm grateful everyday for it. Even just after a little more than a week, going abroad has already changed my life. I feel myself slowly becoming a more knowledgeable, culturally aware, rounded person and my outlook on life is becoming even more open-minded. Well that's enough of that little emotional rant. Here are some pictures from Stonehenge:

Beautiful

Pondering, where did it come from?

Pinch

Presenting Stonehenge

Ground view

Kissing it

Gorgeous

Just holding it

After this we went to Bath to walk around the town and see the Roman Baths. The views on the way there put any other view I've seen previously to shame. (No captions needed)

Busy, Busy, Busy

A lot has happened in the past few days and I've been so busy that I didn't even realize I hadn't posted anything since Tuesday. On Wednesday I had my first British History class from 9-12. The class seems like it'll be pretty easy and interesting and we go on excursions every Friday. During class we also watched this gem of a video. I found it to be pretty catchy.

After this, I had my first Islam and the West class from 1-4. It seemed everyone was struggling to stay awake but the teacher was of course a very nice man. In three hours I learned about Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, The Five Pillars of Islam, and Muhammad, as our teacher is very repetitive. Luckily, we also go on occasional trips with that class.

On Wednesday night we went to a welcome reception dinner at Imperial College. The best way to describe this scene is through the ratio of boys to girls, which very well may have been 1:10. As you can imagine, the boys seemed to enjoy this dinner much more than the girls, as they are a rare and sought after commodity in the FIE program. We met some nice people in the FIE program but overall the dinner was a little weird.

On Thursday we walked through the park to Notting Hill and later ate at a pub called Goat's Tavern. All the pubs are so pretty and the food is pretty good. For some reason I always feel compelled to write about what food I ate and take a picture of it. So here it goes: I got chicken broth soup, chicken with a mix of barbeque, tomato, and marinara sauce, and chips (which again are french fries). And of course, here are pictures of it:

Yum

Yum

There were also some pretty interesting specials on the menu but I didn't really feel like trying the pudding:

Ew?

At night, we went to see a play called The 39 Steps, which FIE gave us free tickets for. When we got there we realized the the seats were all random and not everyone was sitting together. Somehow, Dana and I ended up next to each other in the front row. I was so excited about this since I've always wanted to sit close up at a play but whenever we go someone (Dad), always wants to sit in the very back of the nosebleed seats. This time was a totally different experience and the play was brilliant! The play consisted of a bunch of different characters, but only a cast of four so they not-so-subtly switched off between people, which called for great comedy. 

On Friday, I had my first excursion for my history class to the London Maritime Museum, where we went up a huge hill to see the Prime Meridian line. No one was really sure what this trip had to do in relation to our history class but it was fun regardless and the view was gorgeous. 

The view from the top

Standing on the Prime Meridian

Presenting the Prime Meridian?

And again with the food: for lunch I had an interesting pizza-thing and at night I had hot chocolate and tried macaroons for the first time.

Pizza?

Beautiful

Raspberry macaroons

More Exploring

Today was a great day of simple yet exciting discoveries. This morning we took a bus from right outside our flat to Hammersmith and we got to sit on the top right in the front. I've been wanting to do this for a while and it was definitely worth waiting for.

Front row!

In Hammersmith there are a lot of inexpensive restaurants and places to shop. I stopped by an Orange Mobile store and finally picked up a phone! (And I got a great international calling deal might I add). After this we found something I've been searching for since we've been in London: a pound store. It's the equivalent of an American dollar store but with British currency. I bought a night light, a flashlight for my black hole closet, some candy, water, and Pepsi for 6 pounds. I actually like the soda (or fizzy drinks as they call them here) better here than in the U.S. since they're less bubbly. 

Beautiful

After my exhilarating experience in Poundland we went to a small but very pretty pub called The Hammersmith Ram where they had lunch specials for 5 pounds. I couldn't understand what the bartenders were saying most of the time so I just smiled and laughed. I guess it worked out alright. 

Beef burger with chips (french fries)

Some of us in the booth (and my Strongbow!)

After this, we went over to Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park and rented bikes to ride around. I learned quickly that the Brits made this feat seem a lot easier than it actually turned out to be. 

Assumption: Swipe our cards, grab a bike, gracefully be on our way through the park.

Reality: Cards wouldn't swipe, receipts wouldn't print, couldn't figure out how to get the bikes out, bike seats were set for 6'5" giants, couldn't adjust them, had to ask meter reader man for help, could barely pedal up hill, rode on the wrong path, solidified that fact that we're Americans.

Riding bikes

The Long Water

 

It's all just a learning experience I guess. All in all, riding bikes was a lot of fun since everything in the park is so relaxing and peaceful. One of the best discoveries we made recently was Islkar Water. It's the best water I've found here so far and I can actually drink it without tasting some unidentifiable minerals. Overall, today was exciting and productive.

