February 10th

A fair amount has happened since the last post I made. Classes have started and they are okay. I'm taking four modules as they call them over here. Organisation Design and Management is my first class, which is from 2:30 to 5:30 on Mondays. They split the modules into two section, a lecture and seminar portion. The lectures, at least so far, seem to be pretty dry and uninteresting, and as the name implies...there isn't much participation from the students. The seminars, on the other hand, are more interactive and interesting. I've taken away a lot more from the seminars than I have from the lectures. That being said, i'm pretty thankful that they split the classes into these two sections, because three hours is a long time for one class. They do three years of college over here, so there are first, second, and third year modules. Organisation Design and Management is a second year course, and there are two assignments that will make up my mark (grade). 70% of the grade is based off of a 2500 word paper on the organisation design of Facebook as a company. The research for this will be primarily based off of two youtube videos that the tutor (professor) found. The remaining 30% comes from a student workbook that we complete in 3 or 4 of the seminars throughout the semester. I have my first one today and will have a better idea of what exactly these are in a few hours.

My next class is Art in London, which is from 2 to 4 on Tuesdays. This class is alright because we get to go to different museums, so I enjoy the fact that it gets me out and about London. The teacher, interestingly enough, is from the east bay in San Francisco and attended the academy of art in S.F. Last week we went to the National Gallery, which is right by Trafalgar Square, and I saw several pieces by Da Vinci, which was pretty cool. The grade in this class consists of four components. First is an ongoing journal that we will be keeping as we visit different museums, and this is worth 40% of the mark. Second is a 1500 word paper that's worth 35% of the grade, and it involves examining two pieces of art of our choice. Third is a short presentation which is worth 15% of our grade...mines tomorrow and it's on themes in Rococo Art. The last portion of our grade is 10% and it's just based on participation.

My third module is Spanish, which is from 6 to 8:30 on Wednesday nights. Not too much to say about this one... it's a little different from the U.S. language classes that i've taken because the instructor really makes an effort to not speak english in the class. Most of the language classes i've taken in the U.S. have involved more english, but obviously that changes as you get into higher level courses.

The last module i'm taking is Personal Finance, and it's from 10am to 1pm on Thursdays. It's a third year module and it's probably the most practical, useful class i'm taking. There are three components that make up the grade, first of which is a 60 minute in class test that's worth 50%. The second part is a 2000 word paper that is worth 40%, and the last 10% is based off of participation.

I spent this past weekend in Cardiff, which is in Wales and is about 150 miles west of London. I took a bus there with two of my friends and stayed at a Holiday Inn near the city center. It's a city of about 350,000, and is known for its Rugby team. It was fun to go there and it a nice change of pace from London. Everything felt very laid back there, and we met some natives at a few of the pubs/clubs that we went to. Welsh is a pretty interesting language, it sounds completely foreign and pronunciation of words is completely different from English. We visited the Cardiff Castle, which was really cool. Here are a few pictures.

The weather in Cardiff was awful, the wind was blowing and it rained pretty heavily for most of the time that we were there. We watched a rugby match at one of the pubs called The Old Arcade, and it was so packed that we had to stand for the first half. We ended up leaving and going to a less crowded place for the second half. Wales lost to Ireland, but it was fun to watch and learn about Rugby, as I didn't really know anything about the sport before my time over there. Seems like a pretty brutal sport. That was pretty much all we did in wales, I wanted to go to Cardiff Bay, but didn't get a chance to do that unfortunately. The castle was by far my favorite part of the town, and it was nice to see another place in the UK.

I'm hoping to explore more of London in the next few weeks, and I'm planning on taking a few tours of places like St. Paul's Cathedral, the Churchill War Rooms, Westminster Abbey, and a bunch of different art museums for my class.

I think that's about it for now, I'm off to get some pizza with a friend at a pub near my campus. They offer two pizzas for the price of one, too good to pass up!

January 22nd

Well it's been a busy week. I had another long adventure after my last post and focused mainly on Westminster. I started out by taking the Victoria line to the Victoria station and I walked towards Westminster Abbey. I was on Victoria St. and I walked by a mansion with a nice courtyard and a gated entrance. The gate was open...and my curiosity took over and so I went in and snapped a few pictures.



On my way out, I noticed that the gate had closed and that I was locked in. I looked around for a way to open the gate, but wasn't able to find anything. Thankfully, one of the residents of the place needed to get in, so I thanked her and carried on towards Westminster Abbey. As I got closer to the River Thames, the buildings got taller and more impressive. While I was in the area, I saw:

Big Ben:


The House of Parliament:


Westminster Cathedral:



Westminster Abbey:


St. Margaret's Church with Westminster Abbey in the background from across Parliament Square:


After seeing all of that, I walked up to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately the guards weren't changing when I was there, but it happens every other day, so I'll definitely be going back there. Here's a few pictures of the palace and the Victoria Memorial, which is just outside of the palace.



