12 Days into College

 Twelve Days into College, August 28- September 8

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I have been in college for 12 days now and I learn every day something new about being an adult in a large city. Prior to me moving here my Mom made most of my meals and that's not to say I didn't know how to cook I just never had to. Our apartment (flat in British English) has a full kitchen so slowly but surely I'll learn how to do more with the stove than just making eggs and hamburgers. I get to do all my grocery shopping now which has allowed me to appreciate on a greater level the effort it takes to plan out a square meal.

I have a lot of new responsibilities and generally being a little stressed (in a heathy manner) has caused me to run a little behind on when I would like to publish these blogs, which would preferably be a weekly recap posted on Sunday or Saturday, but we'll see how long I stick to that. There's so much that has happened recently I don't remember all of it and have had to look back in my photos to see what I was doing on a particular night, so hopefully this is a satisfactory recount of my first days in college

August 28- Up before the sun at 3 a.m. in Dublin, I was amped to finally start this leg of my journey, but I knew in the back of my head I would be deeply sad to leave my family in a few short hours. My flight left several hours before my family's which meant they were unable to get their boarding passes and go through security with me, so with less crying from myself than I would've thought we said our teary goodbyes and my family sent me off to security. At the time I could only think about how I won't see then for three and a half months and how sad that made me feel, but luckily that wasn't the case, I found my gate and too excited to sit I stood around waiting for them to start boarding. About forty minutes later I look up and see my family in line at the U.S. customs checkpoint which just happened to be next to my gate. I kept looking at them until one by we locked eyes and came over to talk just one more time before I left. Once it was time for me to board we said another less teary-eyed goodbye and then I left them for good this time and boarded the plane.

Ninety minutes later I was alone in another country. I walked quickly past people out of excitement to the baggage claim only for all my efforts to be undone because I stood at the wrong carousel for fifteen minutes scratching my head wondering where my bag was, only for it to be spinning around a conveyor belt on the other side of the room. Slight hiccup aside I made my way to the train station to board the Elizabeth line that carries people directly into the heart of London. Another forty minutes of me sitting in an uncomfortable seat and the train spits me out at Tottenham Court Road Station. in my excitement I got out of the station onto the wrong street which gave me an additional five minutes of walking through cobbled roads with eighty pounds of luggage that I did not ask for. Finally I saw the study center and many other students wearing our program T-shirts and knew I was in the right place.

I sat for about forty minutes in the student lounge until a program assistant led us all to the only air conditioned room in the study center to begin orientation. After the study center staff were done unloading all the information I met up with a friend I made at orientation who arrived earlier and had already made several other friends in the time since and we went to an Italian place for lunch, I had a margherita pizza. After lunch I hung around in my flat getting to know the flatmates and eventually it was dark and we were ready to go out. A large chunk of the study center students went on a pub crawl in Soho on the first night and everyone had a blast. There is this one place that was essentially a bar inside an arcade and it had the best cider on draught, Old Mout Berries and Cherries. The night ended around two a.m.

August 29- I don't have much in my notes about today other than several hours of orientation followed by an extremely helpful walking tour of the area we live in called Bloomsbury. We were told about some helpful businesses in the area who we may eventually need of service and lots of places to get cheap food which is essential in one of the world's most expensive cities. Some friends and I did some mini sightseeing by taking the train to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. I took it easy in the evening and got some much needed sleep to end my day.

August 30- Friday was a pretty similar repeat of the day prior in terms of orientation and another walking tour, however this one was different. We had a guide who was tasked with taking us to all the historic spots of Bloomsbury to help us know the history behind the area we live in. Towards the end of the tour it shifted to being more of just a Q & A with the guide and it'd already been two hours so I was thankful when we started walking back to the study center. Another small sightseeing session took place after and we walked through Trafalgar Square and down to Big Ben and Parliament. It was amazing seeing Big Ben without all the scaffolding like the last time my family and I were in London.

August 31- The weekend was finally here, but the last thing I wanted to do was go out. College football was back and I'm a sucker for a good game. Watching football here is much more difficult than how it is back home. In Dixon, I would just turn on my tv at 11 a.m. and be all good, but here it's not so simple. First of all even the earliest games kickoff at 5 p.m. and the days slate always runs into the early morning hours. I also could not figure out how to stream it for the life of me. Eventually I figured out I needed to get a VPN that would tell ESPN that I was in Chicago and not London and only then were we finally able to watch. Hayden, Cole, Brandon, Nate, and I hung out and watched CFB until three in the morning when we finally decided to retire for the night.

September 1- I woke pretty up pretty late for me, around 9:30 a.m. and was excited for today's coach pano tour. The pano tour was a two hour drive around the city in an air conditioned bus with a tour guide who knew everything about everything when it came to London. I learned from him that this chain sushi restaurant sold evyerthing at half off for the last thirty minutes of the day to prevent food waste, and thanks to him I got 18 pieces of sushi for only ten dollars! We stopped at Buckingham Palace briefly on the tour for pictures and whatnot, but after the whole tour was over everyone was pretty spent and wanted to take it chill for the rest of the day in anticipation of school starting.

September 2- First day of school. the way classes are structured here is you spend all three of your credit hours in one day to help you finish class sooner, which is good in the sense that we have more time to travel, but bad because three hour lectures feel like an eternity. My first class was Comparative Government and Politics of the UK from 9:30 to 12:30. I feel like I will really enjoy this class because it parallels much of what I plan to do with for my career. I got an hour and a half lunch break so I used my extensive skills in the kitchen to work and made a superb sandwich. Once lunch was over I headed back to the same room where my second class of the day was also being held. I hadn't imagined taking any gen-ed math class in college, but college algebra is a requirement for my major. This class is pretty unremarkable, because it was a lot of review to get us back into the swing of things and I don't care for math. Once class was over I headed to the YMCA to play basketball with some friends for several hours and that was definitely the highlight of my day.