Ooooh, Now I Get It!

Today I had my first day of my British Life & Culture class and it's safe to say I have already been fully enlightened. Our teacher is a charmingly-awkward British man with a cute sense of humor. I'm really excited for this class because, although it is 3 hours long, we'll be going on tons of trips throughout the semester. Some of our future trips that were mentioned today were places like the reconstructed version of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Oxford University, and Parliament.

I learned some very useful information in class today as well. While discussing some future class trips, my teacher mentioned how we would eventually have a taste of curry, which he referred to as South Asian food.  I then realized that in England the term "South Asian" people refers to what we would consider "Middle Eastern" people. This explains why the man at the information desk in the airport told me the tall, dark driver from the car service we booked was an Asian man.

It's these subtle happenings that make me realize how different the British and Americans actually are. The fact that we technically speak the same language is often very deceiving. In a way, this makes things a whole lot more different. For example, if I were in America and I was talking to someone whose first language was Spanish, they would assimilate by trying to speak English. The same goes for the opposite; if I was in Spain I would adjust by trying to communicate in Spanish. In the UK however, both Americans and the British speak English but their versions of English our not always the same. So while both groups continue to speak mostly in their own version of English there are often odd situations of confusion. An example we experienced is the following phrase:

"I'm so pissed, I got my pants dirty."

American translation: I'm very angry, I got something on my pants.

British translation: I'm so drunk, I dirtied my underwear.

Such a simple phrase but two completely different meanings. When it really comes down to it, it's almost like we speak two different languages that have some similarities.

Nevertheless, I clearly have some more learning to do. Oh, and today I also signed up for a free day trip to Stonehenge this weekend. After seeing so many pictures of those humongous  rocks and hearing so many "ancient alien astronaut theories" about them on the history channel I can't wait to see them for myself. I'll do some of my own inspecting and figure out how and why they're there and fill everyone in when I get back, don't worry. As for now, I'm going to cook myself some dinner: chicken, broccoli, rice, and garlic. Let's hope it all tastes remotely the same. Allie and I also bought some baby bottles of wine, just because we could. Cheers!

Baby wine

The First Weekend (Lessons Learned)

These past few days have flown by. I've done more walking this weekend than I have in the past month. Since my stay here, I've learned a few things:

1.) British sense of humor is different than American sense of humor.

During our orientation meetings we were told this often and experienced this first hand from our walking tour of London. Our tour guide enlightened us with several lines such as:

  - "You should all know it’s a law in England that all British movies star Hugh Grant."

  - "The two differences between taxi drivers in New York and in London is that the ones 

      in London speak English and they know where they’re going."

  - "(In reference to a man walking his puffy dog in the park) And here we have a man 

      dragging a ball of wool down the street."

All of these things were said casually, with a straight face, exemplifying how British sense of humor is very sarcastic and spontaneous.

2.) We have charming neighbors.

After venturing out across the street to walk through Kensington Gardens on our own and with our tour group, we learned that Prince William and Princess Kate stay in Kensington Palace often and will be moving in there once the construction is finished. I knew the area of Kensington was fancy and for the wealthy but I guess I underestimated what that really meant. Maybe we can stop by for tea time with Wills and Kate once they're settled in.

Kensington Palace

3.) If you're an American, everyone will know. 

No matter what you look like, how you act, or how much you think you blend in, everyone will somehow still know you're an American. Faking an accent doesn't help much either. Perhaps it's the fact that we were traveling with a group of 11 young girls, or that we were intently studying our night bus maps, but everyone seemed to know we weren't "locals." We did learn though that when approached by night club promoters and asked "Ello luvs, where ya goin off to tanight?" the best response is simply "McDonalds" (or MACdonald's as they say). It seems to ward off creepy (or dodgy as they say) men and make us seem like glutenous wastes of time. Perfect.

Other than this, we saw some of the major sights of London such as Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace. Now that I've learned some new things I feel more confident here. 

My chocolate milkshake!

Pretty cupcakes

Waiting for the tube

Buckingham Palace

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben

Tower Bridge

London Eye

My new watch (on sale for £9)

Royal Albert Hall

King Albert National Memorial

 Next on my to do list:

- Start classes tomorrow

- Learn how to more quickly distinguish between British coins so I don't hold up an entire 

  line of people

- Ride one of the awesome rent-able bikes through the park

- And actually interact with British people

Onward!

Ello London!

We finally made it after hours of traveling and lugging 150 pounds of baggage with us. 

