Composed on September 18, 2008
Well, maybe I should read all the information in the welcome packs before I spend two hours putting up all those lovely posters on the wall because I cannot put posters up with tape! So, I took them all down with no harm done to the walls, and now my walls look very barren :’( Also, I maybe should have looked at the map of the campus before I got up two hours early, so that I wouldn’t be lost in the morning looking for the Duchesne building. But, of course, the Duchesne building is right next door to me. Wow, I’m dumb.
This campus is absolutely gorgeous! Not exactly what I pictured in my mind, but gorgeous nonetheless. We took a tour of the campus this morning, and somehow I still seem to get lost. After the tour, Stephani e and Whitney took us all to Central London using the bus and the tube, so we could get use to them. We went down Southbank, near the London Eye, and we saw some professional street performers. The funniest one was Ernest the Magnifico, yeah I know! He was from Australia and was a comedian who was obviously too big for his…. Uniform/costume outfit. I’ll try to attach the video I took, but seriously, this guy was insane, and obviously has a lot of self confidence. We saw so many other street performers like statues, musicians, contortionists they were all wicked cool. One of the statues things wanted Jerrica to sit on his lap and she was not having it! After that we all walked to Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace.
Then, Stephanie (our FSA Advisor) took us to a tube station where we as a group had to find our way home in time for the free dinner for all the international students by 6: It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t RUSH HOUR! Every train was filled with people, the people inside were literally pressed against the glass doors. We all had to split up into the trains, about two to four in each train with about six different trains. It was a nightmare! Half of us met at Hammersmith and managed to get onto a bus, and turns out that we were on the wrong bus! Then, we got off on one stop, got onto the right bus, and passed the station again. There was the other half of our group! We all managed to get packed onto the bus, to find out that Rob, Mark, Ian, Greg, and Dominique weren’t with any of us. When we finally got off the bus, we saw Mark walking from the opposite direction. He has apparently gotten his fill of buses and the tube because he said he had been all over London trying to find his way back to Roehampton. After all was said and done, we were forty five minutes late, and still managed to get free dinner.
After dinner, we all had a plan to go to Picadilly Circus, but that was killed with the knowledge that the tube closes early. So, instead we hopped on a bus, told the bus driver that we wanted to go to a cheap pub, and ended up in Hammersmith.
