I'm actually here in London and I'm loving it! My flights yesterday went well, except for flying into London was weird. Once we broke through all the clouds it stayed foggy and I could just see green. It was raining of course, and freezing! We had to wait for about a half hour in the rain for our shuttle bus to come pick us up. We were all so jet-lagged and tired that when we were driving through the streets I could hardly keep my eyes open. I just remember my first impression was everything was green and wet. I thought we were going to get smashed by a car any second, because we were driving on the wrong side of the road! It felt like the drive to the centre took about an hour. Our professor came out to greet us once we pulled up, then we carried our luggage inside and up to our rooms. The goal was to stay awake all day to get used to the time change, so once we had unpacked and made our beds, our professors took us out for a walk around Bayswater. Bayswater is the name of our neighborhood, and it was basically just a walk around the block, but it felt like it took forever, because I was so tired. Plus, while we were walking it was raining, freezing, and I had a stomachache. It started pouring so hard at one point we had to stop and stand in the doorway to some building. I was so tired and cold and wet that I started thinking to myself, why did I pick to come to the rainiest place on earth? I didn't take very much of the tour in, because I mostly just watched the people walking by me. Lots of people wear black here, and most of them dress up pretty nice. Once we got back to the centre, I started feeling much better. The sun came out for a little bit, and we decided to walk around Bayswater some more. I couldn't stay out long though, because I had to get back and help with dinner. The centre provides breakfast and dinner for us each day, except for Saturdays. Saturdays we have to fend for ourselves. Anyway, each week a group is assigned to dish crew, and the crew helps before and after dinner. Alvaro and Thais are the couple that run the centre, and they're from Brazil. They're both super nice and cool! We helped them prepare for dinner, then sat down to some beef stew. After dinner, we helped wash the dishes, and mopped the kitchen and the dining rooms upstairs. It was a pretty rough cleaning on top of being so tired. Everyone went out for gelato while we were cleaning, so when we were done we decided to go out on our own. Bad thing is, most of us were half asleep during our tour, so we couldn't remember how to find the gelato place! Another girl named Kristin and I thought we knew where we were going, so we led the crew up and down the streets over and over until we got completely lost. I know, that sounds so unlike me... usually I have an excellent sense of direction :) Some nice old man finally told us that the gelato place, called Gelato Mio, was on Notting Hill. We finally found Gelato Mio and had the most delicious gelato ever! The guys working there were so funny! They could tell right away that we were Americans, so they started asking us what state we were from. They said that California and New York were their favorites, even though they'd never been there. We're definitely going to go back to that place! We got back to the centre and were all dead tired. We dropped down in our beds around 10, and I fell right to sleep and didn't wake up til my alarm went off.
Today, we went to St. Paul's cathedral. We ate breakfast (toast with nutella), had orientation and our first day of classes, ate a quick lunch, then set off for St. Paul's. We took the tube for the first time with our oyster cards, which we bought yesterday. You put money on the oyster cards and it lets you use the tube and the buses. St. Paul's was really cool! The stairs outside of it were the stairs in Mary Poppins where the Bird Lady sits and feeds the birds. Inside was super elaborate, and there were lots of monuments to dukes and lords and war generals. The divination staircase in Harry Potter is in St. Paul's, and that made me super excited! One of my favorite parts was downstairs in the crypt. Lots of famous people are buried down there like Christopher Wren and Horatio Nelson. The tombs are made out of marble and look pretty cool. They wouldn't let us take pictures inside unfortunately, but I took some of the outside. I think the coolest part was at the end when we climbed 500 stairs up to the top of the cathedral and got to look out over the whole city! We could see the London eye, the tower of London, and even the bridge in Harry Potter that gets blown up by death eaters. Apparently they must have rebuilt it :) We had to hurry home after St. Paul's to help with dinner again. Tonight we had chicken with rice, and had strawberry ice cream for dessert. Cleanup went a lot faster tonight, and it helped that we weren't so tired.
We just got back from Champion's Pub, which is a pub right around the corner from the centre. Apparently, the actress that plays Ginny Weasley goes to that pub a lot! We got toffee pudding, but it was more like a chocolate cake with raisin frosting and ice cream. It was so good! I feel justified eating so much sugar, since we did so much walking today :) Tomorrow, we're going to the old part of London to see the Tower of London and other stuff. I'm so excited! I've loved London so far, and it's just going to get better! Cheers!
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