Days 6 & 7 / Jet Lag and Class Begins

Day 6 - 5/28/12
Hey All,

Sorry its been a few days since I updated this blog.  On Sunday I woke up feeling horrible.  I think the combination of not really sleeping properly and the jet lag finally caught up to me.  I'm a little ashamed to say I stayed around the apartment almost the entire day but I figured it was worth it with classes beginning the next day.  At least as I was feeling better around 8pm I took a nice walk around the neighborhood to make sure I have the area down and route to class memorized (its about a 20 minute walk).

Day 7 - 5/29/12

Monday was the first day of class over the summer.  I'm taking two classes this summer both economics classes.  The first of the two classes is Monday and Tuesday from 9am to 1pm and is European Capital Markets.  I figured when I signed up for this class that it would overlap with my FE 442 class I completed last semester (Money, Financial Markets, and the World Economy) but I elected to take it since none of the other electives seemed too enticing for me.  I found that my assumption was correct when we got the syllabus on the first day and realized that I already know much of the material, however the prof who teaches it might make the class worth taking anyway.  The professor is a little angry British guy who used to be a Forex trader at RBS (Foreign exchange i.e. trading British Pounds for US Dollars at the Royal Bank of Scotland for those unaware).  He spent the first half hour or so ranting about the stupidity of everything from the Queen (he's very anti-royalist) to the bankers that brought on the economic crisis.  I think he's a little extreme but he is a smart guy.  Afterward our lesson was on basic Forex stuff which I found pretty slow though he did have a few insider stories which were quite interesting. 

A side note I've already acquired a taste for tea since being over here.  My throat was still a little sore when I woke up Monday morning and rather than going for my usual coffee I decided to try some tea that they provide in the classroom building.  Since I first tried it I haven't gone back and find that it gives me the caffeine kick that I need but doesn't seem to make me feel as dehydrated as coffee does at times.

After class I was really amped to go do something as I hadn't done much the day before.  I rounded up a few of the girls I'm friends with on my floor and we decided to pick and random tube stop and walk around the area.  We ended up picking a stop just southeast of Westminster on the other side of the river.  Where we got off was a cool little area with few museums (including the Imperial War museum that my history nerd self is DYING to go to).  All of us were starving so we stopped at a pub to grab some food.  We picked a pub called Prince William Henry (pic) because it had a ridiculous outdoor patio and it was beautiful outside.  I tried English fish and chips for the first time.  The food was decent and I found myself surprised how much I enjoyed the fried white fish.  After we ate we continued onward to the river.  We walked along and found ourselves at the Shakespeare globe.  From there we crossed the silver pedestrian bridge to the other side of the river.  I forget what the bridge is called we just call it the Harry Potter bridge because its the one they destroy in the beginning of the 6th movie.  From there we walked toward St. Paul's Cathedral which is a pretty iconic sight in London.  Afterwards we wandered a bit finding an Italian style square called the London Guild Hall before taking the tube home.  All in all it was a pretty successful exploration and I plan to repeat this exploration idea.

Here are all the pictures I snapped.

Harry Potter Bridge

Globe up close

They're doing all of Shakespeare's plays during a 6 week period.  Unfortunately, its almost over but its pretty cool.  Theaters from around the world including the Chicago Shakespeare Theater come to put on 1 production each.

East view from the Harry Potter Bridge

West view plus sunset

View north w/ St Paul's in the background

I forget what this was but it looked cool

St Paul's up close

St Paul's w/ the Sunset reflecting off the dome.  My iPhone camera doesn't do this view justice by any means.

Guild Hall

Again

Cheers,
Mick

Day 5 / Morning Run & England Football Game

Hey all,

Quick post this time as I don't want to be sitting around the computer all afternoon.  I went for a morning run around 7 on Saturday and snapped a few fantastic pictures along my route that I had to share.  All the pics are in Hyde Park over by Kensington Palace

All these pics were taken within 5 minutes or so from my flat.  Unbelievable and what a motivation to go running everyday. 

In the afternoon we went over to Camden to watch the England friendly(exhibition game) against Norway.  Camden is a goofy area with tons of people, pubs, and shops.  The atmosphere was quite fun as you can imagine though the English cared far less about friendlies than I thought they would.  Afterwards we went to a bar called O'Neil's closer to home.  Stayed quite late and although the place was pretty crowded I was a little disappointed that it was full of tourists.

I wish I had pictures to post especially of Camden but I was so busy looking every direction that I never snapped any.  I'm getting better at the whole taking pictures thing though I promise and I'm sure I'll return to Camden and produce some pictures that do the place justice.  

