Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

Whew...sorry I haven't updated sooner. After wandering around the city all day I usually come back here exhausted. But, now it's time for an recap of Thursday, Friday, and today.

Thursday, some people had class so I stuck around the room and ran errands. Thursday night we went out to a see a dance. It was amazing! They were doing crazy acrobatic stuff. They did dances to a bunch of old spirituals at the end. It was really good! Everyone in our program enjoyed it. The group that performed was a group from America and I was glad to see my country so well represented. Sometimes I feel like us Americans talk so loudly, I feel like everyone else is talking much quieter than us and we stick out as loud obnoxious Americans...perhaps that is just because I am aware of the difference between our accents...

Anyway, Friday we (Laura, Chris, Andrew, Heather, David, and I)went to the London Eye in the morning. It was rather pricey, but it was a lot of fun and we got a bunch of pictures. After that we (the whole program) had a Walking Tour of Bloomsbury. It was given by a large man from Wisconsin who had lived in London for a long time. He had a very big voice that projected well. It fit his size. :-) He was a very nice man and I felt pretty comfortable asking him all my random questions, such as, what is 'franked mail' and what do the squiggly lines on the road *really* mean? He showed us all around our neighborhood. It was really interesting to see our neighborhood. I went in rather skeptical because we've been living here for a week now and we have been wandering around and shopping and stuff, but we learned that we had only explored a tiny little section on the very edge of our neighborhood. He also explained a lot of the history behind our neighborhood. I also enjoyed the fact that he would go through the etymology of different words, either street names or any other name. It was really interesting.


That evening we (Laura, Heather, David, Andrew, and I) went to a coffee shop and sat around and talked for a long time. That was really fun. I am getting to know these people in my group a lot better. They are all really nice and a lot of fun to hang out with.

Then, today, we (Laura, Heather, David, Andrew, Chris, and I) went down to the Thames River Festival. That was a lot of fun! It was a lot like a state fair only along a river and without rides. But it was a lot of fun to just walk around and look at everything. We took a lot of pictures of the London Eye, because it was all lit up with changing colors! Also, the whole Parliament building behind Big Ben was lit up and beautiful. You should definitely go to my Picasa website to see all of the pictures. I'll put a few up here.

Here's the London Eye at night!
Here's the Parliament and Big Ben at night!
We also found time for a silly picture:
I also liked this sign a lot:
As if the door is afraid of something.... :-P

Welll, that's all for now. Laura and maybe Andrew and I are heading over to All Souls Church tomorrow morning for the second service and then free lunch afterward. Hopefully we'll meet some other students since it is a welcome back day for students. Then I think some of us are planning to go back to the Thames River Festival.

Prayer requests: That I'll be able to find a copy of Love's Labour's Lost relatively quickly at a decent price... Thankfully, Tracy seems to be recovering from her cold. Neither Laura or I have gotten sick. I think I am pretty much over my jet lag. Thank you so much for your prayers!! The weather here has been spectacular! It has been in the mid to high 60's and hasn't rained a bit. Apparently it stays about like this until the end of October. So, praise God for that! I am really loving it here. I am loving getting to know the people in my program and I am enjoying exploring the city.

First Days of Classes!

Tuesday and Wednesday we had our first classes of the semester. On Tuesday I had "The Active Art of Listening and Public Performance" and "The History of Science in London". They were both good. For our music class, we are supposed to go to 20 performances this semester. There are apparently a lot of free concerts around London. We went to one as part of our class on Tuesday. It was good, but I am still 'suffering' from jet-lag so a little while into the performance I got soooo sleepy. Thankfully I made it through the concert...I don't think the performers would appreciate an American student falling over asleep during their performance... Science class was right after that. I hardly had any time to wolf down a few bites of a sandwich. (On a different note, they have really good bread here and I like mild cheddar cheese here!) Science class, I think, will be interesting. We'll be talking about a lot of stuff I've learned about before in other science classes. It'll be interesting to hear it all from an English perspective, having heard the American perspective for so long.

Tuesday night, Laura, Andrew, and I went to a newcomer's evening at All Souls Church. I have a friend who went to church there when he was on this same study abroad program. They showed us around the church and told us about different programs within the church. We met the man who runs the student programs. He gave us information about the lunch welcoming students back for the semester. It was good to learn about the church and what they have for students.

Wednesday we didn't have class until 3pm so some of us decided to go see Westminster Abbey. We left at about 10am to get to the Abbey for the 11am tour. There were six of us total, Laura, Mary, Heather, David, Andrew, and me. The Abbey was amazing! There are so many memorials to so many poets, writers, musicians, and even actors in Poet's Corner. That was the last stop of our tour. There were a ton of kings and queens who have been buried in there. We got to see where the queen sits when she comes to church at Westminster. It is just an amazing abbey. The tour was about 90 minutes and sadly, we could not take pictures inside. We were able to take a few pictures which I have put up on my photo page, here. Here's a picture of the Abbey from out front with two of my friends, Laura and Mary.


