August 27/28
My flight to Atlanta was mostly uneventful. I sat in the window seat in the last row, and no one sat by me. I read in the magazine that the Atlanta airport was the busiest in the world, and there was a short interview with Andrew Zimmern in which he said that his favorite place to eat in Atlanta was the Chick-fil-a, so that's where I ate when I got there. There was also a short article about Quidditch, which I thought was funny. We flew over a Target on the way in (and I now know that there is a Target painted on the roof of Target stores).
After I ate dinner, I had to wait a few hours in the airport, which I mostly spent on my computer (internet at the Atlanta airport is NOT free, though). I did have a seatmate on this flight, a British girl about my age who had been in Canada for the past month. When I told her that I was studying abroad, she recommended a few places to see, none of which I'd heard of, and I was really tired so I don't remember what she said! She also seemed surprised that no one was meeting me at the airport, but I assured her that I knew it took an hour to get to central London on the Tube, and I would be alright.
Going through border control was pretty uneventful. I just showed the guy my letter from Hendrix explaining what I was doing, he asked me what I studied at home, then he told me to have a nice time while I was here. I did think it was funny that there are signs telling people with UK or EU passports where to go, then there is a sign that says something like "All Other Passports, Including US." So either Americans are too dumb to determine that they're not UK or EU, or we think they should have a specific area for us?
Once I got my luggage and followed the signs down to the Tube, I bought an Oyster card and went to wait for the train with everyone else. An older man saw that I was by myself and started talking to me about how he never pays for the Tube and never gets caught, and I was just kind of smiling and nodding at him. Then he stopped and laughed at me and showed me a card from his wallet. "You think I'm crazy? No, I have a freedom pass!" If you're retired (I think there are other qualifications, too), you can ride the Tube for free.
When I stopped off at Russell Square, there were about 20 steps, so I prepared myself to lift my two very heavy suitcases and just go up as quickly as possible. A man with two young children offered to carry one for me, even though I told him I could do it myself. I think he was surprised by just how heavy it was! After that, taking the elevator up to street level and walking to the flat was easy. I stopped at the Acorn office (they're the people that own our building), where the lady explained how to open the door and told me that I was the last one of the Hendrix group to arrive.
I took my suitcases down the stairs to our flat and unpacked a few things, then hung around for a while wondering when I would see my roommates. Eventually I decided to go out to buy a cellphone, at a place I had looked up on Google Maps before I left. It wasn't hard to find and the people at the store were actually more helpful than people at the AT&T store at home sometimes are! Once I had the phone, I walked back to Bloomsbury Square, which is a park at the south end of our street, and called home to let them know I'd gotten to London alright. When I got back to the flat, I noticed that my roommates had been there and gone again, so this time I decided to stay there until I saw them. They came in an hour or so later, we talked a while, then they went out again (I think to get food). I had packed food with me so I didn't need to find a place as soon as I got there. Then I unpacked everything, and when my roommates came back, we went to sleep.
August 29
I got up around 9:30 and walked to the street our classroom is on, so I would know where it was later, and then stopped to eat and use the wifi at a cafe. I called home again, forgetting that it was Saturday and so my family was unlikely to be awake at 6:00, oops! Then I went out to buy groceries at Sainsbury's, which was actually cheaper than I had expected. They don't have much of a freezer section, because most of the foods we keep frozen at home are just refrigerated here, because they're fresher. However, this means that you're expected to use them sooner, so you have to think more about whether you'll use everything before it goes bad.
On the way back from Sainsbury's, I finally met the other girls in our group, who were on their way to get groceries and phones. They're two doors down from us, but I wasn't sure before then where they were because I was the only one who had a phone.
After putting my groceries away, Kemper (one of my roommates) and I went out to get her a phone, and on the way back she got groceries as well. When we got back to the flat, I tried one of the more interesting things I bought, which was Quorn turkey slices. They're made from mycoprotein, which is somehow related to mushrooms, and though it tasted good it didn't really taste like turkey.
