Cheers from London!

So a few days ago I took flight to the wonderful city of Charlotte!! (And oh yeah, I suppose from there to London). After many adventures sorting out my “out of sync” reservation (lo and behold that my return flight in May should change by 5 minutes and thus prevent me from checking in), a delay in my first flight resulting in me hastily rushing through the airport to make my connection, losing my phone in the process (and then conveniently having a nice man turn it into the desk and tell me so when he later spotted me – the lady at the desk then got to smile and hold back a chuckle as she asked me what my background picture was to claim it and I happily answered 2 baby goats), struggling immensely carrying my luggage that in total weighed more than myself, proceeding to trip out of the train from Gatwick into London as I tried to carry said luggage down the little train steps, and then finally arriving at my lovely place (in the Waterloo / South Bank area right next to the river).

I am not sure what to expect from these next 5 months (asides from expecting my bank account to mysteriously disappear), but I am so excited to see what London has in store for me. Undoubtedly I’m in for a few adventures and a healthy dose of awkward missteps (which I will happily supply any accounts of my awkwardness to this blog).

As a preface to what you can likely expect from my blog (asides from awkward), to accompany me on my international travels, I would like to introduce the wonderful Nim the Gnome (but you can call him Ni for short). Nim, a present from a certain best friend’s trip to Sweden, will probably be making a few guest appearances in some of my photographs in Amelie style.

In fact, let’s see what all Nim has been up to this week….

(Nim's flight takes off)

(Nim is so excited that the London Eye is right next to his place)

But actually my stay has sincerely been wonderful so far. I came in New Year’s Eve and proceeded to see the most incredible fireworks show through the London Eye. The atmosphere was unreal - basically just a happy riot on the streets (it took us an hour to walk back to our place that is a 5 minute walk away).

(Brief video of the fireworks partway through)

New Year’s Day was lovely, surprisingly warm and sunny to welcome me to my first full day in London! Due to the nice weather, Dylan and I took advantage of it by doing loads of exploring. We walked miles and miles, stumbling across a number of the major sites and accidentally stumbling into the London New Year’s Day Parade in Westminster (which was really cool except for some reason some marching band from Florida started playing America the Beautiful??). We walked through the parks, made it over to Buckingham Palace, and so on.

(Dylan and I at Buckingham Palace)

 (Sneaky Nim made it through the gates)

(The Eye in the distance from the parks)

(The New Years Parade left confetti all over the ground - please excuse the stereotypical photo...)

(Nim in the crowds after the Parade, checking out Big Ben)

The rest of our program arrived on Thursday, so since then we’ve been busy with orientation activities. Our program took us up the London Eye yesterday, and this morning we did a bus tour. Basically I’m trying to squeeze in most of the stereotypically touristy things at the beginning, because while they’re all things that I want to do, I also want to move on to being a slightly pretentious “local” who can then judge the short-stay tourists coming in ;).

(Parliament and London from the top of the Eye)

(Alex, Elise, and I with the Bridge in the background during our tour)

Classes will start Monday (for those of you who don’t know, the program is structured so that I will be taking classes for the first month, and then will spend the rest of my stay doing an internship at Beazley Group), so unfortunately I won’t have all day everyday just to sight-see and sit in cafes, but I’m excited to get settled into the swing of things (and I know my bank account will definitely appreciate it when I’m no longer eating out for every meal).

I’ll try to do my best updating this so you folks can follow what I’m up to and will also do my best to make it not a complete snooze, but I make no promises as this is my first time blogging.

Finally, throughout my stay, in addition to following my blog, feel free to reach out at any point through e-mail, Facebook, set up Skype dates (for central time peeps, I’m 6 hours ahead), etc as I also want to stay in touch with how everyone is doing. Hope all is well, talk to you soon! Cheers!