Monday-Friday...first week stuff

So...Britt and I ended up having lots of leg room on the plane, which was great. Plus they fed us three different times, and the food was actually pretty good. We sat next to this girl from Maryland (small world) who now lives in London, and she gave us lots of great tips about the markets here and hostel prices. We finally got to the Heathrow airport around 6 am on Monday morning, and we cleared customs in about 5 seconds (yay!) We stopped at a little cafe (I grabbed a smoothie, and Britt got a breakfast sandwich), and we waited for everyone to arrive. Around  8, I spotted Nora and Ryan in a corner...finally, we met up with the lady from Fordham. We found my roommate, Kristin (who seemed awesome...and she likes Harry Potter, so you know we're gonna get along) and met Sami (this sweet girl from Brown...yes, she knows Emma Watson)...two of the others got delayed, and one was coming in later that day. After taking a bus ride (and seeing lots of British cows!...and Nora saw a random naked dude in his window?), we got to our flats. AMAZING. I was so happy when I saw mine (I'm on the top floor with Kristin, Sami and Krista live in the room downstairs, and we have a basement kitchen and couch. Plus we have two bathrooms. Everybody else's flat was awesome too - really spacious and cool. Justin arrived (from Hawaii - almost a 22 hour flight I think : /). Everyone took some time settling in, and we headed out to find a place to eat...our waitress was awesome - she really liked us and was super welcoming. When we got back, we all drank a little and waited for Serita and Krista to get there (their flights got super delayed). We all got comfortable with each other really quickly (we're all outgoing, and we blamed anything awkward on jetlag hahaha), which was awesome : ) 

Tuesday, we got up, went to this random breakfast place called "Tiffin." (Any time is Tiffin time!) The waitress STRUGGLED with Nora's order. I had an awesome tuna sandwich thing. We all found a grocery store, Sainsbury's, which has really cheap groceries. Which is awesome. The cashier asked me if I was ok cause I was stupidly flustered by the system of checking out. At night, we went to Nora's flat, drank a bit, and left obnoxious videos on people's walls. We went to a pub called "Betsey Trotwood" (after the character in Dickens' "David Copperfield"), and I met a nice girl and a guy who looked JUST like Paul McCartney. Except with longer hair - I talked to him for awhile about acting - he's on some BBC tv shows : ) Also, two guys made fun of me for being American, and then called me racist for imitating their British accents. It was fun though; we ended up having a really good time. Britt and Ryan decided to head off in a different direction, and after trying to follow them, I got lost and caught up with the girls instead. We went into this sketchy fish and chips place, where a Turkish man hit on me (I look very Turkish, he told me) and tried to charge Nora seventy pounds for a water or something.

Wednesday, we all slept in pretty late. I can't really remember what we did actually. I'm pretty sure we went out at night to a pub (King John's Castle or something like that)...met some cool American guys from Notre Dame, but nobody British. It was a really nice atmosphere though, and we all just talked some more and had a good time.

Thursday was the start of orientation. We started by getting our Oyster Cards for the Tube (which I can't decide if I like better than the metro...everyone reads, nobody really says anything). We had about a 45 minute metro ride to Kensington Square, on High Street. It's an amazing area, with so many shops and beautiful, historic houses. The London Centre is a space rented out by Fordham from Heythrop College, in a sweet building next to an old chapel. We found this adorable French cafe our friends told us about (amazing hot chocolate!). Orientation started with lunch with the business school kids, who seemed taken aback that we were all so friendly. General Orientation was cool - the policeman that came in to talk about safety made me laugh a lot (don't worry Mom, I took his advice seriously). We met with some of our teachers at the end of the day, which was nice (except they had our passport photos to identify us, and mine's NASTY). But they told me I was better looking in person, which made me feel better. Haha. It was a bit awkward, but whatevs. Again, I can't really remember what we did that night. Something fun, I'm sure. Haha.

Friday was a rainy day. One of our "tutors", Michael Winters, gave us a walking tour of where we live. Clerkenwell is really historic, and Michael is literally (not figuratively, Andy) a walking encyclopedia. He knows EVERYTHING about the city. He explained how we could tell the age of the buildings based on the architecture, the building materials, and the color. We found out our flats used to be factories (which sounds kinda creepy, but it's actually awesome). We saw all the holes in buildings from bombs in WWII, which was crazy to think about. 

We headed over to the school for our first class, an introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets (Michael sat really far away from us on the tube haha - I think he was probably embarrassed cause of our loud, clueless Americanism). The class was about how Shakespeare probably wrote the sonnets for one of two men. It was like an endless love saga, but all of it was really interesting. I loved the class : ) 

Shakespeare apparently lived super close to our flats now at one point in his life...I feel so legite. Except it was in a brothel...classy. London rules.