Since the last update I have been relaxing a bit after the first few crazy days after arrival. Most of Sunday I spent getting organized and staying in the Kensington area. Although my first few days were a blast, I realized that I am unfortunately on a “study” abroad program so classes started on Monday. I am taking three classes this semester: Global Marketing, Economic Integration of the European Union (EI of EU) and British Life and Cultures. Classes here are long, at three hours each. Global Marketing and EI of EU both meet twice a week (that’s six hours per class per week!) and my British Life and Cultures class meets once a week. Marketing and EI of EU meet twice a week because they only last for 7 weeks as they stop when my internship begins. Although I am in class for a long time on both Monday and Tuesday, it is worth it to have four day weekends.
Classes are held at my school building, The Foundation House, which is just a few minutes walk from where I live at Metrogate. For the most part I am very happy with my three classes. My Marketing and EI of EU professors were both really experienced and somehow kept me interested for the entire 3 hour class periods. They also do not seem like very hard classes. My British Life and Cultures class wasn’t terrible but I definitely found myself getting very bored after about two hours.
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| Foundation House- my school building. |
In other news my friends and I booked three different trips since Sunday night. On January 21-23 we will be going on a guided tour of Amsterdam, Netherlands and Bruges, Belgium. On January 27-30 we will be going to Nice France and staying with our AKPsi friends Alexa and Marissa and finally on February 10-12 we will be spending a weekend in Madrid, Spain. I am very excited for the trips and am glad that we are taking advantage of our 4 day weekends, which we will no longer have after Spring break when our internships start.
Although I have only wrote about how much I love London such as how I can legally drink, there are definitely a few things that annoy me about the city/ British culture:
1) Everything is expensive, EVERYTHING.
2) The pound currencyà the Queen is on every single piece of currency, every coin and every bill. Cant they change it up a bit, Im sick of seeing Queen Elizabeth II. Also it annoys me to no end that the bills are all different sizes and that there are no 1 pound bills. Whenever I need less than 5 pounds change, I get handed tons of coins. I hate carrying around change, so I usually empty it out of my pockets as soon as I get home. As a result I currently have an entire Ziploc bag just filled with coins.
3) Food does not contain preservatives or anything artificial. This is actually a good thing since food here is definitely healthier for you than in the US, but because there are no preservatives everything goes bad really fast. Bread, Fruit and Milk all goes bad in less than three days in the fridge, resulting in much more frequent grocery shopping. Since food contains nothing artificial, it is also way more expensive.
4) They drive on the wrong side of the road. As a result I always look the wrong way when crossing the street and I almost get hit by a car everyday.
5) My umbrella is my best friend here. Even when you look out your window and there is a clear blue sky, bring your umbrella because chances are that it will rain anyway (this has happened to me).
Anyway that’s enough of my ranting for now, i'll update next when something interesting happens.
-Rees
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