And I thought yesterday was exciting...

Yesterday was amazing but nothing compared to the adventure I had today! To start off with we had to meet at the City of Westminster College for a brief meeting with Lyndon and to get our ID tags because its a very secure campus and they will NOT let you on campus without them...literally they will make you go all the way back to your flats if you forget them. If I do forget mine I highly doubt I'll make that mistake twice! But anyway...we got our schedules for the semester and boy oh boy is this semester going to be the most incredible experience of my life! I was looking forward to my classes before but now that I know what we will actually be doing I can hardly contain my excitement. I would write my whole schedule down but for now I'll just let you know what we will be doing on Monday.

To start out with we will be going on a River Walk: Tower Bridge to Westminster with Lyndon. Then that's it for class in the morning. Normally we have an afternoon activity as well but not this Monday. Instead the Art History class is going to go to the National Gallery and I plan to tag along as we are allowed. Then in the evening we have a group outing where we will be going to Shakespeare's Globe! Quite an exciting start to classes!

But back to today...after we went over our schedule and got our assignment for the evening (more on that later) we had to go register and get our IDs. Apparently you are not allowed to smile in the picture which was very unfortunate but the reason is interesting. If you do something illegal they actually use your college ID picture to give to whoever might need it. So that's good to know not that I plan on them ever needing it! Once we got our ID's we had an hour and a half to ourselves to get lunch before our next activity at 1 o'clock.

A group of us went to the market to get some groceries. The markets have a great selection for almost nothing! They give you so much food that its impossible to eat it all yourself. Jeana and I each bought a few things and plan to split them with each other and some of it still may go bad but if you buy less its more expensive! I'm sure we'll figure it out within a few days. After we left the market we planned to catch a bus back to the flats but we ran into other people from our group and they spotted a bagel shop that they wanted to stop in and it sounded amazing to us (and honestly how can I pass up a bagel) so we headed there with them. The shop was adorable and they ended up having some lunch items so we all got some lunch and a treat for desert. I've actually been trying a lot of new things since I've been here which has been quite a lot of fun. Not completely sure where this adventursomeness with food has come from but I'm enjoying it! I got this Indian/Middle Eastern chicken wrap with vegi's in it. It was spicy but very good! Luckily my desert which was chocolate with some caramel sauce and a pie crust type thing cooled my mouth after my lunch. We had decided to walk back to our flats to see how long it would take us to walk to the college so since we were eating on the way we didn't have anything to drink. So that desert sure came in handy :)

We ended up taking the long route back to our flats (not that we knew that at the time). It was a beautiful walk through some very pretty neighborhoods though. The flats we passed were adorable! It was a gorgeous day out today as well...pretty blue skyes. And according to Lyndon the Brits are very concerned about the weather so I'm going to try to stay on top of that while I'm here. We were supposed to be back at our flat at 12:45 but got there right around 1:00 when our meeting was supposed to start! It wasn't a problem though because there were a lot of us though the rest of the group gave us trouble since we made fun of them in the morning for not meeting on time!

So then we had a meeting with one of the people who are in charge of the flats. Basically she just went over all of the rules and taught us some things we needed to know about the appliances. She told us all about our troublesome washers/dryers. Here in London they are a lot smaller and they wash and dry. She said they pretty much only wash though and to make sure we had a day to let things dry. She also recommended just going to the laundry mat down the street so we'll see. She said to at least give them a try. I'm sure that will be fun. She also told us a lot of the differences between America and here...a lot had to do with the Internet and what we are capable of in the US we aren't allowed to do here. It was a lot of good info, but mostly I was excited the whole time for our guided tour that was about to take place!

We had a tour guide come to our flat and from there we took off to the tube. We got on the tube and headed to downtown London. It was so exciting to finally arrive! We got off at the Piccadilly stop and it was just quite the sight to finally get to see! I of course took lots of pictures the entire time, but not too many to still fully enjoy my surroundings! Our tour guide was great giving us enough information and then moving on. We got to see lots of things including Trafalgar Square, Covent Gardens, the Thames, a bank where they shot Harry Potter, London Eye from a distance, and much much more that I cannot remember right now but I have pictures of! The tour was just amazing overall and I learned a whole lot!

During the tour our tour guide asked "beer" questions every now and then. This meant that if you answered a question correctly then he would buy you a pint when the tour was over. The last question he asked I got right by pure guessing so I won myself a free pint which was pretty exciting! So we headed to a pub and of course I had no clue what to order. Jeana's dad told her Lagers were good so we just selected one of those! It was from Holland somewhere. I took a picture of the name so I'll put it up here once I see what it is again! But that was a fun experience.

Our tour was only supposed to last two hours but it lasted well beyond that which was fine by all of us because it was such a good time. But since it lasted a while longer it was almost 6 o'clock by the time we were ready to leave the pub. Jeana and I were determined to make our own meal tonight but we were so hungry and still had a 30 min tube ride left so we decided to get some food at the market in Covent Garden instead. Our director and one other girl stuck around with us and we were super glad we made the decision we did. The market was adorable and all of the food smelled fantastic. I've been trying lots of new things since I've been here and so I got some Gnoche (spelling?) for dinner. Basically it was just a ravioli with potato inside instead of cheese. I got tomato sauce and Parmesan on top and it was delicious! I was really wanting some of this fresh pasta they have here so I was pretty excited with my choice. Since all of their pasta is freshly made it cooks in about two minutes so the lady just made it while I stood there. I'm hoping to get some pasta tomorrow at the grocery store and try it myself!

After we ate we walked around and looked at the deserts they had and saw a stand with some adorable looking cupcakes so we decided to take a look at them. We each ended up buying some and it was probably one of my best purchases so far! They are absolutely delicious! We also saw a really cool stand that had all sorts of different chocolates...I'm probably going to have to go back and get some of those some time. The market we went to is there every Thursday. After selecting our treats we were going to check out the street entertainment but sadly the group was packing up as we got there. So we decided to venture home as it had been a long day. We had no trouble finding our way to the tube which we thought was impressive after only being downtown one day!

We made it to the tube and down the steps and the doors to the tube were open and at first we were just going to wait for the next one, but Denise said she thought we could make it so we attempted to get on. Denise, Sarah and I made it on but the doors began to shut as Jeana tried to get on. Instinctively I stood in the way of the door closing so that Jeana could get on because we could not leave her all alone in downtown London! I thought the doors would open back up when I did that but they didn't...so I pushed them open and Jeana hopped on. We had a good laugh about it and are still laughing about it now. We're just glad we all made it back though I probably won't be doing that again as I got a few funny stares! :)

Once we got back Jeana and I relaxed for a while after a long day...it was about 7:30 when we got back, basically the first time we had been back all day. So we were ready for a bit of a break. Our legs were worn out from walking but it was well worth it! After resting a bit we decided to venture out and see one of the pubs. Pretty much the whole group went and we had a good time talking and experiencing London! Finally we made it back and now its time for bed because we have another full day planned for tomorrow!

We have orientation at the college from 9-12 and then at 2 we are venturing to Harrods to take a look around and then have tea around 3:30!!!! I'm sooo excited!