After our orientation, we went on a three hour walking tour of the City of London - along with our very first tube ride! The city however, is not to be confused with the rest of London. It processes ridiculous amounts of money every day and is very historical - specifically where you can find the Tower of London, the Tower of London Bridge, and the site of the Great Fire. We were in certain parts of the city where hundreds of people had been publicly executed, and other parts where Shakespeare had been during his time, which was extremely interesting to think we were standing in the very places that these things had taken place. We got a few good pictures, but not very many with people in them (sorry Mom and Dad!). But we are definitely planning on visiting them again once we have more time to spend there.
When we finished the tour, we went out for a cider and fish and chips with a few other students in our program. The cultural differences are still hard to get used to... people are supposed to buy rounds of drinks here for a group, and then each person in the group eventually buys a round to make up for the drinks they've received. It's extremely rude to ask for separate checks or just go and buy yourself a drink without offering it to others. As you can imagine, it's easy to get both very expensive, and very drunk... We stuck to individual meals (and drinks) tonight, but it's something we'll have to get used to I guess!
We went out later in the night and "got lost" as everyone advises us to do... after actually taking that upon ourselves, I started to think maybe we should have taken that advice a few weeks into the program. I was completely turned around, but we ended up stumbling upon Big Ben, as well as the Duke of York pub which friends had told us about. It was memorable, but I definitely want to allow a bit more time to get used to the bus and tube system before doing it again!!
nice job lil sis!
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