We went over to the boys' flat for a while so Kemper could use their internet (since ours didn't work at the time), then Kemper and I just walked around the neighborhood for a while. I showed her where our classroom was, and then we went to McDonald's because she was really craving french fries (even though everywhere else calls them chips, they're still "fries" in McDonald's) and we couldn't find anything else that was open. When we finished eating, we walked back to the flat and went to bed.
August 30
We had a meeting with Dr. King (the professor who came with us from Hendrix) at 9:00 to talk about what he expected of us while we're here. He mostly just told us that we do have to go to group events and not get in trouble. Kemper and I went to McDonald's again to use their free wifi. I looked up the word "sultanas" because the cereal I bought had them in it and I didn't realize that that basically means raisins. I generally don't like raisin bran but this kind is much better because the raisins (or sultanas) aren't covered in sugar. Then I looked up where I could buy a hairdryer (Boots, which is similar to Walgreen's). I didn't bring one with me because I reasoned that it would be much simpler to buy one here than to have to mess with convertors/adaptors (which is true).
After dropping off the hairdryer at the flat, we walked to King's Cross because I had read that you could get a bus route map there. It was hard to find, but we worked it out eventually (though the map itself is hard to interpret). We decided to go to the Notting Hill Carnival, so we took the Tube there. We got there a bit early, so we decided to walk through Kensington Gardens first. We watched some guys play cricket for a while with a plastic cricket set; most of them weren't very good, and they hit the ball into the pond once and had to use a life preserver to get it back.
Then we went to Carnival, but there were so many people that it was a bit hard to get around. We did see some interesting costumes, but I think we never found the main parade. I got some chicken tikka, so I was happy, haha. We walked to a farther Tube stop in hopes that it would be less crowded than the one we used before. When we got back to the flat I made stir fry for dinner, and Kemper went out to McDonald's again to use their wifi. I called Jillian since I hadn't talked to her yet, and then I went to bed.
August 31
This was the first day we had class, because Monday was a bank holiday. On Tuesdays we have British Life and Culture with Susie (the teachers here want us to call them by their first names). After going over what we were going to do in her class this semester, we walked through Tavistock Square, then went to the British Library. We only had time to go through one section, and she asked us to pick one thing we would take home with us if we could. I chose Scott's diary; he's the guy who was almost the first one to reach the South Pole but was beaten by the Russians, and his whole team died on the way back. The last sentence in his diary reads, " ."
After class we had three different orientations. The first was with Acorn, where the guy told us the rules of the flats, which were basically not to be too loud or messy, and what days the trash and recycling is picked up. He also told us that the washing machines here will probably be one of the most difficult cultural experiences, but I'm not really sure what he was talking about. Other than having to use powdered detergent instead of liquid, they're not really any different from other front-loading washers I've used. It takes 40 minutes for a cycle, and the dryer takes an hour and a half (which is only because I run it on medium heat, since some of my t-shirts have designs that aren't good with high heat).
Our next orientation was at the Senate House library. We learned where everything is, which is important to know since there are so many floors, and how to use the printers. We didn't have time to get our cards, though, because we had to go to our final orientation, which was at ULU (the University of London Union). We got our ULU ID cards and heard a little about the different clubs and sports they have, but since the semester doesn't start for them until the end of September, they don't have anything going on until the beginning of October.
Next we had a "meet and greet" with all of our professors at a bar called Truckles of Pied Bull Yard. Jean (our Shakespeare teacher), who sat near me, was particularly funny because she'd already had some wine before we got there and had a lot more while we were there. She told us that our group seemed to be socializing better together than the group last year, but right after that she said she needed to stop drinking because she was being indiscreet, haha. We already knew that there was some kind of problem with last year's group because they added a whole slide about group dynamics to the powerpoint at the study abroad info meeting (for everyone going abroad in any program), and they told us it was because of last year's Hendrix-in-London group.
