day three: harrods and my first day of class!

Hello again! Today was my first day of class at the London School of Economics, and I got to do a couple other things as well....

Breakfast at the Delaunay

They had us wake up early to attend a welcome address at the school; the lecture was at 8:30, which means that I was waking up at 3:00 ET. It was really great. I actually got there so early that I went and had breakfast at the Delaunay (again...). After the short address, I tried to return to my dorm and sleep, but it was so warm that I wasn't able to. I had been thinking that I needed to purchase an umbrella, because it's due to rain the next few days, and I had the marvellous idea to take the Underground to Harrods!

Twenty minutes later I was shopping the gorgeous and far-too-expensive halls of Harrods. God, what I'd give for one of those Burberry trench coats. Of course, I had to spend lots of time shopping for tea, and invested in tins of Earl Grey and Royal Garden teas. I found a cute black-and-white Harrods umbrella but only got to glimpse at the gorgeous rooms full of chocolates, pastries, biscuits, and meats, because I had to head back to LSE. I know I'll return again - not only do I want to stroll through the beautiful mosaic-encrusted deli, but there is also a Topshop across the street (I've never been!) and Hyde Park is blocks away.

I met with a number of classmates for my Financial Markets class at noon for lunch at the school, and was able to meet students from the US and all over Europe. I was amazed by how many people are enrolled in the course - our class is in a large lecture hall that seats about 200, and most of the seats were filled for the lecture today. The lectures take place from 14:00-17:00 every day of the week, and small 'classes' (about 15 students each) meet every morning for discussion of the material. This is new to me, since William & Mary's classes are all very small. The Financial Markets course will essentially deal with portfolio management; and, in addition to the 1,000 page textbook and numerous additional readings, we were given these immense red tomes with all the class notes. Quite a bit of reading.....

Just some light reading material...

The trickiest part right now is fixing my circadian clock. Waking up 'early' isn't necessarily that hard; it's forcing myself to go to bed at 23:00 (which is actually 6:00 pm for me as an East-Coaster). If I let myself stay up until 3:00 am like I want to, I'll never wake up in time for class. I know it'll just take a few days to figure out, but it's not at all fun.

So tonight I already have a bit of reading to do (lucky me), and then I'll be trying to force myself to sleep... The worst part is actually the heat. It might sound silly because it's only 65-70 F here, but no buildings (that I've been in at least) have air conditioning, and trying to fall asleep indoors without AC or a fan is quite difficult. In an enclosed space, it gets warmer than you'd expect. But it's not much to complain about. I'm in a beautiful city, in a wonderful country, lucky enough to be studying at this amazing school!