First week

It's been a while since I've blogged. But I guess its any easy way for people to catch up on what I'm doing, and how I am while I'm here in London. So I've been in London over a week know, and so far, I've loved every second of it. Not saying its all been easy, but I'm loving the adventure that's coming along with the move. 

During my last two weeks in Maryland, I probably seemed insane to anyone who saw me, I literally was running around like a chicken without a head. From visa applying, trying to gain accommodation here in the UK, finalizing everything at my job so I did not leave everything a mess, quiting my job, selling two cars, organizing the storage and movers, organizing cleaning ladies for the empty apartment, numerous transactions at my bank, going to endless doctors appointment, filling medications for the next year, to seeing friends before I left, I barley slept, and kept feeling very frustrated, alone and questioning what the hell i was about to do with my life. But anyways, I finished the impossible and hopped on a plane to the most deserving vacation I've ever taken; a month in Ecuador. 

Ecuador was AMAZING. It was that vacation everyone always dreams of. I got to sleep in, I got to eat everything I wanted and more, I got to see my family and go out at night with my cousins as well. I also got Lasik eye surgery, which has made my life so much better already. 

Anyways fast forward a month, and I got on another couple planes, with more worried thoughts about what the heck I was doing. First night interesting.  After spending what felt like foreverr on airplanes or in airports, I was so happy to be on the ground, outside. I arrived at my accommodation in bloomsburg and was given a key and told which room I had. Long story short, I was given a double room instead of a single I was first told I had.  Heck yea, I'll take a full bed any day. But the problem was, I only had bedsheets for a twin. I stretched the fitted sheet, and surprisingly it fit, a little awkward on the bottom but oh well. 

The first weekend I spent running around near by stores buying things for my studio, and getting used to the area. While wondering around my neighborhood I of course got lost, and ended up in a cool town, which apparently is very popular. It's a colorful, hippie-punky town called Camden. 

I ran around Camden. went to their street Market and found a bunch of 99cent and other cheap stores where I bought more stuff for my new place. Sunday I spent the day doing touristy things, walked to Piccadilly circus from my hall, then to Buckingham palace. Kept thinking how awesome it was that I was here for a whole year, and that the tourist next to me where probably going home soon. 

The next week was followed by international orientation at my school, Birkbeck.

I met alot of people there from all over the world, the US, Russia, Japan, Brasil, Chile, Poland, China, everywhere. I went to some seminars on the difference in studying at post graduate level vs undergrad, and the difference between studying in the America vs UK. Basically I learned, that I'm going to need to read and write twice as much in the beginning until I get used to the system. I also went on a couple tours of the library and the neighborhood of my school. At night they had all sorts of social events as well. Went to most of those, and learned that there is a bar at the top of the main building of our college, and that its a frequent hangout for everyone, including professors. Alcohol in the UK seems to be a part of everything- they had welcome drinks at my hall, welcome drinks at the beginning of our orientation and school sponsored pub crawls. I went on the pub crawl to the student bars around my school. Thank god those student bars included student prices because the rest of London is twice as expensive at back home. Friday a group of the internationals also met up and went to the university of london's (birkbeck my school is one of the 8 colleges that belongs to University of London) first Friday party. Learned that the Brits part time hobby is waiting in line (the queue here) there was a queue for EVERYTHING. Met a couple of awesome guys from Birkbeck at this place, and spent the night drinking wine and dancing.

 Yesterdays we were planning on going to some speakeasy secret bar, but "the mayor did not want to see us", so we ended up going to brick lane, a street filled with Indian curry places, and got persuaded into eating Indian food, which i LOVED and was pretty cheap and we got free drinks.  

Today I spent the morning reading lectures for my classes that start on Tuesday and later met up with my friends and went to the British museum. 

My parents are coming to visit strating tomorrow until Friday, I'm excited since I haven't seen them in months. 

Haven't been home sick much. I've Only had trouble with getting used to all the coins the Brits use, and already almost burnt my hair straightener because of the voltage conversion. I finally got a phone number and can access the Internet outside like a normal person. :D

So yea I hope people read this, and enjoy my updates. Not sure how often ill write as I'm going to be busy throughout the school year, but check back every so often.