Departure from Scotland & Back to London. Day 5.

June 26^th

I did not sleep much by the beginning of this day.  I got to bed at around 5am, and then I woke up at around 7am to go to the wi-fi lobby one last time to talk to the boyfriend <3 I updated him a bit on my life.

After that we all walked to the train station.

We got on our train for London and it was definitely a big step down from first class, but it most definitely wasn’t the worst! 

We finally arrived back in London after another super long 4 ½ hour train ride!  We got our big suitcases and began the extremely long walk with them.  It sucked because all of a sudden the sun was like, “Hey guys! I love being outside!”  We finally got to the tube and went to Bakers Street where our first housing is located. We were staying at the University of Westminster in Marylebone Hall till Sunday.  It isn’t the very best location because when we walk around the area it doesn’t feel like we’re in London.  It definitely feels like we’re in New York.

Anyway, we got settled in our new housing and I was assigned to live with Larissa again which is good news because she’s one of the awesome friends I’ve made so far!  The dorm room is nice! It’s very big because it’s a handicapped dorm-which I’m used to because I lived in a handicapped room all last year! The room is equipped with two twin beds, two desks and chairs, BIG windows with a semi-nice view, and LOTS of outlets. I tried to get my internet to work, but it wouldn’t work!!!

I went to the front desk, but they were extremely unhelpful.  I called the internet company, and a man with a giant accent answered.  He wasn’t helpful at all, and I had to keep asking him to repeat everything he said and he was obviously frustrated about that.  After the harder-than-it-should-have-been process of getting my address, he told me that they’d have somebody come out to fix it within 3-5 business days. That sucked because by that point, I was gone.

Once I gave up on trying to get the Internet, we got ready to go out for some food.  I hadn’t eaten all day other than a couple pineapple pieces so I was way hungry.

We walked to an adorable Italian restaurant.

Erin and me!

I had a margarita pizza with no cheese as per usual here in Europe. It was tasty!!! Next we walked back to our rooms and I tried the Internet again with zero luck and went to sleep!  

 

The Plane and Such. Day 1.

June 21st/22nd

Hello from London!!

After finding people who were part of the USAC Program, it didn't take too long for it to be time to board the plane.

All of us before getting on the plane!!

I found my middle seat and was preparing for an extremely uncomfortable flight by getting my headphones plugged in so I could begin watching movies. But when I tried to do so, they would not plug into the plug. The kind man sitting next to me asked one of the staff to help me out and they ended up moving me to a new seat. This was good news for me, because now I was in an aisle seat! So I started preparing once again, but of course, the volume button on the remote would not work. At this point, I was very worried that I would be spending this extremely long flight movie-less. But once the movie program was restarted, the volume finally worked!! After that, I proceeded to watch 3 movies. I watched The Dilemma, How Do You Know?, and No Strings Attached (for the second time..). Then I attempted to sleep. But that did not work as planned. I tried and tried and tried some more, but I did not sleep once during that over 10 hours flight to London. And, I am still awake to tell you the story.

FINALLY we landed. And we grabbed our baggage and made it though customs effortlessly.

When we left baggage claim we were met with Ellie who was holding a USAC sign and we met up with the rest of the group. It was nice because I recognized some of the various faces from the facebook page that we were all on..haha! We walked to the underground to get to the hotel we were staying it. This was a tough job because we all had giant amounts of luggage. There were multiple flights of stairs, people to maneuver around.. There was one girl who had two full sized roller suitcases. I definitely felt bad for her, but she made it! We eventually made it to the tube and were on it for about a half hour. After that we got off the tube and walked up the stairs to see our first sights of London.

We were mesmerized to say the least, everyone was so excited and thankful to have finally made it here! After making sure everyone had made it out of the tube, we began our walk to the hotel. Our hotel was kind of a string of many different little hotels. The one that I stayed at was called Avenmore Hotel.

Pretty, huh?

Right when we walked inside there was a tiny flight of stairs that led up to the “front desk.” That was were we got our keys to our room. Luckily, my roommates and I were on the first floor, therefore we did not have to figure out how to get our massive bags up the tiny stairs. We went inside and began to explore the small, adorable room. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of this room; I wish I had because it was very antique-y and cute. However, I was working on like zero hours of sleep at that point.

We settled in and just got everything organized for a few moments, and then we realized we were hungry so we went out to find a little café. We walked around for a while, and were trying to find a place that was charming, special and unique. We were standing outside talking about what we should do and a guy came out of a café and asked if we were from the USAC program. He said he was and had been traveling around Europe for a few weeks already. I recognized him from facebook (lol) so we went inside. I had some super tasty tomato soup. After that, a couple people wanted to buy international phones so we went looking for the store that does that.

We met up with the rest of the group at around 6pm and walked with our big luggage to Kings Cross to check it in so we could leave it there while we went to Scotland. We also got our railway cards at Kings Cross as well.

That took a very long time. Then we went to a little pub/restaurant called O’Neill’s.

That's my roommate Larissa and me in front of the pub we went to!

Everybody got fish and chips, but I got mashed potatoes and peas. Mmmmmm! I also had a sip of a friend’s beer. It was not tasty. Once we were done there, we were all extremely tired so we walked back to our hotels. We got ready for bed and I basically slept like a baby. However, I did wake up once at about 5am for some reason, but I was able to get back to sleep soon after that.

More to come soon! Stay tuned ;)

Leaving in 8 Days (not including today).

So the big day is getting closer and closer, and my suitcase currently looks like this:

Not quite as organized as I'd like it to be...

There is so much to accomplish before June 21st.
Wish me luck!

What is happening here.

The plan is to use this blog to document my many experiences I anticipate having while I am studying in London this Summer.
I am going to London for a 5 week program where I will be taking two courses to count towards graduation (which is happening at the end of Fall semester!!). I'll be taking Theater in London and Art in London. Could there be a more perfect mixture of classes to take in London?!
Although the actual educational program is 5 weeks long, I will be abroad for an additional 2 weeks. Which ultimately means I will be in Europe for a total of 7 weeks. USAC offered an optional tour of Endinburgh, Scotland for the week before the program begins, so I will be there for the first week out of the 7 weeks. Then I will be staying an additional week after the program ends. During that week, I will attempt to explore France and Italy as time permits.

So, that's pretty much all there is to it. I will do my best to make this blog as entertaining, informational, and exciting as possible.