The Flight
As we went through airport security, we were all complimented on our new rain boots by one of the security men working there. Later, that kind man saw us naked when we went through the body scanner. Shortly after that, a security woman performed the last portion of my security clearance by squeezing my bun. I'm not really sure what she was looking for. Our flight left about an hour later than planned because there were high winds over the ocean and we couldn't land in the UK until after 6am. Take off wasn't so bad and once we

Location tracker

were in the air everything was good. We had an adorable baby two rows up that managed not to cry for a majority of the flight. They gave us a menu for dinner and dessert which consisted of things like beef with vegetables and penne with creamy spinach sauce. Whoever wrote the descriptions on that menu is extremely talented because they made the little airplane food seem like gourmet meals, which they most certainly were not. The bread roll and banana pudding were pretty good though. Allie and I watched "The Help," which turned out to be a really good movie, while Katie slept off and on. We barely slept at all for the flight. Everything was pretty peachy until the end of the flight, where it got really bumpy. I have never been more thankful for my strong stomach. All the lights were off and all your could hear were probably about 5 people throwing up. Even the little baby was throwing up! It was so sad... and smelly. 

The Flat
When we got off the plane we were so thankful to be in London, on the ground. Then we began the next part of our journey: to find the car service we scheduled to pick us up. This proved to be a lot more difficult than we anticipated. We walked around for a few minutes, reading all the signs with names on them, looking for "Katherine Shafer." After a few minutes we couldn't roll our bags around anymore so Allie and Erica waited with the massive amounts of luggage while me and Katie ran around the airport trying to find this man before he left after the two hour waiting limit. "Katherine and Katie Shafer" was then paged over the airport information system. Apparently our car service guy was looking for us as we were looking for him. We went up to the information desk and asked airport security what the man who asked to make that announcement looked like and he descriptively told us he was Asian.

Our flat

So we ran around looking some more for a sign that said "Katherine and Katie Shafer," held by what we thought would be a little Asian man. After about 30 minutes things started looking grim and I stopped in the middle of the airport. When I looked next to me there was a man holding a car service sign for "Katherine Shafer." I looked at him and went "We're Katherine Shafer!" A tall and dark man, he most certainly was not Asian. He helped us bring our bags to his car, load them in, and drive us around the Western part of London to Metrogate on Queens Gate Terrace to pick up our keys for our flat. And of course, it was raining. We picked up our keys and went over to Hyde Park Gate to finally see our home for the next 4 months.After watching a video someone made about the flat, I knew what to expect and knew I wanted floor 2, room E. Lucky enough, Allie, Katie, and I got a room together all to ourselves, on the second floor in the last room on the right: room E. The power of positive thinking! We also have our own bathroom and a lot of storage space (which I obviously love). I ran up and down the hallways for about 5 minutes but then got scared I was going to break the old floor boards. Our living area also comes complete with an exquisite non-working fireplace and a magnificent unusable balcony. The flat itself is pretty awkward and very old but I appreciate it's elegance and try to think about how nice it must have been when it was built... during the Victorian Era.

Living room

View from our living room

Our bathroom

Our bedroom

Pretty windows

Settling In
After this, we had a slew of things to do in order to check in. This included going to the Foundation House over on Cromwell Road and taking a walking tour of part of the South Kensington area of London. During this, we saw our school, Imperial College (which we're kind of a part of), a Wal-mart type of supermarket called Sainsbury's, and a few helpful places close by. And of course, once again, it was raining. To eat, we went to Starbucks, which we thought would be a safe choice. I still don't even know what food I bought or what was actually in my drink, but it wasn't so bad. We went over to Sainsbury's to buy some food and water for our flat and to see what type of things they had there. It seems like I'll be needing that store a lot. By the time we got home we were all some type of zombie versions of ourselves.We unpacked for hours, showered in our large and very high up bathtub, and went to sleep.

This weekend we have much more to do for our program here (or as they spell it: programme), such as orientations, walking tours, coach tours, and internship information sessions. We're also planning on exploring on our own and getting a few decorative elements to liven up this old place. And yes Mom, I will buy a cell phone (or as they call it: mobile phone) as soon as possible! Now it's time to have some breakfast and figure out how three girls are going to share one bathroom to get ready every morning. Wish us luck!

Cheers!
(Love, Lia)

P.S. - Here's a random clip of one of my favorite scenes from "The Help." 

"You is kind. You is smart. You is important."

The Beginning

 

Today is the day! I can't believe it came so fast. It feels so unreal. 

According to the convenient yet anxiety-inducing countdown on the 

Virgin Atlantic website my flight leaves in 6 hours and 39 minutes. 

I'm pretty sure the last time I checked that counter it said 56 days.

Time to get ready for what very well will be the best times of my life thus far. 

See you in London, cheers!