After seeing Westminster, we started looking for lunch. We wandered around and found St. James Park. We looked around St. James, but all we saw were million pound homes. We finally started heading towards the tube station in despair, but passed by a little sandwich shop after passing several expensive pubs. We grabbed some sandwiches and headed back to the park to eat our lunch. The sandwiches were incredible! They really filled us up.

After that, we headed back for our class at 3pm. That class was "Shakespeare and Drama". Our professor for that class is a little old lady who teaches several other courses for other universities. She was really hard to follow; she would start explaining one play of Shakespeare's and then switch to a different play in the middle of the first play without telling you and then switch back to the original play sometime later. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure it out pretty soon. But it definitely made taking notes pretty difficult.

Right now, Florida State University is using most of the classrooms in our building, so we only have one class room in the basement. Sadly, this room is boiling hot. We have tried opening windows, but they will not budge. This makes focusing for an extended period of time (2.5-3 hours) rather difficult. But in a couple of weeks, we will have the other classrooms on the ground floor for our own use.

I suppose that is all to tell for now. We are going to a dance tonight, so I'll have to tell you about that tomorrow! It is our first outing as a group.

Prayer: My roommate, Tracy, is sick with a slight cold. You could pray that she gets better quickly and that Laura and I don't catch it. I think I am still a little jet-lagged. It's getting better, but I'm still exhausted a lot of the time. I think that's all for now. Thanks for your prayers!

Clothes!

I finally got my other suitcase!!!! I am soooo happy! It was here this afternoon when I came back after our orientations at about 3pm. Before, when I was talking to people online and they would ask me how London was I would usually be enthusiastic, but I knew that when my clothes got here, I would be very happy and content. :-)

Today we had orientation for our flats and the rules surrounding said flats. Then we got our computers set up to be able to print from the printers we have in the Winston House. The Winston House is a house about a 5 minute walk from our flats that is owned by UNC. This is where we will have our classes. There are also printers for us to print out our papers and we have a small, rather limited library.

After that, we had orientation at the London University Student Union, known as ULU. We saw all that they had to offer and we got our cards to get into the ULU. It is a rather small union, compared to the one at UNC, but we will be happy to make use of its services! They have a bunch of clubs that look interesting. Some of the more random ones were: lifesaving, orienteering, rifle, and London Revelation Rock Gospel Choir. I'm interested in the Art club, the Ski and Snow club, and the Agape club, which I assume is a Christian club. Most of the universities in England don't seem to start for two more weeks, so those clubs won't start up for a while yet.

After that, we had a while to get lunch so Laura, Heather, Mary and I got lunch at the British Museum and wandered around, exploring it a bit. There was an exhibit that had all the prescription pills for a man and a woman laid out over their lifetime. The pills were laid out in chronological order so you could see when the lady started taking pills for her breast cancer and when the man had to take pain relievers for his broken ankle. It was insane how many pills they took, but it made me think about how many pills I take, regularly or not. The man had died of a heart attack. The display noted that he took more pills in the last 10 year of his life than the first 66. But the woman is still alive and 'going strong' according to the display. It was interesting to see how much we rely on medicine now.

Then we had orientation at the Senate House Library. The library is large, not quite as big as Davis Library at UNC, but it is much, much more confusing. There are stairs that pop out in random places and take you places you didn't mean to go and the rooms are not self explanatory. You walk into any room and I can guarantee that it will have books, desks, and computers. There aren't many signs to tell you where things are. Also, their classification system is very different from the one we use at UNC. I suppose it will take a while to get used to it, but I guess by the end of the semester I'll know my way around there pretty well.

Oh, last night, one of my roommates, Laura went to church at this church that I'd heard of. They have both morning services and a night service. Since we had a tour of London in the morning, she went to the evening service. I wanted to go, but (1) I had no clothes and (2) I had to wait for them to deliver one of my bags. But she enjoyed it so I am looking forward to visiting next week. They also have a newcomers night tomorrow night and I think we are going to try and go to that. They also have Bible studies for students and other ministries that look very interesting to me. I'm really excited about getting to check it out.

And now, I believe I will watch 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'. :-) I hope ya'll are all doing well!!

Flat!

This is me with one of my roommates. We were wandering around the outside of the British Museum looking for places to eat Saturday evening when we happened upon a little Thai place. It was delicious! I had satay and coconut rice and they were really really good. We'll definitely have to go there again.

