London Day Two

Emily and I both crashed around 7:30 pm and we slept until 10 am. I woke up for a bit around 5:30 and couldn't fall asleep again, but somehow I managed to pass out until housekeeping showed up to wake us up haha.

I took a quick shower and we had some lovely tea in our room, and got ready for the day. Our first meeting was at 11:30 about academics in the UK, and on the way to the Arcadia offices, we stopped by Pret A Manger for some brunch. My mother recommended the chain of restaurants to me, and they're great! Everything is very inexpensive and yummy. I got an avacado and herb wrap, which was very delicious with lots of veggies and cheese.

The first meeting wasn't too exciting, we went over the education system in the UK and all the various exams British students take, which I was already familiar with. The strangest thing is the grading scale- as low as a 65% can be an A at different universities (it's 75% at York for an A+). 

After the meeting, Emily, Megan, Laura, Jacki and I went to go find phones. We wandered along some streets until we found a shop which was having great sales (January is the big sale month in London). I got a phone with a full keypad and a camera (it looks kind of like a blackberry) with a Orange top up card for £21.45. We all ended up getting the same phone haha. It took awhile because there was some glitch with the computer system registering our numbers, but it is such a relief to have a phone! We hurried back to be on time for our next meeting at 1.

This meeting was about general safety things and being in a foreign country, even if we don't think it's one, and all kinds of general information. We had our first "language lesson," which I passed with flying colours (other than "jammy," which means lucky). We got handouts for an optional scavenger hunt, which we kind of started, but ended up going all over central London on our own haha.

The first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral, which made me super happy. I love St. Paul's! It was really great to see it again, especially after writing a paper about it during the London Blitz.

St. Paul's Cathedral

Me at St. Paul's!

Next we made our way over to Trafalgar Square, where there was a crazy street performer who sucked us into his performance for half an hour... it was odd. He was the sass-master, though, and quite funny. 

National Gallery

Trafalgar Square!!!

The crazy street performer haha

A ridiculously British shot.

Next we made our way toward Big Ben, with a few stops along the way at the cavalry museum and St. James' Park, ending up at Buckingham Palace and not Big Ben. The sun set at 4 pm, which was crazy early to all of us, but it was just a reminder of how far north we are compared to America, even though it's way warmer here. It was nice today with no rain, which was great for walking all over London!

The Cavalry Museum

WWI Memorial

Buckingham Palace!

Finally we walked up another street to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey! We ran into a familiar face over there- Abraham Lincoln's statue is outside Westminster? That was a surprise. It was completely dark by the time we made it over there, so we got to see everything lit up and looking pretty.

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben

Abraham Lincoln Goes to London

We ended up by the Thames and took some pictures of the London Eye at night. You could see the flashes from people's cameras on the Eye as they took pictures! 

We got off at a random stop on the tube to find dinner. We ended up at a place called Leon's, which had nice wraps and such. I got a bowl of tomato soup with some flat bread and it was very enjoyable! It was really nice to explore London and get to know some of the other Arcadia students, even though we aren't all on the same program. And navigating the tube was lots of fun! I proved I can read a map today, and that I remember where a lot of things are even though I haven't been to some of them (I really do watch too many British shows). I really wish America had better public transit systems in the areas where I live.

We walked back to St. Paul's from Leon's and took the tube back to our hotel, and we took a break (hello blogging time) and now we're heading out to a pub to have "the British experience," as the Arcadia people call it haha.