london | day two

My first cup of British tea!

Well, I’ve made it through two days in London! I’m settled in here at High Holborn Residence Hall, and I’m starting to figure out my way around the area.   

I slept for more than 20 hours yesterday/today. After doing a tour of the city yesterday afternoon and cleaning up, I went right to bed and managed to sleep until noon today. So I am all rested up! Still, the 5-hour difference is going to take some adjusting. When I woke this morning (afternoon?) I walked two blocks down to Sainsbury’s for groceries. Though I’m sure I’ll be eating out quite a bit, I wanted to get some snacks to keep in my room.   

It is also much more difficult to find drinking water here. I would never have thought of it, but almost all the taps (at least in my residence hall) have signs warning you not to drink the water. There aren’t many drinking fountains, and when I was at the café yesterday, they didn’t serve water without request, as a restaurant would in the US. So I loaded up on bottled water at Sainsbury’s, and found a few other treats that I had never seen before and wanted to try out.

Then what water am I supposed to drink?? 

Of course, I had to get some English crisps; there was gooseberry yoghurt (which is more like whipped cream than the heavy, condensed yogurt I’m used to), apple and elderflower juice, and my very favourite cookies (which my friend Mike introduced me to!), caramel waffles. I’ve had elderflower juice and the waffle cookies before in the US, but they are very difficult to find, expensive, and usually sold in specialty stores. I also noticed that many more of the foods (even packaged foods) are locally sourced; many products are labeled as ‘British’ and have Union Jack decorations, far more so than you would see ‘US’ or an American flag on foods sold in American stores. Very cool and interesting. 

After shopping, I went to officially register for my class at LSE. Getting to the school is very simple: I follow Drury Lane (the intersection for which is right outside my hall) down a few  blocks and there I am. LSE has a more extensive campus than

I expected; there are quite a few academic buildings, the library, shops, cafes, etc., and it's very close to the Thames. I know I've stayed in Central London so far, but it is such a beautiful city. The shops, hotels, statues, gardens are all clean and picturesque. There are more trees and greenery than I'd expect in a city, certainly far more than in Chicago. It's lovely walking down a city street and being shaded by towering trees. 

After registering, I discovered that the Delaunay is just a few doors down from LSE on Kingsway Tunnel. I ordered my first cup of Earl Grey tea since I've gotten to the UK (ahhhh!) and some biscuits and enjoyed them at Victoria Embankment Gardens, down near the Thames. It was absolutely beautiful. The weather has been perfect: around 75, breezy, a few specks of rain throughout the day. The garden is across the street from the Thames, and has a surprising number of tropical plants growing along its walls. I learned that the public restrooms may only be used for a fee (50p), which is interesting.  

I've been trying to keep my mouth shut most of the time I'm out in the city. I realise Americans have a negative reputation, and though I try to not be a stereotypical ignorant American (I've so far successfully managed to avoid pulling out a huge map of the city and squinting at it dumbly in the middle of traffic) as soon as I start speaking I usually get a look. So I've been sticking to 'yes', 'no', 'excuse me', 'thank you', and whatever else is pretty accent-less as much as I can. I've caught on to switching directions: when passing someone else on the sidewalk, I know to pass them to the left rather than the right. Crossing streets, I know to look to the right rather than the left (a potentially fatal mistake to make!), though the major crossways for one-way streets have very helpful directions (Look left! Look right!). Why don't all cities have these?   

My room at High Holborn Residence Hall

I begin my class tomorrow. There's a welcome lecture for the new students early in the morning, and then I'm meeting up with my fellow Financial Markets classmates for lunch before our lecture begins at 2:00 (whoops! 14:00). Class is every day of the week, from 14:00-17:00. There's a midterm exam next week and a final exam at the end of the three weeks. I look forward to meeting my classmates (so far I've been out and about or sleeping, and haven't met many other students) and settling into a schedule.