Tours and Sites and Flatmates

June 22, 5:27 p.m. London, England

Well, so far I have to admit, I have found it much harder than expected to find quality time at my computer! I’ve been trying to keep up with my LJ flist and my e-mail, but I’ve barely had time to skim things, let alone comment and respond! So I apologize for being a little quieter than expected! I just got back to my flat after a walking tour of Kensington, and I sneaked into the kitchen with my laptop to get away from my classmates for a bit in order to focus a little harder on “stuff”, such that it is.

So the past two days have indeed been quite eventful. On Friday evening after my last journal entry, I jumped back on the Underground and went to Leicester Square, since I remembered it as being a fun part of town from my last trip to London, but when I got there I immediately walked out of the tube station and barely made it half a block before it started raining. And unfortunately, seeing as I was afraid to leave my laptop in my hotel room, it was on me, and I didn’t like the idea of being out in the rain, so I jumped into the closest restaurant and had dinner. It was too expensive and not that exciting, but it was food, so I ate quickly and left. Got back on the tube and went back to Earl’s Court where I spent a bit of time in an internet café, before heading back to my room for the rest of the night.

I will not go into too much detail, but my room that night was even more disgusting and cockroach-y than the night before, and I had trouble sleeping, so it wasn’t exactly the best night. So I got myself up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and immediately ran for the hills (i.e., checked out and went straight to check in at the Foundation Center).

I was actually the third person to arrive from my program, and both of the first two turned out to be flatmates of mine, one was a roommate, so the three of us just kind of hung out in the room all morning and waited for everyone else to arrive.

The specific details of where I’m staying: It is the Manson Place flats, as I expected. All of the people in my program are in the same building, spread between three flats. I am in the largest and highest of the flats. We’re on the 4^th floor of the building, and there are 13 of us in this flat. The facilities are actually decent for our group. There are three small refrigerators, so plenty of food space after all. A decent sized kitchen. There are three bathrooms and three showers. Six rooms, I believe. Two rooms of four, one double, and three singles. The three guys in our program are in the singles, and then the rest are women. I am in one of the rooms of four, which is good, actually, because it means I got to be with both of the roommates I requested.

Everyone in the flat and the program seems to be really nice for the most part, and so far we’ve been fairly conflict-free. Which is nice. We had a self-determined flat meeting this afternoon to discuss some flat rules and remind each other about things and we all seemed to be pretty similar minded. This is both good and bad – good, because it’s a pretty comfortable situation so far. But it’s hard because when we want to go out, so far we’ve tended to go in a huge clump, which tends to be problematic when it comes to obvious things like restaurants.

Yesterday afternoon we went on a short walking tour of the FIE facilities in the area, as well as some of Imperial College, and local amenities such as grocery stores, etc. Not that exciting really, but it helped a lot of people figure out the area. After the walk I fed my obsessive side and watched Doctor Who, which somehow resulted in half of my flatmates joining me, which was rather amusing to me. Nice. I might have to convert some people to the dark side while I’m here. After Who, we went to a rather uneventful dinner with the group after failing to make it into the pubs due to Euro 2008 insanity. Tonight we’re going to go early and try to get a table before the game starts ;)

Today we had a few different planned activities. They took us on a very quick little bus tour of the major tourist sites in London, which was cool because I finally got to take some pictures, but frustrating because there just wasn’t enough TIME anywhere. But we’ll hit those places up again later. And they made the mistake of taking us to Buckingham Palace RIGHT AFTER the changing of the guard ended, so it was a freaking madhouse there. Ce la vie!

This afternoon, like I mentioned above, we were taken on a walking tour of Kensington. This was…mildly interesting, if a little strange. It felt like a neighborhood walk and architectural tour more than anything. Which, like I said, mildly interesting. The guide did point out a few interesting places I want to go back to, like this rooftop garden overlooking High Street Kensington. And we went past Kensington Palace, Royal Albert Hall, and the Albert Memorial, which was awesome.

As I mentioned, this evening we’ll be hitting up a pub. Where is still to be determined, but I’m quite ready to go do that ;)

Oh, and because, of course, I know you’re all waiting on baited breath to hear – my luggage did in fact turn up late yesterday afternoon, and let me just say that the resulting shower was like the best shower of my life. It was bliss. I was quite a happy camper. That and pajamas. Pajamas made me quite happy.

I’ll be back later to share some pictures from today’s tours!