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5/24
After
saying goodbye to everyone on the team, I attempted to get a few hours of shut
eye before my 4:15 AM wake up call on Thursday morning. The adrenaline I had
going about the trip helped a bit in being able to function that early before
sunrise. I packed up, grabbed a croissant from downstairs, and met the driver
who would be taking me to the Linate airport at 5:00 AM. Luckily it was early
enough where we didn’t hit any traffic. It was nice to drive through Milan as
our team was unable to go to the city the day before. It was definitely the
most cosmopolitan out of any of the cities we had gone to, and the church we
drove by briefly was beautiful. Eventually I got to the airport, checked in,
went through security and customs, and was at the gate to depart for London. I
was relieved that navigating the Italian airport wasn’t too terrible at all. As
I was waiting at the gate, a group of men wearing Australia sweatsuits sat in
the seats near me. I inquired and found out that they were the Australian Men’s
Volleyball national team. Pretty cool. They have a training center in Milan,
had just played Poland, and were off to go play in Japan.
Eventually
we walked through the doors of the gate to a shuttle which took us to the
plane. The flight was short, but long enough to try and get some more shut eye.
While I was there I looked through my London information and read up on
Heathrow airport so I was able to navigate on my own if for some reason I
missed the Syracuse bus to our housing location. Despite a 20 minute delay, I
still arrived before Syracuse students. After dragging my bags through the
airport and a brief phone call, I was able to find the group of academic and
student life advisors waiting for us at the airport. I was relieved to have
made it on time. They told me they would watch over my bags if I wanted to walk
around for a bit. I grabbed a luggage cart and a small snack as it would still
be a few hours before arriving at our final destination. Eventually the
Syracuse group flight arrived and I began to meet the students who I would be
spending the next five weeks with. After mingling for a bit and waiting for the
entirety of the group to come to arrivals, we boarded the charter bus that
would be driving us into the city.
The
traffic at this time, even though it was midday, was comprable to Atlanta or
Washington DC traffic. We bussed deeper into the city as we were informed
briefly about different areas we were driving through. Eventually the bus was
able to maneuver into Topham Street, on which the Gazzano Building and our home
for the summer resides. We unloaded our baggage and gathered in the lobby of
the flat building to get our room assignments and keys. My flat is composed of
myself and my roommate Lauren who goes to University of Dayton, Moira who goes
to Providence, and Eleni who goes to Syracuse. We threw our bags in our room
and began to unpack for a bit but were ready for a quick turnaround as we were
heading to the Faraday House, the academic center, for orientation fairly soon.
At 1:00 PM we met back in the lobby and began our walk toward Faraday House.
They
had Subway and various snacks to hold us over until orientation began. After
mingling and chatting together, we were led into an auditorium type room where
they gave the basics on our time in London. The instructors and student life
advisors were introduced and we had a brief lecture on transportation.
Honestly, the lecture was a bit of a blur as I (and everyone who had just flown
in overnight) was exhausted from getting up so early. After the formal part of
orientation, we broke into our separate classes and met Professor Sharon
Hollenbeck for the first time. She talked with us briefly about the class, but
we spent more time introducing ourselves and going over her favorite things to
do in the city. We also learned that she would be treating us to dinner at
Khan’s, an Indian restaurant, on Friday night. After orientation wrapped up, we
walked back to Faraday and spent the rest of our afternoon getting settled. As
dinnertime approached, me, Lauren, Moira, Margot, and Yi headed across the
street to One Dollar Burger to grab some food. We soon learned that 1. The
burgers were not, in fact, one dollar and that 2. Service isn’t quite what it
is in the United States. We probably didn’t help the case by asking for
separate checks at the end. Although our waitress seemed to have been over us
and moving on to other tables before we even asked for the check in the first
place, another waiter came and helped us. As many of us were wiped, we called
it a night which ended up being a great decision.
5/25
On
Friday morning we reluctantly woke up at 10:00 A.M. for a meeting in the flat
next door about housing and the basics of our apartment. We learned about the
internet service, cleaning service, and I asked how to use the washing machine.
Yes, I do my laundry at school but that is nothing compared to the daunting
nobs and levels of the London washing machines. Unfortunately, it turned out
that the flat we were in had a different washing machine than us, so my
question was essentially useless. After the meeting, a group of us set off to
find Budgens, one of the nearest grocery stores to our flats. We went to the
store and gathered basic food items and ingredients to stock our fridge and
have on hand to cook meals so we didn’t have to eat out all of the time. To get
to the store, we walked through this little area lined with restaurants, coffee
shops, pubs, and more. We live in such a great location and am very happy with
the surrounding area of our flat! Every Friday and on the weekends there is a
little food market set up along the same street, very similar to the one that
comes every Tuesday at Emory. I bought a bunch of fresh grapes from one stand.
When we were finished unloading the
groceries back at our flats, we set out to seek out international phones and
gyms to join for the time that we were here. Although a group of us spent some
time at O2, I didn’t end up purchasing a pay-and-go phone until the following
Monday. We did stop by three gyms to figure out which one would be the best
value for our time there. Me, Margot (who plays hockey for Syracuse), and Moira
all joined LA Fitness. The facility there is great and the people were really
nice. Not to mention they cut us the best deal which was surprising as the
other gyms were much smaller and not as great of equipment. Not to mention they
threw in a sweet LA Fitness backpack and free lock with the membership. One
thing that we’ve all gotten accustomed to is the people running on the streets
with backpacks on. I feel like it’s a burden to even carry my iPhone around to
listen to music without an armband (#firstworldproblems), so it was interesting
to see people exercising with a bigger backpack of their belongings.