September 3- Day two of classes and I was feeling pretty good. I filled my morning class time slot with my online course principles of macroeconomics. You can complete the course at your own pace whenever you'd like, but I decided to pretend it was a physical class so I have dedicated Tuesday mornings from 9:30-12:30 towards it. My second class of the day was public speaking from 2:00-5:00. I have only been in class once, but I have a feeling it will be the most transformative course of my freshman year. It's hard to explain but the professor, Gerry (In England it's commonplace to refer to professors with just their first name), is a man that must be met face to face to understand that he knows exactly what he's talking about. Later that night the whole study center got ready to go to a play. "The Play that goes Wrong," is what we were watching tonight. I really enjoyed it, but it got redundant towards the end because everything went wrong (obviously), and I felt that it unnecessarily prolonged it, but I'm not a theater major so what do I know.

September 4- The final day of class for me and it's only Wednesday! I have 19th century European history from 9:30-12:30 in the same classroom as two of my other classes. I will enjoy this class because I've always enjoyed social studies and history. This class is different than back home because Europe is so old much of the history we'll be studying we will be visiting it in London. While I'm at certain landmarks learning about what events happened there it's very possible that it predates the founding of my hometown! When class ended I did my math homework and hung around waiting for my friends to get done with class. It was another evening spent at the YMCA playing basketball to mark the halfway point of the week.

September 5- The weekend starts pretty early for me this semester, but that doesn't mean I'm off the hook for schoolwork. I spent Thursday morning doing more homework to allow me to enjoy my weekend without the stresses of school. Early afternoon, my roommate came back to the apartment from exploring the city and advised me of a good direction to go for a walk, so that is exactly what I did. I walked for about three miles round trip west down New Oxford Street towards Hyde Park. I window-shopped up and down that road until my friends got out of class that day. Tonight we were going to the nightclub down the road, The Roxy. I hung out with my friend, Nate, and flatmates in my flat until it was time to go out. Three pound cover and eleven pound pitchers made it a popular destination for the youth and a couple people way too old to be there that night. Hayden, Cole, Brandon, and Hudson had a prior obligation that evening which made them show up a little later, but still had a blast with us. It was a really fun night and I got back to my bed around two.

September 6- Just to get a little sweat going Cole, Brandon, Nate and I went to the YMCA to play a little basketball. We got kicked off the court after a short while because a class was about to start, but that was fine because we also brought trunks to use the swimming pool. Before the pool we used the steam room and sauna just for the hell of it and it felt really good too. We got in the pool and decided to race and time ourselves swimming down and back. We got sufficiently tired after a short while so we got cleaned up and made a group trip to Lidl (European Aldi) for some cheap drinks and headed back to Brandon and Nate's flat. We hung out and watched Youtube for a couple hours until around 11:20 when we took the tube to the Ministry of Sound, another nightclub. I had never been to a club until the night before at Roxy and once I walked into the Ministry of Sound, it was like Roxy's environment times ten. Loud music and bright flashing lights made it hard to make out the face of a person five feet in front of you. The night was great though, and when we left around 1:40 we had to take the bus home because the tube shut down for the night. I didn't mind because it was my first time on the double decker bus and we got dropped off right next to McDonald's. We watched football in my flat eating our food until everyone got tired enough to sleep.

September 7- I got up around 10 a.m. cleaned our apartment and went for a walk. I walked through Hyde Park and found a nice bench to sit on and take in the nature. I stumbled upon the Albert Memorial on the south side of Hyde Park. I took a picture of the impressive monument and found my way to the nearest train station to go back to the study center. The rest of the day I watched CFB with my friends and hung out.

September 8- I decided today was going to be a day of productivity. I got up at the early hour of 10:30 a.m. and did the rest of my homework before going on a walk to Primrose Hill. I saw that rain was in the forecast so I packed an umbrella and raincoat for my walk. for the first hour I was doubting the weather channels forecast because the skies were empty and blue. The moment I got to the base of Primrose Hill it started pouring, so I ran inside the park's cafe and waited out the heavy pour. The rain reduced in intensity so I put on my raincoat and trekked up the hill. The view from the summit wasn't that impressive because it was rainy and foggy, but I still got a great view of certain landmarks. The rain starting picking up again so I decided to take the train back. When I got back I went to a common area of the study center to finish writing this post.

Miscellaneous Thoughts: 

• I'm really enjoying college so far and even though there's been some hardships getting used to this new way of living, I think I will navigate city living and college well.
• This city is expensive so it was amazing to find Lidl and their 4-pack of cider for only $2.50, it's quite good as well.
• Food here spoils pretty quickly, so it gets annoying to have to grocery shop every other day, and I always forget my tote bag so I have to decide to pay for plastic or carry all my groceries back in my hands.
• It get's stuffy super easily inside these buildings, so we've resorted to keeping our windows open and even then it gets quite warm in the flats.
• I haven't had to sleep on a twin bed since I was 7, and my feet always hang off the bed so that will take some getting used to.
• The basketball court at the YMCA is so small it's only 1 wooden backboard hoop in the area of less than the size of half court which makes even 3v3's a challenge, but we make do.
• I walk up four flights of stairs every time I go to my flat so I'm hoping for excellent calf definition  by the end of the year.
• I miss my dog.
• 3 hour lectures are actually insane, high school classes were 43 minutes.
• I'll come back home translucent because the sun doesn't exist here.