When in England…Order Drinks at the Bar, not the Table

I’ve been in London for two days, and it’s been eventful.

The flight itself over the Atlantic was fabulous—there were a million movies on the little screen in front of me, and several new releases, so I finally got to watch Eagle Eye, which I’ve wanted to watch the entirety of last semester. Between flights was sort of boring, and the public transportation in London was new and overwhelming, though I made it safely through, though I had two slight bumps: Great Portland Square in an American accent sounds like some other place on the outside of London and NOT where I was aiming to go in a British accent; trying to grab the attention of a taxi cab driver on the street is scary when you’re not used to anything other than calling a cab by phone.

My residence is so-so. The room’s fairly nice--it's sweet having my own sink and a supplied fridge, there’s one working shower in the girl’s bathroom (only two normally—the third is a bath!) and the kitchen closest to me is infested with flies, but the kitchen further from me is where everyone hangs out anyways. There’s like 15 other American study abroad students on this hall, and the regular students we’ve met are really social, so the hall’s pretty lively.

Orientation felt like the beginning of freshman year all over again—awkwardly looking at other people trying to figure out whether I should just go forward and introduce myself, a series of lectures from various administration telling us things that went in one ear and out the other, and a party in the evening, where people mingled from group to group, asking the same series of questions. Well, one thing was different—they served red and white wine to everyone at the party, and I don’t remember that in freshman orientation.

I planned on retiring early, but one freshman on my hall said they were going out to a pub, and I decided being antisocial so soon into the semester wasn’t cool, so I joined the group of partly freshman, partly study abroad students (about 85% of all the study abroad kids were from the U.S.) who were going to the pub, and had my first taste of a drink called…Snakefight? Snakebite? It was yummy, a mix of cider and beer and grenadine, but far too sweet for me to have more than a cup. Tomorrow morning, I have an early morning lecture on “How to Study Successfully at UCL.” Joy. Night, everyone.