Cheers,
Mick 

Day 4 / More Orientation

Day 4 - 5/27/2012

Friday was our last day of orientation.  I manged to pull myself out of bed and make it down for another series of lectures around 9am.  Again the first lecturer was fairly dull (though I managed to stay awake this time) and she went on and on in the hot room about various parts of the architecture prevalent here.  I did manage to get a few points from the talk though.  A cool thing she mentioned is the fact that all the museums in London are free to go to.  I'd already planned to go to the British Museum and I've now added the Imperial War Museum to the list.  If you have other suggestions please comment on the bottom of this post as I'm always happy to go check out free forms of entertainment(London is very expensive).

Again the second lecturer was excellent.  The topic was the transition from the British Empire to the sorta half membership to the European Union.  One of the funniest points of the lecture was a point similar to the topic two days before.  He was speaking about how one of the most difficult tasks he has every semester is trying to explain the idea of a constitution to his British students.  He says that in the UK they don't see a need for a constitution because Parliament has supreme power and they elect Parliament.  The students ask why Congress is limited in their action and he responds well there's a constitution that prohibits them from doing certain things.  So then the students reply well why don't they pass a law changing that at which he replies well then it would be taken to court and overturned.  The confused students then ask why Congress doesn't tell the courts what to pass and he replies well you see there's this constitution that says the courts have a check on Congress.  They reply well why don't they change the Constitution to which he states well you need to have 3/4 of the states and yada yada to change it.  The students then are thoroughly confused and are like well how the heck do they get anything done? to which the professor replies, "Well I suppose they don't really."

Another funny story is the trip he usually takes his students on to the national archives here.  One thing they look at is the Declaration of Independence... You know the real one that they sent to the King.  I was shocked that I never really thought about what actually happened to the Declaration of Independence that the Continental Congress sent the King.  I mean it was a letter but you never really think about it being sent.  He says its quite funny that over in the States our copy is contained in a bullet proof glass case but here you open up a file cabinet unroll the thing and put a stone on each corner.  You can touch it, hold it, and on the bottom there's just one word written, "Rejected."  I feel I must make a trip over the archives at some point to see this for myself.

The final funny bit I'll tell you about was in regards to borders and Independence Days.  The prof made the point that the Brits don't have an independence day and apparently a few years ago a few people tried to get one passed.  The idea didn't have much traction as who are the Brits gonna celebrate Independence from.  England's borders have been intact since the 11th century very different from most of Europe which was formed post WWI, WWII, and the Cold War.  His final line was, "What do you do on that day anyway drink beer and eat?  You call that an Independence Day we call it Friday."

Actually had a small amount of free time Friday afternoon.  Used it to go grab my textbooks along with a few other errands.  Friday night we went over to Imperial again.  Most of the kids are finishing up finals and we ran into a funny tradition.  Apparently upon finishing their last year at Imperial seniors or whatever they call them dress up in full on drag, (dresses, whigs, etc.) and get drunk to the point where their English is indecipherable.  It was pretty funny to watch a bunch of them causing chaos across the pub for awhile.  After Imperial we attempted to go to a bar nearby but found them already at last call so we just headed back to the Crofton.

Day 3 / River Tour and Greenwich

Day 3 - 5/24/2012

Woke up early again but a few too many pints from the night before prevented me from going on a run this time.  We had a boat tour scheduled for today but none of us really knew what exactly it was.  The RAs met us downstairs at 10am and led us to a tube station where we took the tube to Westminster.  As a side note it feels awesome to be back in a city with decent public transit.  When we emerged from the tube station here's what we found. 



We then proceeded to get on a river boat where one of our professors who is also apparently a certified London tour guide narrated our slow cruise down the river.  The professor was really witty and knew his stuff.  He'd be talking about the 16th century Gothic architecture one minute before haggling the police river boats speeding by on the loud speaker as "show offs."  It was also kinda cool that our pilot is going to be on the Queen's barge for the diamond jubilee which is occurring in about a week.  1000 ships are going to escort her down the river in celebration for her 60th year on the throne.  I still don't see how that many ships are going to physically fit in that river but I guess I will see it.  One of the most striking things I saw on the trip down the river is big a difference there is between high tide and low tide.  We were going down river during low tide and based on the markings it seems high tide is at least 20 ft higher which is a huge difference.  The professor told us that the tide was one of the reasons the Romans settled here as the difference is so great that during transition from low tide to high tide and vice-versa it is so strong that it actually changes the direction of the river allowing ships that time tides properly to ride a swift river both up and down stream.  I'll post the other pictures I took on the trip with captions.

Don't Remember (Good Start)

Westminster Palace

Again

Again

No clue

Queen's Entertainment Center

Again

London Bridge

The Globe Theatre

Again

Again

Forget the name its not done yet but will be Europe's Tallest Building

Tower Bridge and HMS somethingoranother.  It was the British Flagship on DDay.  Churchill famously informed everyone he planned to go observe the invasion on the ship standing next to the guns as they blasted the French coast.  Eisenhower who would be responsible for his safety was dismayed and called the King to try and get him to reason with Churchill.  The King then phoned the Prime Minister and informed him that as Commander and Chief of the British Armed forces he intended to put on his uniform and observe the landings from the HMS Belfast.  Churchill was dismayed and eventually backed down.

