week 1: you big gherkin

ok, i'm going to write a post instead of deciding what classes i should take. gah! there's just too many good courses. i'm like a kid in a candy store.

well, week 1 in london is over. it was slightly crazy, slightly hectic, but mostly fun.

first off: i looove my dorm. it couldn't be in a better location. it's right off of trafalgar sqaure in central london, a site with enormous lion statues that attracts lots of tourists, and right by the strand, a busy street with lots of stores, theatres and cafes. which means i can also cross being stabbed while walking home alone off my list of worries.

my favorite thing about the city so far is that it's incredibly walkable. i live about a minute away from the river thames, and on one jog i can run by the tate modern art museum, the globe theatre and cross THE london bridge (which, by the way, is not very impressive). speaking of jogs, one day i was running along the river, enjoying the lovely scenery, and bam! tripped on God knows what (probably my own feet) and fell. well, it was really more of a baaaaaam - i think i did somewhat of a half somersault, and of course, i had to land at the feet of some woman walking right towards me. i scraped both my knees and somehow managed to scrape my left shoulder as well....

the second night i was here, the school sponsored a boat party for all the study abroad students. afterwards, i went out to a pub with some kids i met on the boat - a real english pub! had a pint (correction: 1/10 of a pint) and played pub quizzes, paid for by an english dude who i gathered was too drunk to know how much money he was wasting on american kids who knew diddlysquat about british pop culture.

another fun time was when my laptop's AC adapter broke and i took a trip to London suburbia to buy a new one. 17 miles out of the city, you can't really tell that you're in england and not the US. 17 miles of of the city, you also can't get a taxi for the life of you to get back to the subway station. when i finally do, the driver bloke tells me i could've just stayed in the city and gone to any electronic parts store. way to go, jeanne.

i was obviously worried about being dirt poor before i got here, but i've done a surprisingly good job of staying on budget.... except during the school activities fair. here, to join a club (or "society", as they like to call it), you have to pay a membership fee, anywhere from £1-3. but in exchange, you might get some freebies like stationary or environmentally-friendly reusable tote bags (who doesn't need more of those). me being the idiot who can never say no to nice people, i joined more societies than i can remember, much less count. and in exchange for my £20+ of overexcitedness, i now have 6 pens, 3 boxes of mints, 5 post-it pads and a tri-colored highliter. that's a unfair transaction, if you ask me.

toodles!