I'm Lovin' It

After being here for a few weeks, we’ve gotten to know the transportation system pretty well. We love to make fun of the lady who announces the stops and train lines you’re on, it helps us practice our British accents. We enjoy when she politely says, “Mind the gap when leaving the tube.” But then again everything sounds polite in a British accent. We’ve decided which tube stops and train lines are our favorites.

Stina:

Favorite tube line: Hammersmith and City

Favorite overground stop: Canada Water

Favorite tube stop: Waterloo (Steph sings Abba’s "Waterloo" EVERY time we go through it)

Steph:

Favorite tube line: Jubilee

Favorite overground stop: London Bridge

Favorite tube stop: Tottenham Court Road

How delightful are all of those names? We are falling in love with this city!

On Wednesday night we went to see Les Miserables. It was perfect. The singing, acting, and production made it an unforgettable experience.

This week we both received our Oyster cards in the mail! Oyster cards are passes for the tube, buses and the overground. We look like real Londoners now, swiping in and out of the station without needing to buy a ticket every time we go somewhere. We are REALLY excited about these cards, you have no idea!

Friday was our busiest travel day so far. Stina started off her day by waking up at 6 a.m. to meet a dear friend (Farrell) who had a layover in London. Steph slept a little later and traveled to meet Stina at Paddington station. From there we took the train to Reading, England.

Reading is a lovely city. Our friend from high school, Stephanie, got married to a Brit and moved here this month. We visited her home and got to see our other high school friend Claudia, who was also visiting Stephanie. We had a great time acting like normal people instead of college students. We got to eat some delicious Mexican food, walk around a mall, and most importantly drive in a car on the wrong side of the road! We’re thinking about renting one and trying it out. That’s a lie; we would definitely put the lives of these poor Brits in serious danger if we tried.

After three weeks of being in London, our laundry piles had become quite large. We ventured out to a laundry mat called "The Laundrette." Sounds cute right? Not so much. We spent way too many pounds to wash and dry our clothes (which didn’t come out so clean and dry). But the other people inside made it quite an experience. We kept to ourselves and did some schoolwork (yes we’re doing schoolwork!).

Saturday night we got invited to someone’s house for a game night. Yay friends! We played a British version of catch phrase. We weren’t much help to our teams as we had no idea what the words “aubergine,” “tea towel,” and “trainers” meant. Our new British friends got a kick out of it. We imitated our best British accents for them and they did an American one. We definitely don’t sound as whiny as they make us seem! We’ve decided to buy the game and bring it back to the motherland so we can show off how sophisticated we’ve become.

Sunday was quite the day! We went to two different churches, walked across London Bridge, strolled through Regent’s Park, met up with some friends for afternoon tea, and ended the day by clogging our arteries with Big Macs, fries, and McFlurries.

Although it seems like all we do is run around London and have fun, we are taking classes and really enjoying them! This whole “class once a week” and “optional readings” thing really suits us.

Cheers!

Night (Day) at the Museum

If you don't care about history, precious gems, culture, or if you hate learning skip to the fifth paragraph. (If you decide to take this route, shame on you.)

For those of you who are museum nerds like us, you would LOVE London. There are 312 museums in London but we only managed to stumble upon 3 this weekend. Our first stop was the Natural History Museum where we saw a dinosaur (yes, a live one) and thousands of minerals and rocks (Steph was way too excited about these, yeah Geology class!) We learned that a millipede moves faster than a cheetah and sometimes small bugs can single-handedly consume a rat, we're still trying to figure that one out.

We then walked to visit Victoria and Albert. They have a Museum, The V&A. We spent quite a while in the Medieval Times area. We even got to try on some traditional robes from the Middle Ages.

Our favorite stop of the day was The British Museum. We split up and tried to conquer the areas that most interested us in 30 minutes. It didn't work. Steph spent the most of the 30 minutes fixated on the Rosetta Stone and only got to see a few artifacts from Ancient Rome and Greece. Stina only managed to visit the Islamic Empire exhibit. We're definitely hitting up The British Museum again. We've decided to make Friday the official "Museum Day."