After that, I walked over to Trafalgar Square and passed by Admiralty Arch on the way.

Admiralty Arch:


Trafalgar Square:


I then left Trafalgar Square and walked through Soho to get to Oxford street because I wanted to find a store called Primark, as I'd heard they carried hangers. Soho looked pretty cool, but I was getting tired at this point, so I pretty much just kept walking and didn't stop much. I got to oxford street and it was pretty terrible...people were everywhere and I couldn't walk fast. I finally made it to Primark though, and thankfully they had hangers. Primark, aside from being packed with millions of people, seemed like a good store with really reasonable prices. If I have to do any clothes shopping while in London, i'll probably go there.

Since I was right by the Marble Arch at this point, I decided to stop by. It really wasn't that great, but here's a picture of it.


Then I walked back to my room, and unfortunately it started raining about half way through my journey back. I stopped in this place called Eat for a coffee and to wait out the bad weather. Thankfully it didn't take that long. Here's my route for the day.



After those two days, I'm pretty sure my legs wouldn't fallen off if I had walked anymore, so I decided to take a few days off.

My room mate came on the 20th. He's from Washington and goes to Western Washington University. He's nice, but I do miss having my room to myself.

Orientation started yesterday and it was okay. I met a lot of people and went out with 6 of them last night which was fun. Kate, Diana, Oliver, Brent, and my roommate Tyler are Americans and the other member of our group, Natalie, is from Sweden. We started out by walking around the Kings Cross area and we found a pub, the Yorkshire Grey. We had a drink there (I had a London Pale Ale for 4.75) and got some food and then continued on to the Railway Tavern on Liverpool St. We stayed there for an hour or two and I had an Abbot Ale. It was good and cost 3.95. Then we headed back to Kings Cross and I finally got a normal nights rest. Today was the second day of orientation and I got my classes. I'll be taking Personal Finance, Art in London, Theatre in London, and Organisational design and management. Those'll start on the 27th.

That's about it for now, I'll post more another time. Hope all is well with all of you!

London - January 15th

Well, after staying up until around 6am yesterday morning (the 14th), i spent most of the day sleeping. I woke up around 4 and ended up meeting one of my neighbors shortly after getting up. He's from Pakistan, and I can't say that i remember his name, but he was very friendly and he studies at the University of Central London. I told him I was going to go to the store to get some toilet paper and food, and he told me he'd prefer if I didn't go because it was unsafe. He even offered me some of his toilet paper...I declined and walked to the store anyway, as I was more interested in the walk and experience than buying food and T.P. I walked to where google maps said the store was, but it ended up not being there. So I took a slightly different route back to my apartment and ran into the store I was looking for, which was closer than I thought it was, so that was good and will be nice to know for future trips. It also had a way better selection than the market I went to the other day, which was a Tesco express. Tesco apparently has different varieties of stores: Extra, Superstore, Metro, and Express. Those are ranked from largest to smallest, with Extra being the largest and express being the smallest. The first day, and the one that's closest to me is an Express, and the the one I went to yesterday was a Metro, which was still relatively close to me. Metros and Expresses are by far the most common and it seems like there are only a few Superstores and Extras in London and that they are kind of on the outskirts of the city.

After I got back to my place, I talked to Kate for a while and she's doing well. We used this app called Viber, which basically lets us make phone calls for free through VOIP (voice over internet protocol). It's through the app so you have to set up an account with it, but essentially it lets us connect through the internet, whether it's wifi or a data connection, and it's worked pretty well so far. So if we ever want/need to talk on the phone, that may be a good option in addition to google hangouts, skype, and a number of other apps.

I was pretty hungry at this point, and didn't want to cook, so I went to this place called Honest Burger that was about a two minutes walk from my place. I walked in and wasn't greeted, so I just sat myself and caught the attention of the server that was in my section. It was kind of hard to understand him, he had a really thick accent, and after my interactions with him, i'm pretty sure I was supposed to be seated by a host or something, but I got my food quickly and everything worked out. The burger and fries were great and i'm sure i'll be going back there. They played the temptations and other older american music, which I really liked. Total for the meal including a drink was about 11 pounds.

I found several bars that are showing the 49er Seahawk game this sunday, so i'm planning on going to that. Actually, I'll probably go for the Denver N.E. game as well. I'll have to figure out some of the bus schedules for that though, because the tube stops running before the game ends. Glad that it's being shown here though. Maybe i'll meet some other people from the states.

