one week gone?

"The world is a playground, and life is pushing my swing."
-Natalie Kocsis

It has been exactly one week since I arrived in Kingston. In a mere seven days, the amount of things that has happened is almost overwhelming. New home, new school, new friends, new experiences, new places. So strap yourselves in for a long one, folks.

I was picked up from the airport by a driver who brought me to my home in Kingston, where I spent the evening unpacking and settling in. The bedroom I picked is small, but it's cute, and I love the sunshine that streams in through the large window. I met the other student who's staying here, and she is incredibly nice. On Wednesday, my parents were still in town, so they picked me up and took me out to lunch and grocery shopping. We went to Sainsbury's, a pretty big grocery store, and they had just about everything I was looking for. I bought every instant meal I could find, and I even found ramen! My mother felt better that they had so many frozen dinners...she knew I wouldn't starve.

On Thursday, it was time for orientation. It was an all day event that included a tour of Kingston, lectures on living and studying in the UK, and a chance to meet several other international students. I was amazed at the number of countries that students were from, and I got a chance to talk to people from the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Spain, India, Greece, and of course all over the states. That night, most of us headed over to a welcome reception at a pub entitled The Slug and Lettuce. Strange name, but we had fun. From there, a group of us ended up pub hopping to The Ram and eventually ended up at The Mill, a bar with a younger crowd. It turned into a pretty late night, but we had a lot of fun.

Friday, I went on a walking tour of London. We had to meet at a tube station in the city, so it was our first adventure getting around on the trains/tube, but we managed to get there with no problems. Taking a train straight to Waterloo only takes about 25 minutes, so it'll be quite easy to get into London on a regular basis. We walked for over two hours through various parts of the city and hit up the major tourist sights, including Westminster Abbey, the Parliament building with Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and Piccadilly Circus, and eventually ended up at a pub (of course!) where we met up with the other tour groups. The only downside was the cold; by the end of the tour, I think we all had numb fingers. After some food and a drink, I headed back to Kingston with a few other girls that had also decided it was much too cold to stay in London for the evening.


The study abroad kids had a day trip to Brighton on Saturday that counted towards our "British Life & Culture" class. Located on the south coast of England, it is known for it's beaches and the Royal Pavilion, which we had a tour of in the afternoon. I started out by walking with a group down to the beach. It was freezing cold, but there were actually a few people swimming in the water. I'm not sure what those people were drinking... Anyway, we headed up to the Brighton Pier, which has a "fun-fair" at the end with rides, food, and an indoor arcade/casino. It was cute, and we ate some fish 'n chips and took some pictures. Then we headed up into the town center to look through some shops on the way to the Royal Pavilion. The tour of the palace was actually extremely interesting. The outer architecture is based on Indian architecture, while the inside is based on Chinese design, but it was all created by Europeans who had never been to the Far East, so there are several design flaws. The inside was extremely extravagant, and had a few absolutely gorgeous rooms, such as the dining room and the music room, and it was quite different than any other palace I'd seen, with dragons and fantasy creatures everywhere. Definitely worth a visit, if you're ever in Brighton. After the tour, I headed back to the pier with another group of friends to hang out for awhile longer. That night, back in Kingston, we headed to The Mill for another night out. We ended up doing some pub hopping again, eventually ending up in a club, but we didn't stay there too long. We were starving, so my friend and I found an open pizza place on the way back home. It wasn't as good as chicken bacon ranch, but it was decent.

Sunday, I watched a disappointing Australian Open final in which Federer lost to Nadal in the fifth set. Then he broke into tears, which was even more depressing. It's okay, Federer, I still have faith you'll tie Sampras' record! There was a traditional English luncheon going on, but I had missed out on tickets, so I headed into London later to meet up with a group that was already there. We met at a pub and had a couple of drinks before heading off to find an American bar that would be showing the Super Bowl. Sadly, they were charging such a ridiculous fee to get in that we decided not to bother. Apparently, a couple of the girls shouting out "but we're American" or "but she's a Steelers fan" didn't get us in for free either. So we headed back towards the tube station in the heavy snow, meeting plenty of random people on the street as we went. (I believe we're in at least three pictures with a random group of French guys.) We did eventually make it back to the train station though, where we had an hour delay because of the snow. After another walk from the train station to my house in the snow, I decided to skip out on watching the end of the game and just go to bed. Of course, after hearing that it was a fantastic game with the Steelers scoring to win in the last 35 seconds, I deeply regret that decision. Ah well, at least they won. Yay Steelers!

Monday was supposed to be my first day of classes, but the university shut down because of the snow. We had only gotten around six inches, but the entire city was shut down. No tubes, no trains, no buses, no stores, no restaurants, no nothing. Apparently this was the worst storm London had seen in 18 years? These people should travel to NY for a week in the winter and see what real snow is. But who am I to complain about a snow day? I headed downtown my friend Kaitlin to have a look around town, and we got hot milkshakes. I'm not sure why ShakeAWay hasn't come to the states yet, but it's absolutely amazing. They have about a hundred milkshake flavors, and they'll steam up any milkshake to form a hot drink of sorts. Incredible. That night, one bus route was running, so we traveled down to a pub in Surbiton (south of the town center) to hang out for awhile. It was a huge pub, and we ordered some food and relaxed while plenty of study abroad kids eventually braved the snow to meet us there.

And that finally brings us to today! The university was closed yet again, but I don't have classes on Tuesdays anyways. I actually have a pretty nice schedule, with classes Monday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday. I used this afternoon to look up information online about my classes. Statistics doesn't look like it should be too bad, but chemistry is already scaring me. Looking at the first lectures, it seems that I'm already eight or nine chapters behind, and there are two lecturers every week speaking on completely different topics, so it will be double the work throughout the semester. I think that set me off into some sort of overwhelmed state for the afternoon. I ended up looking through a lot of Albany stuff as well, and began to stress over the amount of courses I still needed to fit in for forensics, whether it was possible to remain in the honors program, if I should try to do an internship instead...I was nervous about being here for the semester, when I should really be at home trying to sort out internship and research opportunities. It was at this point that I wanted more than anything to have access to a piano practice room, because nothing relaxes me more than the piano. Finally I did manage to stop stressing, though. After all, why worry about that now? I'm in London! I've decided that it was probably some form of feeling homesick, because it would be just like me to turn missing home into stressing over academics. Or maybe it was stemming from the fact that I feel badly about missing my grandfather's funeral yesterday. But either way, the overwhelmed feeling has completely worn off, and I am back to being absolutely in love with London.

Though it's early, it doesn't seem like adjusting to living here will be too difficult. There are plenty of small differences, especially because I've never lived right in a city before, but I think I'm settling in quite nicely. Classes may end up being a different story, but I'll let you know once I've actually had one. For now, I think I'm going to settle in with a chemistry book for the evening. Or maybe I'll head out to a pub to meet up with some people? I know, tough decision. =)