First Days in London

Soo, the first few days in London have been pretty hectic, but I love it already! The first day we get here was a little rough, our flats were not immediately ready so we ended up wandering around London on very little sleep. During that time though I was able to set up my cellphone which was good, I have a UK number now! The rest of the day was spent doing very little orientation stuff and a lot of getting things together, we went grocery shopping and tried to set up bank accounts and the like. After dinnertime a group of Clark people and I tired to find our first real London Pub, but that didn't really work out so well. We wandered around for a bit trying to find a fun looking place, but as it was 8pm not many people were out. We ended up finding a pub with some people in it so we went in- soon to learn that the people inside were all from Jersey and fit the stereotypes completely, and the bartender was Canadian. So not really a london experience, but the people were fun to talk to!

Yesterday, I had my interview at my internship. This was an adventure of its own, as me and another girl had to take the Tube together to get there. One thing we learned is that the tube is EXPENSIVE! especially if you don't buy tickets correctly, as we of course did not. Once we got through however it was pretty well organized and the trip is not very difficult, its going to take me 30-40 minutes to get to work. I'm working at a special needs school, specifically with kids with Autism. I'm really excited about it, I met my supervisor yesterday and she seems really nice! The school is really big, they have a swimming pool and everything! I think that will be one of my responsibilities; helping the kids with their swim lessons- or teaching swim lessons? i'm not really sure.

Last night I finally got to meet a lot of the people in my program, our orientation strangely did not include introductions! But we all hung out together which was fun, about half of the people here are from Clark, and then there's also students from Stonehill and Sienna.

Oh, and my flat! it's set up kind of strangely- we are on the 4th floor, but the main staircase only goes to the 3rd floor. To get into our flat we have to go in the door of somebody else's, and then up another staircase. But don't worry, the flat below us in also in our program so they're not creepy. We also don't have our own door at the top, so we're pretty much in a 2 level flat where each level has its own bathroom, common room and kitchen. I'm living in a triple which is nice- it's pretty big so there is enough space for all of us. We also have big common room attached to our kitchen. The flat is big in general but not very nice, it works for us though!

Alright, I think thats it for now, the rest of the week I'm doing more orientation-type things, tomorrow we're going on the London Eye, hopefully it will be less rainy than it is today!

Miss you all!
Mackenzie