We only had snack food at the bar, so after we were done there we had dinner and then went out to another bar together, the Shakespeare's Head, which is really close to us. Someone had left a newspaper there that had an article talking about the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and they called him BoJo, which I'd never heard before (it made me laugh). Afterwards we went to Sainsbury's for some people to get more groceries (I just got chocolate), and went back to the flat.
September 1
For our first Art & Architecture class, Barnaby (our teacher) just went over the syllabus and had us watch some short films that had to do with what British art is (general answer: it's hard to say). After class I looked in the "free books" box on the first floor of the building and found a copy of the book we had to read for Susie's class, Mrs. Dalloway! One less book I have to buy, at least! Our Shakespeare class is on Wednesday afternoons and is taught by Jean. She emphasized the fact that plays are written to be heard, not read, so we will only be studying plays that we can go to.
After her class I went to the post office to buy stamps and discovered when I tried to go back to the flat that our door-sensor does not work when it gets too hot... Luckily I've only had a problem with that twice because the weather has gotten cooler. When I finally got in, I put my stuff away and went out to get fish and chips for dinner (which were very good).
September 2
We walked to Holborn to take the Tube to Marylebone station, where we got on a train to Stratford-upon-Avon. As soon as we got there we left our bags at the B&Bs we were staying at (3 different ones since we had 16 people). The one I stayed at was called Linhill, and it was very nice (and the lady there had a dog). The first thing we saw in Stratford was Shakespeare's grave, in Trinity Church. It was kind of cool to be there, but... No matter how close you are to him, he's still dead, I guess?
On the way to the theatre to pick up our tickets we passed a couple eating lunch on the bank of the river. The guy yelled, "Genuine British people, £5 a picture!" I couldn't tell if the other people in our group heard him, but I laughed. After picking up the tickets, we went to New Place, which is a house Shakespeare once lived in. They were doing an archaeological dig in the garden, which was interesting but they were only finding things like buttons and nails. Then we went to eat dinner at the Rose & Crown, which was pretty good (and the fish and chip portions were HUGE). Afterward I sat in the park to read and watch the people walking past. There seemed to be a lot of Asian tourists.
Our seats for the play were kind of weird because we were at the very top, leaning over the rail, so at times it felt like we might fall onto the people just below us. The play we saw was A Winter's Tale, which I'd never heard of before. Most of the first act was a little hard to follow but the end of the act was very dramatic, with a huge bear puppet (the kind that someone wears) that looked like it was made out of paper, and huge bookshelves fell down and books went all over the place. Here's a picture that someone else took:
In general I thought it was well-acted, but Jean is a strong believer that Shakespeare's plays shouldn't have complicated sets, so she didn't like it very much (although she did think that a couple people did very well). After the play we made our way back to the B&B and watched some TV before bed.
September 3
The lady at the B&B cooked us an "English breakfast", which included very thick bacon, eggs that were kind of sunny-side-up but a bit runnier, and toast with marmalade. We walked along a neat path through a field and behind people's houses to was Anne Hathaway's cottage, which had very nice gardens, and then we went to Shakespeare's birthplace. I've been there before, in 2008, but I'm pretty sure that the video you watch before you go into the house was new. It included a clip from the Doctor Who episode with Shakespeare in it.
We had just enough time for lunch before we got back on the train to London. I went back to the flat to drop off my things, then walked to Foyles, the bookstore, to use their wifi.
September 4
I slept late, ate breakfast, and went over to the Acorn office to ask them to fix our internet, which they finally did! I spent a long time checking emails and things, so I didn't do much else, besides read for class. I cooked a quiche for dinner, and Kemper brought me Aero chocolate, because I had told her that I was looking for it and couldn't find it anywhere (except the mint kind, which I'm not really a fan of).
Some links you might find interesting:
Into the Bowels of the British Library
Info about the tour of Aldwych Station that I went on (which I will talk about in a later post)
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