Ok so maybe Monday wasn’t so exciting, but it was a much needed day of rest. Even though the UK doesn’t have Memorial Day, it happened to be a bank holiday so we still had no class/a day off. We slept in, and my roommates, Amanda and Mike, and I went out to a quick breakfast with some of the other students in our program at Pret a Manger, London’s version of Starbucks (aka one on every corner, but everything is way cheaper and there is a bigger/better selection of food). From there we ran errands and legitimately started unpacking and got settled into the flat. We also decided that we wanted to do several roommate dinners per week to practice cooking and save money (Mom, Aunt Teri, and Grandma – aren’t you proud of me?!). We of course took pictures to prove how awesome we are:
Because Monday was so low key, Amanda, Mike, and I decided to wake up early on Tuesday morning before class to go for a walk/explore around London. At the beginning, this was an awesome idea. But then we got close to Parliament, and Big Ben, and all the famous London monuments and got carried away to a point that we were almost late to class (not to mention the blisters I accumulated on my feet from walking so far. Ouch…). It was still worth it though, because now we have a better idea of the layout of London, and a better sense of how far away things in London are from our flat (better to learn sooner than later, I suppose).
Then there was class all day, blah blah blah… I have to admit, class is not so exciting for me. The topic is interesting – in case I did not mention it before, it is about Politics and Media in the UK, which is right up the alley of my Communication/Political Science degree. However, after being out of lecture classes for over a year and knowing that I do not need to take notes because I am the TA, I have the tendency to zone out (if you haven’t gathered already, I am in class now as I am composing this blog). If I wasn’t being paid to show up, I probably would choose to sleep in a little more often, but I will definitely survive. After class though, we decided to go to King’s Cross Station. Why would we go there? Come on Harry Potter fans… to visit Platform 9 ¾! We were disappointed to find that in fact the actual station was under construction, so they set up a fake one outside, but hopefully it will be done before we leave in August!
To cheer ourselves up from our Harry Potter fail, we went to Harrods to window shop. We spent most of our time in the hat section (no pictures, sadly), which was everything you imagined from the Royal Wedding. The best part though, was the Chocolate Bar we happened upon. Yes, you heard correctly, chocolate bar. Everything chocolate was there – ice cream, milkshakes, cake, etc. We chose fondue. Is your mouth watering yet? If not it will after looking at the picture below. It came with strawberries, bananas, pound cake, croissant pieces…
Wednesday’s class was significantly more interesting, because we took a field trip to see Danny Finkelstien, who is the executive editor of The Times newspaper in London and former politician. His office was right next to the Tower of London castle and the Tower Bridge, no big deal. But he was hilarious and had an interesting insight to what is happening now in British politics. After our field trip we came back to our flat to cook dinner (again!), this time with salmon on the menu instead of pasta.
This dinner was also awesome because my good friend from work in Berkeley, Crystal, arrived in London and came over to hang out! After dinner we decided to give Crystal a proper UK welcome, and took her out to a pub in Piccadilly Circus. We had a hilarious bartended who was a surfer, and completely jealous that Crystal and I were from California. We ended up going back to our flat relatively early because Crystal was jetlagged and because I had a meeting at the Parliament building the next morning.
My meeting on Thursday morning was less of an interview, and more of a “nice to meet you, this is what you’ll do here” meeting. The MP (member of Parliament) that I will be working for is named Jon Trickett, who is one of the leaders of the Labour party from Yorkshire, in Northern England. He is absolutely hilarious, and had me laughing throughout our meeting, so I think this internship will be interesting as well as enjoyable. My fellow intern, Sarah, was also very sweet and helpful so I should have a smooth transition to the job. My official first day is next week, so I will let you all know how that goes in a later post.
From Parliament I met the rest of the group at the train station, and we took off for a day trip to Oxford! Upon arrival we got a campus tour from Ash, the current president of the Member’s Union at Oxford. Apparently former presidents have become pretty famous, so I’ll have to look out for him in the future! We had the rest of the day to meander around and explore on our own. We decided to walk through Christ’s Church, which is where they filmed several scenes in the first and second Harry Potter movies, go “punting” (basically going on a boat that is a crossover between a row boat and a gondola, ridiculously difficult by the way), and to grab a food/drinks at the Turf Tavern. After dinner we attended a debate at the Member’s Union, which was actually a comedy debate for charity about whether people should still have children or not. The debate teams from Oxford and Cambridge both gave silly arguments, and had the audience laughing, except for us sometimes because we didn’t understand some of the slang/couldn’t always understand the accents. It was still interesting though because we got to sit in the room where several famous (serious) debates have occurred in the past at Oxford.
And now we are caught up to the present moment, as now it is Friday morning and I am sitting in class and promptly not paying attention. If you have made it through this post without skimming/skipping some parts, congratulations! I will try not to wait so long between posts next time!
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