The Beginning!

   Well, after sleeping for maybe 20 minutes on the red eye to London, I arrived safely at Heathrow, split a cab to Kensington, and unpacked a bit just in time to be thrown into orientation (I still haven't finished unpacking because we have no storage space in our tiny flat). My roommate and I are getting a long great, but we have bunk beds which is never fun...hopefully maintenance will be taking them down soon. Oh and we're in the basement so our view is of the fire escape.

   On the first day of orientation, we took a walking tour of the neighborhood and it's beautiful. Very expensive area, everyone drives Bentleys, Maseratis or, my personal favorite, Aston Martins. The second and third days of orientation consisted of lectures about British culture/politics/economics...all of which would have been interesting if it wasn't 9am, feeling like 4am, right after taking a red eye flight. Poorly planned if I do say so myself. I managed to stay awake for the interesting ones but I was out cold for the rest of them...oh well.

   We've generally stayed within walking distance of our building for shopping and what not, but yesterday my roommate and I took the tube to Westminster and saw Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, and all that fun stuff, got flashbacks of Mom and my visit to Greg.

   Then today we took boat tour down the Thames...I was expecting a boat cruise so I was a bit disappointed because it wasn't a big party like I had hoped, but still a great time. We then walked around Greenwich for a while, it was a very cute area with little boutiques and a nice market place. Then we walked up a huge hill to the Royal Observatory and overlooked the City of London. In that same place, you can stand on the Prime Meridian of the World, which is at zero degrees longitude. Oh and we went into Queen's House, where Elizabeth I and two other queens lived...very cool.

  We've been to a couple pubs/bars and a club (don't worry, Dad, we stay in groups) and I have gotten minimal sleep so now I'm getting a cold which sucks but I always get sick so I guess I should have seen it coming. Going to bed early tonight, I have my first class tomorrow 9-1, that's four hours...not sure how I'm going to make it through that but, we have every Friday off until our internships start which is awesome for traveling!

Sorry this was a long/boring post but now I don't have to email everyone and you can just read this if you want to! :)