Friday!

It's Friday, Friday! Sadly, that basically means I have completed week 1 of my adventure in London. Time is beginning to start to fly, and before I know it the beginning of the day becomes the end. This week was filled with ups and downs, but you'll be happy to hear, there were significantly more ups! Getting used to walking to the store, having my converter blow a fuse, or not having enough shampoo and conditioner were some of the lows. It's okay - they weren't really that low! Ups? Randomly stumbling upon the Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) and other gorgeous sites. It's definitely very different from the United States but incredibly exciting to be here.

Today was a day of academic registration and advising. I sadly could not change one of my classes, so I will have class Monday-Thursday. Not too bad - but it would've been nice to have Thursday off! So I'll have one or two classes a day and most of them include visiting different areas in London. My sports class has visits to stadiums and TONS of guest speakers! My kind of class! My London history class also has visits to different educational and historical sites as well. Most of the classes do not look too incredibly difficult but the Director of the program warned us the classes are probably harder than they seem.

He gave us a whole lecture on how study abroad changes you and your perceptions. He lectured us on how we shouldn't be connected to social media as much while we are here because it does not allow us to connect to the culture and learn to miss people. Well let me tell you, sir, I communicate with my loved ones daily while here and I sure still miss them! However, he made a good point. He encouraged us to immerse ourselves and explained that every time we are looking at our phones while walking down the street, we are likely to miss some awesome scenes! He also talked about how many people don't realize how much they enjoy study abroad until after they return home. Well, I truly enjoy it already! Hopefully it will remain that way. Lastly, he mentioned that culture shock is probably greater upon returning home. I'm not sure about that one (yet, obviously) but there was a bit of culture shock upon arriving here.

I'm not used to living in a city where it takes a decent amount of time to get from place to place. Heck, at home it takes 10 minutes maximum to get to one of three grocery stores. Here, it is over a ten minute walk to the closest one and you have to carry all your items back home with you. (I miss you CR-V!) So today's greatest purchase was a reusable shopping bag, which will make my life easier when carrying my groceries home from the store.

London is such an incredible city to explore. There are people from every nation, religion, nationality and ethnic group. Every time we think we are going to converse with a British individual, they end up being from a different country. It truly is a global city and you can see the evidence of all the different people every where you go. It'll be interesting to find out who my professors are, as many of them are not American. Hopefully the accents won't be too difficult to understand

Sorry today's update isn't going to be too thrilling - basically did some school supply shopping and went to the school for academic information. We plan on heading out exploring again in a little bit. Tomorrow, we intend on heading to some local markets and really just doing more wandering. There are so many free things to do around here and lots of London still left to explore.

We are really blessed to be attending Syracuse Abroad because they arrange a great variety of field trips weekly which are usually free or of a very low cost. It's really nice for the budgeting college student! Yes, London is a TAD expensive but I have found most of the food costs reasonable.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have more stories to share soon!