Week's End

So, thus ends my first week in London.

And this is my first post, mostly because I've had a fuzzy internet connection. When I first open up my laptop, I get good reception, but after a few minutes it peters out and is gone until I close the laptop, wait a few minutes, and open it again. I don't know what's up with that, but I'm either going to have to live with spotty internet and get steady online time at the school computers, or pay 99 pounds to have the Apple people look at it and figure out what's wrong. I'm more inclined to the spotty internet -- for now, at least.

This post will have no pictures, since I haven't really had good internet long enough to upload them. Thankfully I brought my flash drive, so I can put the pictures on there and then upload them from a school computer, but I'm only at school Monday-Thursday. I did get some pretty nice pictures, too!

Anyway.

The flight from LA was...horrible. I hate flying at the best of times, but with this particular flight I only managed to get at most two hours of sleep, I was always uncomfortable, and it was bumpy all across the Atlantic. My stomach hated it, and all I wanted was to go to sleep and not feel it, but alas! no good. Then when we got to Heathrow, we had to stay in a holding pattern for at least fifteen minutes when all I wanted was to get off the damn plane, but then when we finally land, we had to wait another fifteen minutes for our gate to be free, and I just wanted OFF THE DAMN PLANE. All told there ended up being a delay of almost an hour. Gah. I hate flying.

I met my roommate Liz, who is nice, and we got to the house just fine. My host mum Suzy was in Australia until Wednesday, but her son Tarik was there with his fiancee Francesca and they were both nice and helpful so we were fine. I was so tired I took a nap for a few hours, but I still managed to get a good eight hours of sleep that night.

Monday was our first day of orientation. The commute was about an hour and a half, with one bus ride, three different tube lines, and a ten minute walk on either end. I've since managed to condense that commute to about an hour, but that's with cooperative buses and tube lines.

There are twenty-nine people in my program, three of which are guys. We listened to some orientation stuff, and then Martin, the program director and one of our teachers, took us for a short walk around the neighborhood. Mom -- Dorothy L. Sayers lived just down the street from my school building! Literally down the street -- I walk for about a minute and get to a placard saying "Dorothy L. Sayers lived here".

Tuesday our teachers gave brief explanations of their classes. I'd been intending to take Britain Today (mandatory class), a history of the Empire class, a theater class, and a Shakespeare class, but now I've decided to take a 19th and 20th century novels class instead of the Shakespeare class. About half the reason I wanted Shakespeare was to see some of his plays, but I can see some of the plays without taking the class, and with the novels class we're supposed to go out and explore the London described in those novels, which sounded more interesting to me.

Tuesday afternoon was spent going to Greenwich. We took a boat ride down the Thames, and I got lots of pictures of things like the London Eye, the Tower Bridge, and so on. We had to climb up an awful hill to get to the Royal Observatory, which is where the meridian line is. It also had a pretty awesome view, so I took some pictures.

Wednesday was first day of actual classes, but it was mostly just introductory stuff. I was amused, however, when my history teacher started mocking the French. I'd thought it was just a stereotype that the British and the French like making fun of each other, but I guess not, if my history teacher does it at basically the first opportunity.

Also on Wednesday, Martin took us to the British Museum for about an hour. The British Museum is only about a ten-minute walk away from school, which is nice. Evanie and I went to see the Sutton Hoo helmet, which our History of the English Language professor last semester told us about and showed us pictures, so we got a couple pictures of us in front of it. When I can upload my pictures to the internet, I'm going to send those to him.

On Thursday I didn't have class until 4:30, so I wanted to take my computer to an Apple store to see if there was something they could do about the internet. I went to the one on Regent Street, so I could also explore Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus a bit. I'll definitely be going back there when I have more time. The Apple store, on the other hand, was not helpful except in telling me I'll need to pay 99 pounds for them to take my computer for a week or two and figure out what's wrong. I don't think I'm in such dire straits that I need that yet.

Friday was the first day of the weekend, since we always get three-day weekends. Liz and I and some of Liz's friends went to Highgate to have tea in a tea shop where Francesca works, and we felt very British about having tea in a tea shop. XD We were somewhat less British by taking loads of pictures to commemorate it. We then walked to the Highgate Cemetary because we wanted to see Karl Marx's grave, but you actually have to pay three pounds to get into the cemetary, so, after a few comments about how Karl Marx would be rolling in his grave at a cemetary practicing such capitalism, we left.

We spent a bit of time at the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street -- or, more accurately, the gift shop. At some point I'll definitely go see the museum itself, but the gift shop was interesting enough, for awhile. Then we came back to Harrow (that's where the homestays are) and had our first meal in a pub. Liz and her friends are all 19/20, so they were very excited to be legally buying drinks. I was very amused. They all ordered different things and kept tasting each other's drinks to see what each was like, but I didn't bother because I've already tried all the things they'd had. I was somewhat disturbed to feel a bit old. XD

Now it's Saturday, and I've had a lazy day, only going to the Harrow Town Centre to get a quick lunch and buy some groceries. I feel a bit odd for just hanging around all day, like I should be going out and doing stuff, but I think that's mostly an external thing -- like other people would be telling me I need to go out and do stuff. Trust me, I am not intending to spend my days here like I do in America, staying home most of the time, but I do need some down time, some just-for-me time. It refreshes me. If I spend every day going out and doing touristy stuff, I'll get burned out on the touristy stuff and just want to sit down and read a book. So to avoid that, I'm going to try and take a day every week or so just for me to relax.

Fourteen weeks is both a long time, and no time at all. I do have plenty of time to be a tourist, but also to pace myself. It doesn't feel like it's all that long until I'm done with my program, but I'm sure I can fit in what I most want to do and still keep myself from getting burned out.