Well, I've explored my flat. 'Fully equipped kitchen' awakened images of plenty of dishes, tupperware to store leftovers in, measuring cups, and lots of pots and pans. In actuality, we have three knives, spoons, forks, plates, bowls, mugs, and pots. There are no pans and there are no measuring cups except for one glass cup that measures in pints and decalitres... Needless to say, we're going to have to buy several things so that we can make food in any sort of capacity...


This is our little flat kitchen. I like to call it our 'closet kitchen' because it is so small. It really is like a closet that they converted into a kitchen. One of my roommates aptly noted that you could cook without hardly moving. I suppose it's a blessing in disguise. ;-)

I have one of my bags now. Sadly it was not the one with all of my clothes... Hopefully that one will come tomorrow... At some point I have to figure out how to work our telephone. I tried to call the airport today, but for some reason the number wouldn't work. But hopefully I can figure that out.

We went on a quick tour of London by bus today. Apparently you can rent a horse and ride around Hyde Park. We saw several people riding as we passed by. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go riding in the park. There were a lot of other places that I'd like to go, but I can't really remember them all right now. But it was fun to see a lot of London. Hopefully I'll get to know the city a lot better by the end of the semester.

I'm in London!!

I made it to London in one piece and I found my flat without too much trouble. The only problem is that my luggage is still in New York. The people at the airport said that it should get there tomorrow about the same time I got in today and that they would call me and send it to me. I took the tube to Bloomsbury and then wandered around for a little while, mislead by the differences between "Square" versus "Place". If there's a "Bedford Square" then there's a "Bedford Place", a "Bedford Street" and so on... So I finally figured out the difference and got my keys and made it to the flat without collapsing. The flats are nice; rather small, but nice. I think some of us are going to go get some food and some converters for the plugs. Then at 5pm we are all going to head down to where we have class and have some food with our program director.

Prayer requests: That my luggage will make it here tomorrow and that I'll be able to adjust to the time difference and get some good sleep tonight, as I was falling asleep on the tube... Thanks ya'll!

Waiting

As I write this I am sitting in JFK International Airport waiting for my flight to London. I probably won’t be able to post this until Saturday or Sunday.

My first flight went well, I sat beside a girl my age who had finished her studies and was working for a telephone company in Egypt. She was with her family who had come to America for summer vacation and they were heading back to Egypt. I had a lot of fun talking to her about all sorts of stuff. It was interesting to learn more about Egypt and the culture there and she was interested to learn about what kind of stuff I did in college.

Now I have about 2 hours until I leave for London. This flight is going to be draining. I am already tired since I didn’t sleep too much last night and then navigating my way around 2 different airports and doing so much new stuff in one day has drained me. But God will provide the strength I need. I just hope I can get a little sleep on the way over. I’m less worried about getting from the airport to the flats and all that, still a little worried, but less so. Right now my main concern is the fact that one of my legs is hurting…I think I cut the circulation off on the first flight and now it is rebelling…. But hopefully on this flight, I’ll be able to stretch out a little more… We’ll see.

There’s not really much to tell about this airport or anything… It’s huge, but that’s about it… There’s a little kid running around and shouting, but this terminal is pretty big so it’s not bothersome or anything. I’d like to take a nap, but there are armrests between the seats, so I wouldn’t be able to lay down… I suppose I’ll figure something out…. Anyway, that’s about all for now. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to tell you at the end of Saturday.

I’ll probably put prayer requests at the end of each post for those of you who would like to pray for me. Don’t feel like you have to, but any prayer is appreciated! I’d be happy to pray for anyone, you can just post it in a comment or send me an email. :-)

Prayer requests: That I would be able to get enough rest before classes start. And that the jet lag wouldn’t be too bad.

Suitcases and craziness

I am done with camp now and beginning to work on getting ready for England. As I do this, it is dawning on me that I will be living out of a suitcase for four more months... Only this time, I will have even less that I am able to take with me. Having traveled and lived abroad before, I don't believe this will be as hard for me as for other people in my program. The actual packing process has yet to begin, so we will see how it goes...

On a similar note, I am realizing how much I have yet to do that *must* be done before I leave... That is in addition to seeing all of my friends off and saying final goodbyes to friends at camp. I have yet to get a English Heritage pass, which will allow quick and much cheaper access to many of the sightseeing places that we will be going. There are also many different things that I need to buy such as warm, waterproof walking shoes and a warm, waterproof jacket... The list gets longer and the amount of money that I have to spend on them seems to get smaller and smaller... But, then, I guess that is how it always is. But in the end I know that God will provide. So, I shall leave you now to go search for some warm waterproof walking shoes and jackets that *hopefully* don't cost a fortune, since I don't happen to possess said fortune...