Day 1&2

Day 1
Monday morn Matt, Jessie and Penny dropped me off at the airport. As I hugged them goodbye and walked through the airport I felt find, I was calm, cool, and collected. I was able to get through security and find my gate without a problem but then I realized I had forgotten my makeup bag in the car with Matt and Jessie and I was suddenly overcome with what felt like despair. I had absolutely no reason to be, I could just ask Jessie to send it to me once she got home and in the mean time, hit up the local drug store for something cheap. At the time though, it was absolutely the end of the world. I had remembered with enough time to have them come back and drop it off but not enough to board the plane. It was all wrong and there seemed to be nothing I could do, and so naturally I broke down. In the airport. Crying over my makeup. So I did the only thing I knew how to do, I texted Jessie and her text jokingly inviting me to run back to her warm and waiting arms was only too tempting. Before I knew it I had tears filling my eyes. Luckily enough, boarding was not far off and my mind became distracted.
I made the connection to Chicago and had a quick layover where I met up with my soon to be roommate and another classmate. The flight was long and painful. It was 8 hours of shifting positions and an inability to sleep, but make it I did.

This is her! The one and only Khrystalle. She's from Kansas and is the gal sleeping right above me for the next 6 weeks and then we are traveling to Italy together at the end of all these shananigans! Hopefully we don't hate each other by the end ;) But really..

We got off the plain and purchased our Oyster Cards which is the underground train thing we use to get around the city, hopped on one, and got to our stop. It was about a 15 minute walk from the stop to our flat with all of our luggage and it was hot! It probably would have been much more manageable if we weren't toting all of that behind us but I was seriously sweating. It was gross.

Look at how ghetto it is! It was probably once really cute and nice, but I don't think that there has been a lot of maintenance done to keep it up because it's looking rather dingy!

This is our teensy little room! It's way messy right now but I feel like it gets the point across. One girl came in and said, "Oh, your room is really..cozy" Nicely put. 

Khrystalle and I unpacked and then found our way to the local drug store, Boots, where we bought converters and toiletries. I am increasingly amazed at how expensive everything is! When we got back to the flat I took a shower and got to wash my feet! Seriously the best thing of my life, even though the shower was so small that the curtain was stuck to me the entire time, I was clean! I hit the hay at 7 and woke up this morning at 7:50, well rested and supposedly ready for classes.

Day 2
We walked to our first day of classes where I thought I would be well prepared, but quickly found that I wasn't. I was so lost throughout both of the classes! Looks like I need to read a few more summaries online! After class we went to a cafe and I bought a ham, cheese, and "salad" baguette and walked to the grocery store. Again it was crazy expensive, but really.. it was like 20 pounds for 4 things. Once we dropped off our groceries we headed out once more for a little adventure. Our goal was to see Big Ben and see Big Ben we did!

We then walked around to find Westminster Abbey. It was so pretty! There was a church right next to it called St. Margaret's church that I seriously want to go to. 

Don't you just want to live there?!

Everything is so much radder in person. This really doesn't even do it justice, but anyways these doors were amazing. I feel like churches are a really big thing here, which I didn't even really think about and so seeing this depiction of Mary and Jesus was really great. 

And then came this radness! Can I tell you what any of these places are? Certainly not. But the architecture is really something here! There is always something to see, I want to live in every house and all of the apartments that I walk passed!

As it turns out, all those cute old fashioned telephone booths that you see in movies are actually a lie! The ones all around where we live are these nasty plastic ones with none of the red radness! Instead it is as I said, plastic, and upon those 4 plastic walls are pictures. The kind of pictures that the people on the side of streets hand out on the Strip. It is so gross! I was so dissapointed when I saw those everywhere because I desperately wanted one of the above classic pictures and then to my dismay I found this beaut on my walk today! Basically I'm official now. What I am officially? I have no idea, but I am official!

On the other side of the Thames River is this little gem which I believe is the London Eye, don't quote me on it! I want to go up on this bad boy one of these days. The view from up there has to be incredible! PS. Incase you were going to go around talking about the Thames River and are as illiterate as I am, it's pronounced Tams or Tims or something like that. Nonsense. I had no idea what the group was talking about each time I heard it and when I finally figured it out I felt so dumb! Did you know I read a whole book with the name of that river within? Definetly pronounced it to myself as it looks..amature

On our walk I discovered that I needed to use the bathroom. As I scowered the streets, searching for one, I stumbled upon this little dear, only to find that it costs 50 pence to use. First of all what public bathrooms require a cover fee, and second of all what in the world are pence? And which coin is that!? I'm sure I am getting ripped off over and over because I have no idea what any of the coins really mean, but thats okay right? They're coins so they can't be worth all that much..wrong. One of them is worth 2 bucks! I mean..pounds? Much too confusing

So I pay my fine and walk through the gates and a man is standing their directing me to which specific one I can use! Strange. So I open the door and stumble upon this gem! I had been really wanting a picture of the flag and when I found this little dear I was so delighted that I figured it would suffice!

So after all of our hard work walking we decided that we needed a treat and so we stopped at one of the cute carts along the road. Can you see just how much my ice cream does not look like the picture?! I totes should have gotten what the other girls got (Ashley, my other roommate and Christa) or I should have just stopped at the nearby McDonalds for my usual soft-serve ice cream cone. Drat.

On our walk back my feet were hurting pretty terribly so I convince the other girls that it would be a fun adventure to take the buses! It was so fun! We sat on the top level and got to look at everything! It was so rad!

London is rad guys! Probably come visit me!