Apparently I’m really bad at this kind of thing. This should really come as no surprise because I’ve ALWAYS been bad at this kind of thing, but I had hoped that I would actually be able to keep up with it while I was doing this whole going on an adventure thing. Oh well. 

So what have I been up to? Lots of things. Since I last posted on here, I’ve been to Paris, Wales, and Edinburgh. However, for those of you who have been reading the school newspaper (those who go to the school where you can read the newspaper), you will know about these experiences. Or at least the experiences that I feel up to putting in the paper (aka, no drinking stories, alas). Unfortunately, being a terrible blogger, most of these things are in the comparatively far past, so you only get to hear about Edinburgh for today. It’s probably still going to be a long one though, so yay?

I wasn’t really sure what there was to do in Edinburgh when I signed up for it, but I knew I would want to go to Scotland. I went with a group from school, which means that we have an adult to make sure we make it on the train but we’re mostly free to do whatever we want. We took the train to Edinburgh, which was about a four and a half hour train ride from London. We left from King’s Cross amid many jokes about how we were driving past scenery that the Hogwarts Express drove past, but the ride was really scenic and wonderful. 

Once we got there, we settled into the hostel (my first ever hostel experience although a surprisingly pleasant one) and then headed up to Edinburgh Castle. I talk about this in my article, so let me just say that I have no idea who on Earth would ever want to attack this castle. It has cliff face on three of the four sides. Good luck, suckers. 

Friday night, we went on a ghost tour. I’d heard they could get pretty creepy because they take you underground in the vaults of the city, but apparently we missed out on that one. Ours was comparatively lame, although the guide was pretty funny and informative (and looked like Benedict Cumberbatch…). We ended up in the pub, where we got free drinks thanks to the ghost tour. We talked to a couple of other Americans that had been on the ghost tour with us. The two of them went to Western and are studying at Harlaxton, but the best part was when the girl looked at me and asked me if I knew someone at Xavier that I definitely do know. Best small world moment ever.

Saturday morning, we went on a tour around the city. I loved our guide. You could easily imagine him fighting against the English in a kilt. And he proudly made fun of the English at every open opportunity. I also decided that Scottish people are officially one of my favorite groups of people. When our guide was telling us about some Scots taking the castle, he asked, “Do you think 30 Scotsmen could defeat 1000 Englishmen?” None of us really responded, but this older man that was walking by with his wife proudly declared, “Of course they can!” 

I compare every city to London these days, and Edinburgh is definitely a lot smaller than London. Or, at least, the older part of Edinburgh is, and I never really went to the “newer” side. Still though, it’s a really pretty city and not so massive as my new home. We spent most of Saturday just wandering around, checking out a few museums and gift shops. And I found a rubber duck! I wanted one wearing a kilt, but instead I got one wearing the Scottish flag. Still, I’m content.

Easily one of the best things about Edinburgh was all of the French people wandering around. They were there for the rugby game on Sunday, but they obviously decided to start the party early because they spent Friday night and pretty much all day Saturday wandering around the city drunkenly, heckling anyone that looked at them for too long.

Saturday night, we did a pub crawl with 70 of our closest friends. 70 people on a pub crawl makes things a bit hectic, to say the least, but we got lots of free drinks, so I’m not really complaining. Although I guess I should add, as somewhat ashamed of it as I am, I had my first wipe out during the pub crawl. I would like to that, as anyone who knows me well can confirm, I tend to be rather clumsy, so this wipe out was rather late in coming. I mean, I was tipsy, but certainly not drunk enough to completely bite it like I did. I contend that I only ended up on the ground because I hit one of those two foot tall pillars they have along sidewalks sometimes, which set off my ability to catch myself, which means I ended up on the ground. Fail. Although I didn’t rip any clothing, which I consider a success. 

Anywho. Sunday, we decided to recover from the night before by climbing a mountain. We had heard that you could get really great pictures from the top, and I don’t know that any of us were really thinking that the climb would be quite so difficult as it was despite being told it would take forty minutes to get to the top. But we did, and the view was fantastic, and I got the opportunity to let out my inner mountain goat to climb all over rocks, which is one of those things that randomly makes me happy for no particular reason. 

Then the train back, when I kindly informed the lovely the gentleman sitting next to me that lifeguarding at DisneyWorld was cool precisely because it’s not a real job (sounds a lot worse taken out of context), and we finally arrived back in King’s Cross and back home. 

So my weekend in a very long nutshell. In case you were wondering. :)

I guess Monday night is my official tumblr update night. I’m not sure why, except that things finally calm down after the weekend. Actually, this weekend was relatively tame, but I just never really thought about it. But I’m updating you now!

