It was a very long first day. After traveling from DC to JFk, and then JFK to London, without being able to sleep in the plane, I was really tired and crabby. As soon as I got to the apartment I wanted to sleep until it was time to go to orientation, but decided not to so that I could get over the jet lag and get into London time mode, so instead I took a shower, put some new clothes on and went for another walk of the neighborhood. By the time I got back my roommates were here, so we started to awkwardly introduce each other and interrogate one another. After a while we decided to go to the free lunch that the program was offering. They had told us that it would be a buffet style lunch, with more food than we had ever dreamt of, so we were quite excited. By the time we got there we were disappointed with the buffet, it was really small with traditional European food we had never heard of, so we took some, and tried it, which was ok, not great food, so we decided to eat it. The atmosphere was kind of weird, it felt like a High School cafeteria were no one talked to anyone else, and everyone was judging who you sat down with and what you were wearing and what not. Thankfully I had just taken a shower and was hanging out with my roommates so I was good.
After lunch we did some administrative stuff, like get our school ID’s and other stuff like that. Dinner time came around and we decided to go to a pub nearby. It was called Shakespeare’s Head. Apparently people after work go out to the pubs to drink, we saw a lot of business men and college students blended together in the pub, which created a cool atmosphere. Whoever said that the US and the UK were two great nations separated by a common language, was damn right. At the pub we had our first run ins with the British culture and language. When we walked in we waited for someone to come and sit us a table, but after a few minutes we noticed that no one was coming and that we should find our own table, so we did. After this, we waited about ten minutes for a waiter to come by and take our order, and guess what, again, no one came. After a while of waiting, we went to the bar to ask for a waiter and they told us that we had to order at the bar and that they would bring the food to our table. So my roommate Zach starts ordering, “I want a cheeseburger with-”, the bartender/waiter interrupts, “You mean a beefburger?”, “No”, says Zach, “A cheeseburger with-”, again interrupted by the bartender/waiter, “Ok, so a beefburger with cheese on top”, “Sure” is the last word Zach said to the bartender. Then it was my turn, and I thinking that I wasn’t going to mess up since I had seen the interaction, say, “A beefburger with cheese on top and some fries”. Now, if you know about British culture, you know that they are not called fries, just like I knew that, but I wasn’t really thinking, I was trying to not mess up the beefburger part. After a few seconds of confusion, the bartender asked me what fries were, I explained and he said, “Yes, they come with Chips”, Chips is what they call fries in the UK, don’t ask me why.
After our dinner at the pub, where we had beefburgers with chips, beer and weird ketchup, we headed over to our last orientation session of the day. It took place in a hotel nearby. As soon as we sat down to listen to the orientation, all five of us started to fall asleep, we tried to keep each other awake, but it was boring and we had been up for a long time. After the orientation session, which was mostly about security and what not to do and what to do, we headed home. Even though we had fallen asleep at the orientation, we had decided that we were going out our first night in London, no matter how tired we were. We asked around to see what was the best pub/bar nearby to go to and everyone told us to go to Shakespeare’s Head, but since we had already been there we decided to go someplace else. Before heading out we bought some beers and drank for a few hours in our apartment while we talked about life.
We left our apartment around 8pm and just walked around until we found a pub that looked fun, it was called O’Neil, an irish pub, which was full of drunk guys watching football (soccer), cheering and cursing every time their teams did something to merit either one. We sat down in a corner, watched the game while talking about politics, religion, soccer and life. After a while of drinking and talking we decided to head out and see if we could find people from our program that were around the area, so we headed to Shakespeare’s Head. When we got there, around 10pm, there was no one left from our program there so we headed home. We got home at 1030pm, which is the usually the time I start getting ready to go out back in the states, but we were really tired and falling asleep at every corner.
When we got home some of my roommates decided to go get some girls to come to our apartment and hang out with us, while they did this, me and my other roommate stayed in the room talking. This is the last I remember, not because I blacked out, but because I fell asleep in the couch and woke up at 6am, fully clothed in my bed.
It was a great first day and first night in London. It was pretty chill and relax, hung out with the roommates and explored our neighborhood. Today we are going to go buy our british cellphones, then we have an orientation session from 2pm to 4pm, and after that we are free until Friday morning.
I can honestly say that I am glad I came to the United Kingdom. It promises to be a great semester in the UK and Europe. Going to visit friends in other countries, going to travel, going to take cool classes, going to theater, out to more pubs and clubs, so I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated. Cheers!