As dinnertime approached, our group
set out to the tube station to find our way to the restaurant. Our first time
taking the tube was actually much easier than I expected. It was fairly easy
and definitely nice that it is a flat rate regardless of where you are going,
much different than the Metro in DC. We found our way to dinner which ended up
being a great meal! I was lucky to have experienced Indian cuisine already,
once at Emory and again at Ashu’s wedding over Spring Break. I ordered Chicken
Tikka Masala and everyone shared naan, rice, and more. It was a great meal to
get first acquainted and a nice way to start out our first evening in London.
After dinner we retreated back to the flats where we all spend the remainder of
the night hanging out in our flat aka Flat Two aka Flat Dueces. One thing we
were definitely not used to is how early both restaurants and pubs close here!
11:30 PM is usually the standard time at Emory to go out, but that’s when the
pubs begin closing in London. We sort of forgot about this so we just stayed at
Gazzano hanging out for the night. A few of us walked around the neighborhood
as the night was winding down, and ended up finding our new favorite late night
eating place-Perfect Chicken. Definitely a great start to our time here!
5/26
We
slept in Saturday morning and then headed to the Portobello Road Market (per
our professor’s suggestion) for the afternoon on Saturday. Me, Moira, Lauren
and Eleni arrived via tube to the outskirts of the market. We walked a few
blocks and followed the crowd to find where the road really began. Even though
we spent 3-4 hours at the market, we didn’t even make it all the way through.
It was definitely different than what I was expecting. Portobello Road was
flanked in its entirety with various shops, booths, stands, and tables with an
assortment of different products. It was essentially broken down into three
sections, antiques, clothing, and food. We had a great time perusing the
different stalls and stopping by whatever places looked interesting to us. I
ended up finding this great artisan watch that I wanted to buy, but decided
that since it was early on in our browsing that I wanted to wait to come on the
way back. Unfortunately the woman ended up being already packed up by the time
I came back. Even though I didn’t buy any products, it was really interesting
seeing the variety of the different stands. We went into a Scottish goods
store, England paraphernalia store, looked for handbags, antiques, jewelry, and
more. This is also where Lauren and I discovered we are both self-proclaimed
foodies. We celebrated this by trying the hip new dessert, variations of
Belgian waffles, in addition to getting paella for dinner (yes, we were there
long enough to eat dinner too).
Saturday night our group, soon to
be dubbed the family, went to Piccadilly Circus. We were intending to go to a
sports bar to hang out and watch the Celtics game but they wouldn’t let us in
as it was after 10:30 PM (another concept we’re getting used to). We ended up
going to a few different places, and ended up at this multi-level club called
Picadilly Institute. We somehow managed to find the greatest room ever-a room
where the DJ played all throwback 90’s and early 2000’s songs. We had a great
time singing and dancing the night away. After returning to our area, we took
those who hadn’t experienced it yet to Perfect Chicken (we also became on first
name basis with the main guy there, sup Reese).
5/27
On
Sunday we took a group trip to Greenwich Village. We are lucky in that Syracuse
organizes a few field trips and other activities for us. We bussed out and had
a tour guide join us to tell us about the city and area along the way. Almost
every street we turned on was immersed in some sort of significant history or
fun fact. In order to actually get to Greenwich from the place where our bus
stopped, we had to walk through a pathway/tunnel that went UNDER the Thames. It
was a little eerie but pretty cool, and definitely took a bit longer than I
expected. When we reached the other side our tour guide gave us a run down of
the different highlights of the area and let us know that if we wanted to go
with him to the observatory we would meet at 2:00 PM to begin our trek. The
group split up and a handful of us walked around for a bit before finding a
place to grab lunch. We went to the Spanish Galleon, a pub on the main street.
For lunch I had my first fish and chips! I was surprised that it was quite
literally a whole fish, and chips. In the States I’m used to strips of tilapia
or whatever kind of fish, but was the fish in its entirety. After lunch we
walked off our very filling British dishes and continued to explore Greenwich.
At
2:00 PM, we met our tour guide who led us an increasingly steep hill toward the
top of Greenwich where the observatory and Astronomy museum were. We got a
great view overlooking the entirety of London. Nestled at the bottom of the
hill that we were perched was the location for the equestrian competitions of
the London 2012 Olympics. We were also able to see the O2 center and other
venues away in the distance from where we were standing. I decided to go check
out the exhibits in the astronomy museum, as I had just finished taking the
class and what I learned was still decently fresh in my memory. It was cool
learning more about topics I had covered in brief, and realizing what a
thorough course it was at Emory, as I already knew a decent amount of the
information. After the museum, we descended back down the hill and grabbed ice
cream as we were definitely parched. Our instructors told us that we brought
the sunshine with us, which was definitely true of our first week. We bussed
back to the Faraday House and then headed back to Gazzano. We were pretty wiped
so we just hung out the rest of the evening and ended up watching the Lovely
Bones in Flat Four, Margot, Lucie, Jessie, and Alesha’s place. One thing that
we realized and ended up talking about in class later that week was the lack of
commercials on British TV! There were only about two or three commercial
breaks, all of which seemed to come at awkward times. Regardless, they left us
in silence due to the content of the movie. It was a nice, chill way to wind
down before our first day of class on Monday!
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