Classes were, well, classes. It’s kind of hard to do things during the week because everyone’s schedule is different. I’m putting off riding the tube by myself (although I don’t know why when I’m usually the one that figures out how we’re going to get to places), and there’s only so much to do in the area with it being as cold as it is. And it’s cold. Freezing, as a matter of fact. I posted pictures up of it snowing the other day, which apparently happens here about as often as it does in Nashville with much the same results. But that’s for later.

On Tuesday, I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It’s within walking distance, so it wasn’t too hard to get to. The museum itself is huge. I heard one of our tour guides from orientation week call it the handbag of the empire because they essentially just throw whatever shit they can’t find a place for in there. It’s mostly art, but it also has a lot of random artifacts from all over the world. I was there for three hours and only covered a floor and a half. Luckily, most of the museums here are free, so I can waste time there all semester and not have to pay for anything. Although if I go frequently enough, I might start to feel guilty and have to donate something I suppose. 

Wednesday I went to the Museum of London with my History of London class. It was so cold that day, and our professor wanted to show us old ruins of the original Roman walls around London and the Guild Hall (where the Mayor’s office is). The freezing cold combined with going there the week after visiting the British Museum made the Museum of London seem like a complete dump. It probably isn’t actually all that bad, but it was just one of those museums that’s trying too hard to be interesting and ends up looking super cheesy.

Thursday was my friend Laura’s twenty first birthday, so we decided to head down to Piccadilly. That’s where all of the clubs are, and her goal was to find somewhere with bright lights and dancing. Needless to say, she celebrated her birthday the American way, meaning she didn’t remember all that much the next morning. But it was a fun night regardless. Lesson of the night, though: Never follow someone into a club if they tell you that they can get you a good deal. This usually means that the club is super sketch and/or empty. Thursday also included an adventure on the night bus because we missed the last tube by a whopping (if I remember correctly) seven minutes. The night bus isn’t actually that bad, and now I know which stop to leave from, so that’s good. Haley had to play mommy and find the right stop for everyone despite being more intoxicated than half the people there (because unless someone reliable takes the role of Mommy for the night, Haley does this regardless of her own level of intoxication). But we all survived the night and made it back to our beds safely.

Friday was pretty chill after all of the insanity of Thursday. In the morning, I went to the Natural History Museum with a couple of my friends. This museum wins lots of points because, not only do they have lots of dinosaurs like all good natural history museums, they had a narwhal. Day was made, easy. Friday night, we went to the pub attached to the British university that’s about six blocks over. The pub is super cheap, and we were hoping to meet British guys our age, but Imperial College is the math and science-y university in Britain, which means that most of the people there were nerds. Which is totally my type but unfortunately means they’re not all that outgoing and are therefore unwilling to make friends with American girls. Except for a couple of exceptions who were (oddly enough) extremely interested in American football. Talk about strange. 

Saturday morning, I went to something called the Doctor Who Experience. Doctor Who is a TV show here in the UK that’s kind of cultural phenomenon. I’m not going to bother explaining it (look it up on Wikipedia or something), but the Experience is just a show that’s part live action, part props. As someone who’s only seen two of the most recent seasons (out of six), I didn’t get a lot of it, but I still enjoyed it. Saturday afternoon is the topic of this week’s Newswire, so you’ll just have to read all about it there! Suffice to say it was quite the adventure.

Sunday I did… laundry. There was supposed to be a hall activity where we went to see a movie together (Underworld 3D to be exact… snerk), but my roommate and I were apparently the only ones that signed up, so we decided it wasn’t worth it to go after all. Sunday night, I watched the first half and half time show of the Super Bowl. I’m kind of surprised I watched it that long because there weren’t any commercials on the channel we were watching. Oh well. It kind of reminded me of freshman year and watching the Super Bowl in the chapel in Buenger with everyone. Except, well, my dorm’s more like Brockman. Only worse times a million. 

Also, I realized the other day that this is the first semester in my entire life that I’ve not attended a Catholic school. Yeah, I know, right? How weird and sad is that? So is life.

I’m going to Paris next weekend, so hopefully that will be more interesting than this one was!

Alright, classes here really aren’t any different from the United States. Which makes sense, because the university that I’m attending is an American university that just happens to be in London (hence the lack of British people. Really should have thought that one through). The only difference is that instead of giving us participation points or busy work (read: analysis essays), they just give us a couple of papers, a presentation, and ta da! there’s your grade. Which is admittedly a little stressful, but nothing beyond my capabilities as a history major with an English minor. 