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Again

Again

Naval College

Again

The riverboat tour ended at the Naval College in Greenwich.  From there we were dropped off and informed that we would have to make our own way back to our dorms without any assistance.  After being somewhat stunned we realized it would be kinda cool to figure it out which I'm sure was our directors intention.  As a side note the director of student affairs here is a guy named Michael whose been emailing us for months.  I was picturing an old white British guy who was quite dull and instead was introduced yesterday to Michael the Don Cheadle look-a-like, seriously its scary how much he looks like him, who is absolutely hysterical.

We were all starving so we stopped at a pub for lunch.  Afterwards we decided to go and try to find the Prime Meridian, or the line that divides the eastern and western hemispheres that is located in Greenwich.  Regrettably we found out it was about a 20 minute walk straight uphill.  The combination of the jeans I was wearing (stupidly to avoid looking as American in what is probably one of the most touristy areas in London) and the two pints I'd had with lunch had me sweating and exhausted when we reached it.  However we paid our 5 pounds to get into the Royal Observatory and I snapped a few pictures.

View from the Observatory.  The construction below is for the equestrian event in the Olympics that is taking place there

Better Angle

Olympic Countdown

One foot in East one foot in West.

 Someone snapped a few pics of us standing there and I'll post them when I get them but they're on someone elses camera.

We managed to make our way home from here and I laid down for a much deserved nap.  After napping myself and a few friends decided to go to the welcome party that the staff had organized at a bar down by Westminster.  The bar was pretty cool, it was right along the river and I liked the atmosphere.  We stayed til around midnight when we decided to head to another bar that some other people were heading to.  After a brief cab ride where our driver was a Chicago Bears fan of all things we arrived and found quite the party.  The best way for me to describe the "bar" is I try to think of those old pictures of the beetles in Liverpool where its a basement with concrete walls and just lots of music and such going on.  The night was an absolute blast once we got there and it was hard to get away when we did but we had to be up at 9 the next morning.  I'll censor the exact time we left from this as to not horrify certain relatives but needless to say it was quite the first real night out.  What a full day and hopefully you enjoyed this and if you did I'll try to keep it updated.

Best from London,
Mick

The Beginning

Hey All,

I decided to make this blog to post pictures and write some notes about my experience in London so that my mother and others won't have to attempt to navigate the realm of Facebook. 

Day 1 - 5/21/2012

 I headed to Logan around 4pm or so on the 21st to catch the flight to London.  After being told I needed to arrive at least three hours in advance because international security takes forever I promptly made it though security in about 5 minutes and had 3 hours to kill.  The airline Virgin Atlantic was pretty awesome and its understandable why Richard Branson is as wealthy as he is.  The flight was a group flight so I ran into a few people I knew in the airport and made a few friends with others before we took off. 

Unfortunately, I didn't sleep at all on the flight and and after a 6 to 7 hour flight we landed in London at around 7:30 in the morning.  Customs took ages but we got through after about an hour waiting in line and I split a cab with two other guys on the program to get to our dorm.  First impression of England is that BMWs are driven here like Toyotas are in the US.  Our dorm is called the Crofton(pic) and is a lovely looking flat about fifty yards south of Hyde park in a neighborhood called South Kensington. 

I can't emphasize enough how ridiculous this neighborhood is.  My neighbor across the street is the Bulgaria London Embassy.  A few doors to the right is the Thai Embassy and the Netherlands Embassy is around the corner.  I've seen more Aston Martin, Porsche, and Bentley cars in the last few days than I knew existed on this planet.  I'm living in a triple with Tyler a Colorado kid that goes to Wake Forest and Rohan (pronounced like the Lord of the Rings Kingdom) who's another BU kid from Mumbai, India.  The room is decent size and we share a kitchen with three of the other rooms that is surprisingly nice.  Although when we first arrived it took me about 20 minutes to locate my room as this flat is a maze.

As we all arrived they took us out on a tour of the local area that just reinforced how ridiculous the area is.  I was completely turned around and hadn't slept in about 24 hours so was almost at a zombie state.  Afterwards we headed with our RA and our entire floor over to one of Imperial College's pubs for dinner.  Imperial College is one of the best schools in the country ranked third behind the much more famous Oxford and Cambridge and is located a block from my residence.  We get student privileges at Imperial College Union which means we get to use the facilities that include 2 nice pubs, go on their social events, and join their clubs.  The pub was fun as I got to know a few of the other kids on our floor.  I realized immediately that Americans, particularly American men stand out like a sore thumb.  I found out that British men almost never wear shorts even when its beastly hot (its been unbelievably warm the first few days here).  This information was slightly to my dismay as I brought about 6 pairs of shorts with me for the trip. 