Here's a couple of pictures of the view from my room.

The really impressive looking building is actually the St. Pancras station, and the Kings Cross station is connected to the clock tower that you can see on the right hand side of the photo. If I understand it all correctly...St Pancras offers international railway services whereas kings cross does not, and I believe that the underground is connected between the two, and that it basically acts as one underground tube station.

Just got back from a 6 mile walk around the city. Here's a picture of the route I took, it's not exactly accurate, but it is for the most part.

I Started out from my place around 10 this morning and headed south until I hit the River Thames. I stood on black friars bridge and took a few pictures.

Then I walked towards St. Paul's Cathedral, which was really cool. I didn't want to pay to go inside and take the tour because I figured I'd save that for later in my trip so I can do it with someone. But I went down below it to the cafe and walked around the perimeter of the outside. Here's a few pics of that.

The building is awesome and the surrounding area had a lot of cool cafes and stores as well. I ate at a place on the northern side of the cathedral called PAUL Bakery. Had a coffee and a Ham and cheese croissant sandwich. It was delicious and cost about 5 pounds.

After that, I headed towards the Bank of England. I didn't take too many pictures or stop too much in that area, but I'll definitely be going back there. It was cool and I like how there are a bunch of roads that lead to it. Another interesting aspect of this area that seemed more noticeable to me than in the other areas i've been to so far is that there's a lot of modern architecture right next to older buildings.

Next, I went to one of London Metropolitan Universities buildings. It was pretty impressive, although I'm not sure if this is the building that I'll have my classes at, or if it'll be at a different building in the city. I'll find out more about that when I begin orientation on the 20th. Here's a couple of pictures of the building that I went to today.

After that I walked back to NIDO which took me about 40 minutes or so. I didn't take the fastest route though, so taking that into consideration, it wasn't that bad.

That's all for now, more to come later.

London Day 1

Hello from London!

I arrived at Heathrow on time this morning, around 7:30am. The plane was awesome, every seat had its own TV screen and it even had USB ports and plugs for my devices as well. There wasn't anyone else in my row, so I took advantage of their TV's and charging outlets, and I slept across the row for a good portion of it, which was good considering I had stayed up until 5:30am the previous morning. After I got off the plane, I walked to the UK border and got through without any problems. I did have to stand behind a large man wearing a turban who decided it would be a good time to relieve himself of some of the gas he had clearly been holding in throughout the flight. It was a pretty miserable half an hour to 40 minutes in line before I got to the border agent.

After being admitted into the UK, I went on to get my luggage at baggage claim and then headed to the underground tube station. I bought an oyster card and used that to get into the underground where I took the picadilly line all the way to the Kings Cross station. My luggage made it inconvenient for several people, but no one seemed too upset...next time I'll probably just stand with it off to the side so people don't have to maneuver around it. I was a little disoriented after getting off the tube, and I ended up walking about five minutes in the wrong direction which was a pain since I was carrying around all my luggage. I eventually realized it wasn't right, so I turned around and made it to NIDO student living. Had to sign a few forms, they didn't say anything about the security deposit though...but they gave me my room keys and everything I needed for my stay at NIDO. I'm on the 12th floor, out of 16 total, and I can see the Kings Cross train station really well from my room.

After I got up to my room, I went through the apartment and marked the condition of everything, the place seems pretty good. It's small and there's no room to move around in the bathroom, thankfully there's some storage space under the bed. So I unpacked all of my clothes and stuff, and realized that I didn't have any hangers. So i figured that I'd be able to get some at a store I'd read about called Tesco that was close to my place. I was wrong, but I bought some food there so it wasn't a waste of a trip. Back at my place, i looked up another store called Argos which was a bit farther away, but I wanted to see more of London so I was okay with the walk. I finally got there and when I walked in all I saw was a bunch of Ipads and a few places to check out. I went up to an IPad because I wasn't in the mood to ask anyone and look like a confused tourist, and I learned that at this store, you do all of your shopping on the Ipad and then you go to a clerk to pay, and they grab all of your items from storage behind the counter. Unfortunately, they were out of hangers...so I bought a shower mat instead.

After Argos, I went into a grocery store called sainsbury's where I bought a pellegrino lemonade (something familiar) and a croissant cheese twist that was delicious. I kept walking and took a few pictures of buildings that I don't know anything about...but they looked cool and I figured I'd be back around the area and can learn more about which things are what later.



There's a few of the pics and here's a few more of my place. I'll add some tomorrow of the view from my room, but it's too dark to get a good one right now.



I think that's about it for now, planning on exploring more tomorrow. I'll post again soon.