You probably don’t really care about my specific classes, but I’m going to tell you about them anyway. If you don’t care, skip towards the bottom.

My first class is Contemporary London Literature. We’ve already had to read one book. Like the entire book. Or at least that’s what she told us, but only about three of us had actually read the entire book. The professor’s really nice though, so she didn’t really care all that much. That’s actually how a lot of the professors are. They give you a lot of work and give off the impression of being a hard ass, but then they joke with you in the next sentence. Kind of confusing when it comes to what to expect for grading, but what can you do? This first book, Wise Children by Angela Carter in case anyone cares, was weird, but after Modern American Fiction with Finklestein last semester, anything seems tame. 

Next is History of London. I’m in the geeking out period with that class because we’re doing really old stuff that I love. The best part about this class is that we get to take field trips to places around London, so on Wednesday, we went to the British Museum. (That I do talk about in the Newswire. So read about it there. Kinda.) Unfortunately, the class is a little pricey due to entrance fees into these exhibits. Double unfortunately, half the class is stupid. Or at least the professor thinks so. He asked us questions today like “What were the Romans known for?”, “Has anyone heard of Julius Caesar?”, and “What is the use of walls around cities?” Really? We’re study abroad students, not stupid. Or, well, most of us are anyway…

Then on Tuesdays and Thursday, I have Cultures of Imperial Power. The syllabus is just as terrifying as the name of the class, but the professor is the study abroad student adviser, so he seems pretty understanding. And we watched a clip from Lord of the Rings to emphasize the concepts about Empire. These people are wonderful.

Tuesdays, I have Shakespeare. Another pricey class fee, but I get to see Shakespeare in performance, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. The professor asked us fun introductory questions like “Which of the four elements would you say you are?” and “If you had to have a fried egg for a nose or sausages for fingers, which would you choose?” and the extremely popular “If a dark lord offered you a million pounds in exchange for turning a former significant other’s head into a chocolate eclair, which would you choose?” (Side note: almost everyone said they would choose.) My biggest problem with the class so far is that we have a research paper due on my birthday. What an asshole. 

But classes weren’t the only thing I did this week (so this is going to be a really long entry). On Thursday, I went to a Cirque du Soliel show. My roommate and I weren’t entirely sure what it was other than the fact that the tickets were cheap and we’d heard it was good. It was fantastic. Lots of people jumping on trampolines and doing flips and hanging from gymnastics rings in mid air. Risky stuff, but all so cool. 

On Friday, I went with some people to find the house from the Parent Trap. Yeah. With Lindsay Lohan. It’s about fifteen minutes from our dorm (if we actually got the right house, which I’m somewhat unsure of). Talk about tourists. It’s the middle of a neighborhood, so people kept asking us what we were taking pictures of. I feel kind of bad for the people that live there, but they never came out if they were actually home. 

Friday night it really got interesting. We decided we want to go in towards central London and go around to bars and stuff. We were looking for a certain bar in particular, but we had no idea where it actually was. So we ended up bar hopping and… ended up at a gay bar? Yep. (It had pretty lights, okay?) We stayed there for a little while before moving on to other bars. Unfortunately, after about ten, everything starts charging a cover fee, so we headed back to Kensington to end the night at one of the local pubs there. Only to find out that a bunch of British guys had decided it was kilt night. Why, I have no idea, but they were attractive at least. Unfortunately, they were also wearing the kilts the proper way, and decided that pub closing time was also a good time to moon everyone. 

On Saturday, we went on a search for a market and ended up eating lunch at a pub called Dirty Dick’s (there’s a picture of it up on Facebook). The funny thing about waiters here is that they don’t have to be nice to you because they don’t rely on tips. You don’t tip. So our waiter was perfectly free to be an absolute dick to us. Which he was at first because there were eight of us and we were Americans. He was a bit more sympathetic towards the end, but he kind of lost our respect when he bitched so much about getting us water. (Yes, water.)

Sunday we attempted to go to the Chinese New Year. I say attempted because we got there right as it started, and by that time, the area was so overcrowded that we couldn’t see anything, even with the huge TV screens on either side of the actual stage. Alas. I was hoping I could write about that in the Newswire this week, but it just wasn’t to be. So we came back to the dorms. I didn’t want to feel too much like a bum, so I went for a walk around Kensington Gardens, which is the huge park that backs up to Kensington Palace and is connected to Hyde Park. I wanted to find the Peter Pan statue, which I did. Eventually I’ll wander over to Hyd Park too, but it was already 4:15 at this point, and I didn’t want to end up lost in London’s equivalent to Central Park after dark. 