Side note: the picture in front of the British Museum includes Becca! (Stina's friend from Princeton that came to visit)

After our fun filled, learning day we ventured to Notting Hill. After asking a local where to eat, we followed her advice and went to "Crazy Homies." This little Mexican joint was absolutely lovely. The food was to die for, the music was pumpin' and the service was brilliant. We can't really explain how great it was, you'll have to make a trip to London to experience it yourselves.

Unlike the cleanliness we encountered at the museums, the club we went to Saturday night was dirty, the place and the people. We are happy we went to experience a renowned London club but that will be our first and last visit. You may be wondering why we were so enthusiastic about writing about museums and not clubs... we're not your typical college girls. We did have a lot of fun immitating the less coherent people and dancing in/with our coats (we refused to pay two pounds to check them).

Like the club, our own kitchen is (in the most appropriate terms), NAST (we didn't leave out the "y", that's what we say). We've enjoyed grocery shopping and trying to cook on our own, but the facilities are making that real difficult. The picture speaks for itself. (No, Mory and Shannon, none of this is our mess).

Bottom line, families and friends, we need money to eat out. We take any form of international currency. Dollars, pounds, euros, any donation is accepted.

We're definitely livin' the life. We love it here. COME VISIT! (studentuniverse.com has great deals) Sorry seasoned folks, it's a student only website.

Cheers!

Level One, Here We Come

The school/grading system here in the UK is very different than what we are used to in America. Your final grade is a level. Level 1 is an A, level 2 is a B and so-forth. Our grades will be entirely based on one 3000-word paper we write for each class. These 3000 words, we were warned, need to be in UK English. We don’t really understand why colour needs a “u” or why the British think they should spell organisation like the French, but it’s their programme, so we’ll try to be on our best writing behaviour!

The past few days we have been pretty busy getting settled into our rooms, attending a make-up orientation (we missed the original one because our flight was cancelled) and actually going to class (we still think we’re on holiday here). Classes here only meet once a week for 2 hours, but have a lot of independent reading. The stereotype of English people being anti-social even surfaces in the education system! Fortunately, both of us are taking classes in which we fancy the subject matter.

As we settled into our rooms we realized we definitely needed some hangers. Our coats were sprawled across both of our rooms and it was starting to get a little crowded. When you don’t have a Target or Wal-Mart it is nearly impossible to find hangers! We asked various people around campus and NO ONE knew. The best answer we got was (remember to put on your British accent), “I just buy my clothes and take the hangers they come on and hang them up that way.” Oh, thanks buddy. After searching for hours we felt accomplished when we found a couple of packs in a market nearby; you can see the tacky carpet on our floors now!

Today we ventured into a street market in Deptford, a town about 10 minutes away (the same town where we found the hangers). We tried on some interesting British fashion and saw some characters. We enjoyed the atmosphere and want to make it a Wednesday tradition!

Remember when we said the UK school system was different? Well, the teachers and students here are a little too comfortable with each other. In class today, Cristina witnessed a student talking to a teacher about a reading she had done. As they talked, the student proceeded to pull out some marijuana and roll a blunt. NO BIG DEAL. The teacher continued talking as if everything was normal. Everyone in the whole room acted like that. Cristina, on the other hand (on the inside), was in utter shock. What happened to D.A.R.E? or Red Ribbon Week??

Tonight we went grocery shopping at our local grocery store, Sainsburys. We have made a trip there at least once a day, but sometimes up to three times. We love it!

We have been exploring where we live and our urban home is growing on us, especially when we get to watch London sunsets from our windows every day :)

Cheers!

Getting Around

We must say, the transportation system around here is very impressive! Between the buses, the trains, and the "tube" you can get anywhere in a timely manner, even if you are directionally challenged (a.k.a Cristina). We've had plenty of adventures on all three modes of transportation already!

Yesterday, we took our first tube trip to Central London. As easy as it is to get around, we encountered some difficulties, especially with the language barrier. Seriously, you would think going to an English speaking country would be easy, but Steph had to ask the English speaking man at the ticket office to repeat himself five times. We finally got our tickets and decided we were real Londoners, so naturally we could get dropped off in the middle of London and see every major tourist site without a map, in a few hours.