I also had my first British pint at the pub during dinner.  Not having slept for around 30 hours at this point I at least had the intelligence to make it my only pint that night.  My friend Joanna was attempting to drag me out with her because it was her birthday but I decided I needed to get to bed so I declined and headed to sleep.

Day 2 - 5/23/2012

What I assume was jetlag fully kicked in on the first morning here as I woke up wide awake at 5am.  Unable to go back to sleep I decided to go for a run in Hyde Park.  The weather was perfect that early and the park beautiful.  As I was finishing up my run and thought I was going to my flat I rounded a bend and found myself here instead.  For those not aware that's Kensington Palace the former residence of Princess Diana among other Royal Family members.  As I was running along the Long Water in the park I must have gotten turned around and was actually heading West instead of South.  Luckily the sun was rising and I knew my flat was South of the park so I managed to find my way home without having to ask for help.  Being still only 7am and not having to do anything until 9am I decided to go get groceries.  My roommates were awake at this point and together we managed to make our way to the grocery store which is about a 15 min walk. 

Another side note I will be shocked if one of us doesn't get hit by a car very soon.  I found out quickly that cars do not stop for people in the city (or else they are just amazing chicken players) and every instinct of mine has me looking left then right when the opposite is what your suppose to do here.

I managed to luckily only embarrass myself about 5 times in my first shopping attempt.  I first got confused when searching for whole wheat bread I had to settle for whole meal bread (half expecting a microwave dinner to be in between the slices)  I also had to ask a clerk where to find q-tips.  After the confused look I got back I mimed my way into finding out that the "ear buds" were located in the baby aisle.  Then as I was checking out the cashier and I got into a sort of staring match after she had finished ringing up my groceries before a confused me realized that I'm suppose to pack them myself here. 

We got back in time to make breakfast before they set the fire alarm off to get everyone else up at 9am (evil).  We proceeded down toward the classroom area to have orientation.  The first half of the day was pretty typical info before the chairman of the faculty spoke to us.  His speech wasn't that incredible and he was talking to a room full of jetlagged overheated (the Brits don't believe in A/C) students but he made a cool point reminding me about The Grand Tour that young British men used to make back in the 18th century.  You can read about the whole grand tour here but the gist of it is that young men would travel across the channel to France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, before returning home.  Gave me a few ideas for possible travel plans.

After a lunch break we returned to the boiling room for 2 lectures.  The first was a history of the politics of the U.K.  He first raised to points of distinguishing the United Kingdom, Great Britain, the British Isles, and England which are all different.  I was surprised that I was unable to get the full name of the country I'm currently in correct.  The full title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  The professor was interesting but as he got about halfway through the lecture he reached the point of John VI King of Scots ascending to the English throne I found myself resting my eyes before being woken up to the round of applause at the end of the lecture.  Before I get yelled at from various relatives about this in my defense I was extremely jet lagged and about half the room was asleep. 

The second lecture was given by a younger professor on British culture and was simply fantastic.  His lecture was based on the somewhat famous quote by Shaw "English and America are two countries divided by a common language."  He had quite a few interesting points that I'd never thought about before and was pretty funny.  One of his more entertaining points was when he asked someone to take out a 10 pound note.  He pointed out that on one side is Elizabeth II Queen of England who as we know is still the head of the churches of England and Scotland as he pointed out sorta their pope.  He also pointed out that the UK isn't an atheist country by any means it has the same percentage of the population that are nonbelievers as the US.  He then flipped the 10 pound note around and showed us whose picture was on the back, none other than Charles Darwin.  Charles Darwin of course is the pioneer of evolution one of the biggest disputes of religion in the world today.  He said his picture was put on there a few years ago and nobody cared when it happened.  He then asked us to imagine what would happen if Obama were to propose to put Darwin's face on a piece of government property.  I thought it was pretty funny and kinda eye opening.  He also told the story of how John Lennon once said of the Beatles that, "[The Beatles] are more popular than God now."  The quote caused riots and burnings of Beatles gear in the States whereas Church officials in England said simply well yeah we don't like that young people don't attend church as often anymore but he's probably right.  The final point was that from a British standpoint its quite ironic that a country founded on religious freedom and separation of church and state behaves in such a way. 

After the lecture we raced back to change before heading off to a comedy night that was organized by the staff here.  We had a comedian come in who writes for BBC and he was absolutely hysterical.  The point was to expose us to British humor which I've already been a big fan of for quite some time.  After the comedy night we ended by heading to Imperial for a few pints at the student union.  This time we went to the real union bar and its awesome.  Its basically a quad surrounded by the building on all sides where people lounge around sitting in the grass and on outdoor tables just having a few beers.  It was a great way to end my first night in the UK.