So there’s my week in a nut shell. Sorry this has been so long, but just thought I would keep you all up to date!

If any of you would like to actually see my bright and shiny face, you are free to do so. Here’s my schedule. 

MW 12-1:20 Contemporary London Lit
3-4:20/5 History of London 

TR 3-4:20 Cultures of Imperial Powers

T 6:30-9:30 Shakespeare

Subtract 5 hours if you’re in Eastern time or 6 if you’re in Central time. These are the times when you definitely can’t talk to me. On Wednesdays, you probably won’t be able to talk to me until 6 my time because those are my field trip days for History of London.

Otherwise, probably the best time for me if 10-12ish, but that’s obviously meeting/dinner/relaxing time for most people. So just let me know when you want to talk, and we will see what we can do. :)

I finally have more than two seconds to update all of you on what I’m doing! Of course, those of you from Xavier can read what I’m doing in the Newswire, but let’s be serious, there’s only so much that I can talk about that can be posted in the newspaper (not that I’ve done anything that can’t be talked in the newspaper, except drinking, but I’m legal here). It’s been a really long and tiring week, but I’m finally starting to settle in a little. Classes start tomorrow, so I’ll finally have a routine again. 

But what have I been up to, I’m sure you’re wondering. Well, a little bit of everything. Tours of London, walking around to get to know the area, visiting pubs, meeting people (Americans, but no British people thus far), getting various necessities, and just generally trying to settle into life in a dorm again. (Don’t get me started on what it’s like living in the dorms again. Worse dorms. Terrible, gross, nasty dorms.)

I think I’ve seen a little bit of everything, as far as the actual sights of London go, but I haven’t seen much in depth. This post is mostly just to talk about funny things that have happened this week that I won’t be able to talk about in the Newswire. (That might actually be a better title for this blog. Hm. I’ll think about it.)

Top Three Things Thus Far That Won’t Be in the Paper
1. I flew out of Cincinnati Monday with a couple of other people in my group. None of us really knew each other, but we kind of bonded over the fact that none of us knew each other. A lot of us are still hanging out, actually. Only two of them are actually from Cincinnati, but the others are aware enough of Cincinnati to make jokes about it with me (particularly how nasty a city it is), which is strangely comforting. Who knew Cincinnati could be a bonding tool? Our plane was delayed for two hours flying out of D.C., which sucked but was compensated for by the fact that there were over a hundred empty seats on the flight from Washington D.C. to Heathrow (London’s major airport). Which meant, since the nice man in Cincinnati bumped me up to economy plus for free, I had an entire row to myself. Yep, an entire row of three seats for me to spread out on. Best. International flight. Ever.

2. Pubs. Oh my. Everyone here loves their pubs. Which means they’re every five feet. Except, of course, they’re super expensive. I would much rather spend my money on trips than spend it on alcohol, but that’s obviously not the philosophy of a lot of people in my program. They’re all so obnoxious but hilarious at the same time. I’m sure the British people don’t think so, and I won’t think so when I actually have work that needs to be done, but for now it’s pretty hilarious.

3. Speaking of loud people. The walls in my dorm are like paper. Which means that I can hear absolutely everything. Which means I’ve heard guys down the hall both break up with their girlfriends and try to hook up with girls here only to be shut down (two different guys, for the record).  

The list was going to have five things on it, but it’s late and I’m tired and this took longer than I thought it would. So I’m going to stop for now. But just know that I’m having a fantastic time and will try to keep you up to date as much as I can!

This really is a terrible time to start this, considering how little time I actually have right now. But for some reason it seemed essential that I start a blog about my adventures in London. So here it is!

I leave in six weeks. Six weeks! That thought in itself should be terrifying. And it is, to a certain extent. It’s kind of one of those things that if I think about it too hard, I’ll just ask myself what I hell I was thinking by deciding to do this. But I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that I’ve always wanted to study abroad, and I’ve always wanted to do it in London. If I can’t do it with my university, I’ll do it through some random group of study abroad people where I won’t know anyone.

For the most part, I’m not really thinking about it. I just need to get through the end of the semester first. Until then, it won’t really feel real anyway. Even though the roommates are planning out what’s going to happen when I’m gone and everyone around me has started a sad and depressing countdown to the end of the semester and my departure from Xavier, it still feels like something that’s just a dream but could never possibly happen.

But happen it will, and this blog will be the place for you to find out all about it!