We managed to stumble upon a museum, the Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. Don't be impressed, there are signs every two feet in Central London directing tourists like ourselves to all of these sites. Keeping up with the tourist theme, we obviously got ripped off trying to buy lunch. Somehow we managed to pay £5 for a £2 sandwich because we got special bread that we didn't ask for. What's unspecial bread??? See what we mean about the language barrier?

After some shopping at H&M, TopShop, and Harrod's we were exhausted. For you non-Brits, we'll explain Harrod's through locational analogies. For you Auburners, it's the size of three Haley Centers, for you Princetonians, it's about double the size of the entire McCosh building, for you Miamians, Harrod's is the size of the Florida peninsula. Let's just say there was a lady in a ballgown singing opera from one of the twelve balconies...just like Macy's right?

We ended the night by attending a "Crazy Hat" party. Apparently it was National Hat Day? Even if it wasn't, we had a lovely time. The people and food were brilliant!

Today, we took the tube once again to SoHo to go to church at Hillsong. After seeing the selection of British godly men, we decided we were too old to wear promise rings that could be mistaken as engagement rings. To avoid any confusion about our marital status, we switched our rings to the right hand. Considering the language barrier already in place, we didn't want to cause further confusion. More importantly, church was brilliant and lovely! We'll definitely be back every Sunday!

Tonight we decided to go grocery and Poundland (like the dollar store) shopping at 4. It was a great idea considering everything closes at 5 on Sundays. We ran into Poundland and furiously grabbed £1 pots, pans, and dishes (what a deal!). We had 9 minutes to grocery shop and anyone who knows either of us knows how much we love food, so this was more than enough time. After throwing a lot of random items in our carts, we were told it was time to exit. We bought pasta with no sauce, cereal with no milk, and bread with nothing to put inside. Real substantial meals, huh?

By this point, we were each carrying 3 huge bags of random kitchen and grocery items. We went to the nearest bus station just wanting to give our arms a rest. After waiting for 30 minutes, and Steph's bags all breaking, we realized only certain buses stop at each stop. And guess what? None of the six buses we could take back home were stopping at the one where we were waiting. See how local we've become? After realizing this, we ran to another stop and hopped on with all of our items in hand.

Finally feeling at ease, we placed our massive bags on the seats next to us. After one stop, two ladies from Peckham (remember the hood next door?) dressed in tunics decided they wanted our bags' seats. Rude. Next thing we knew, our urban neighbors were sitting on top of our stuff and we were covered in the rest of it. We wish we had a picture to place here, but we didn't think it was an appropriate time to ask for one, so you'll have to rely on a mental image.

All in all, it's been a great weekend. We start classes tomorrow (wait, are we not here on vacation?) and hopefully we'll make some more local friends!

Cheers!

HERE WE ARE!

'Ello there!

Our journey to London started off a little rough as the combined weight of our luggage was 336 pounds. Walking through the Miami and London airports has done permanent damage to our backs but that's okay, we have enough scarves combined to keep a small country warm.

We got in a taxi full of excitement and our driver immediately asked (say this to yourself in a British accent) "packed lightly, ladies?" Our lovely driver Oliver then showed us around town and as we got closer to school he told us not to walk alone in Peckham. We promised him we wouldn't and by the time we finished our sentence we had arrived in our new neighborhood, a full 10 minute walk from our new school, Goldsmiths. COOL!

After unpacking, some orientation meetings and a little exploring in our new neighbor"hood", we stumbled upon some really good cheap places to eat (perk number 1 of living here). Last night we enjoyed some jacket potatoes, basically it's a loaded baked potato with a London flare (topped with meat, chili, beans etc.). Might not look super appetizing but they were lovely.

Today we got adventurous and took the bus (the first time the wrong way) to Greenwich. Our eyes and mouths started to water as we saw Starbucks, Subway and Mickey D's. Greenwich is a close, lovely town that we definitely want to spend more time in. It's full of shops, restaurants, theaters and organic markets (we even found fresh squeezed Florida orange juice to feel even more at home). As if that weren't enough, we got to eat TEX-MEX tonight! The place even had an American flag hanging inside. Go freedom!

In less than 48 hours we've already cried, laughed, and made some new friends. Tomorrow we're off to explore the touristy spots and attend a "Crazy Hat" party. We miss our friends and family dearly but we LOVE skyping, so hit us up often!

Cheers.