Wrapping up London

OK now that I'm at Manchester, I have proper internets for updating!

I'll start by summarizing what happened in London.

So in case people are a bit confused with the orientations that I've been doing, I'll explain. I'm studying at the University of Manchester, which is in Manchester. However, I applied through Arcadia University's Study Abroad Office, so they had their own orientation for all students studying in the UK who also applied through them. Arcadia's orientation was in London. There were students studying at the University of Manchester and University of Nottingham, as well as students participating in Arcadia's own programs, like the internship program and the semester abroad program for freshman. Orientation was Monday - Wednesday and consisted of informational sessions in the morning about adjusting to life in the UK. They gave us the afternoon free to explore London and helped us by graciously providing unlimited tube passes and tickets to a play Wednesday evening.

London was unreal. It's definitely a city, but it's too clean and too royal-looking. Re: cleanliness - the tube did not reek, and there was no graffiti anywhere. As for the architecture and the like, the buildings were very consistent. They all look like they were built during the same era (like 1600s) which was nice to look at (Manchester's not the case). This also made London very historically-rich. It was definitely very pretty, although it seemed like a fake city for being so ... nice.

In London, I ended up doing a bit of sightseeing, though I didn't get to everything. During orientation, I met the other Manchester students. Actually, I would like to note that everyone else is either a business or an English major, which was interesting for me as a math major. Ok, so I met Ivy, a student at Grinnell who studies English, and Filipe, a student at Hartford who studies business. John and the rest of us went down Fleet Street looking for a barber shop, but to no avail. However, along the way, Ivy spotted a couple secret houses that belonged to famous English writers, so that was cool and off the beaten path. Eventually we made it to the British Natural History museum, which was super cool but we didn't go in. A bit further along, we got to Parliament and the Big Ben. We went into the Parliament to sit in on a House of Commons proceeding, but it was too full so we ended up sitting in on a House of Lords proceeding. We preferred the House of Commons because we've seen on CSPAN that it looks like a pub; the MPs would be throwing things at each other and telling jokes, lots of fun. There weren't any seats left, so we sat in on the House of Lords, which was supremely boring, but I had fun counting the number of Lords who were passed out haha.

We saw a play, as a group, on Wednesday night, The 39 Steps. It was a comedy based on a Hitchcock film of the same name, and referenced a number of Hitchcock's works, so it was a nice little game to spot the references. I can officially say I've been to a British play.

That's a pretty good summary of London. Right now I'm going to go grocery shopping with John and Filipe. Later tonight, we're going to dinner and a pub crawl to celebrate Filipe's birthday so it'll be lots of fun. I'll write more about gastronomic firsts and my homestay when I get a chance. Bye!