Londontown

I've been in London now for little over a week but already, it feels like it's been longer.

London is wonderful. I don't think I've ever taken to a city this quickly because I generally take a while before adjusting to a new place entirely.

There is so much greenery and open space, the lack of sky scrapers leaves everything feeling less frenetic and rushed.

The first day here I was with my dad. Our hotel overlooked Cartwright Gardens in Bloomsbury and was run by a cute French family. Due to jetlag and the uncomfortable cramped seats on British Airways, we were too tired to walk around so we ended up buying an unlimited ride pass and riding random double-decker busses to their end stops and back to see the city from above. It was surprisingly fun.

After heaving my two suitcases through the Tube, we got to the Umi Hotel where I stayed for a few days for Butler orientation and met the 5 other kids on my program who all quite cool. It's funny because all of us come from (fairly) liberal arts schools and three of us were from the Bay Area so we had a lot of common interests and got along quite well.

Our hotel was in Notting Hill so we walked around exploring a few cool parks (Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park) and of course sampling local pubs.

A note on pubs because I know attitudes towards drinking varies among the people reading this: pub culture here is really nice. It doesn't involve a lot of the crazy binge drinking at American parties or whatever. It's more a place to go and relax than a place to go to get wasted, which I like. You don't even have to drink while you're there, so I don't want you all thinking that London is turning me into an alcoholic because that is not true. With that said, it is the way to get the London experience because that is what students here do, so if you want to make friends with other students, you do go out with them, so that's what I'm doing. End note.

During orientation we also got to see "39 Steps" at a theater in Picadilly. It was a comic remake of the Hitchcock film and it was HILLARIOUS. Great play, if you ever have a chance to see it, do.

On Saturday we moved into our dorms, I'm living in Dinwiddy house along with most of the JYAs(as study abroad kids are called here) and a lot of SOAS third years and first years. My room is nice, it has a desk, some drawers, a bed, a wardrobe and a bathroom. It is a good sized room, especially for having a bathroom inside. My window looks into a courtyard outside so that's really nice. My four flatmates are all international as well, there's another JYA girl, a girl who transfered to SOAS from Georgetown, a guy from Japan and a guy from Korea. We all share a kitchen but I've been spending much more time in a flat upstairs.

I've been hanging out with a lot of interesting people, including Hans from Germany who is a great cook, two British brothers who are hillarious, a girl from Somerset ( I think), a guy from Old Jersey, and the other kids on the Butler program. Our british friends are hillarious and are making it their goal to introduce us to everything fun and british.

The flat upstairs is where the majority of them live and the rest of us spend the majority of our waking hours in there as well cooking, laughing, drinking endless rounds of tea. It's really fun, and I can't believe how quickly they accepted having us obnoxiously touristy Americans hanging around.

It's super expensive here but since we have our own kitchens, the food costs are okay and since some of us can cook, we are taking turns and it's been going real well so far. Tonight is Mexican food night in "the kitchen that stole our souls".
Even the weather has been good so far, we only had real rain once or twice and I've gotten a surprising number of sunny days. I'll see how I do though when the dreaded grey days come along.

Class starts next week, so that'll change the current routine of waking up and hanging out all day, sleeping at 4 AM then repeat.

But the final reason why London is fabulous?
The first offical freshers party was held in Club Surya.


I win.

Hope you are all doing well, the first few days meant lack of real internet in the hotel and such but with adjustment will come more updates.

Love,
me :)