Project #2 for my British Life and Culture Class

This was my project 2 of 3 for my BL&C class. It was worth 40% of my final grade. I haven't gotten a grade back on it yet. I had a blast making it and I hope that you enjoy it. The objective was to take a theme of BL&C and use pictures we've taken along with text to get our message across.

- Joel

Just Returned From Ireland Last Night.

Sorry that there has been no part 2 to my blog of Germany yet, but I have been on break for a little over a week now and went to Ireland! It was awesome and I'll detail it out along with the part 2 soon! Meanwhile, I uploaded all of the pictures to facebook.

About A Month In (Part 1)

Hey Everybody,

Sorry for the long delay between posts. It's not hard to stay busy in London. Lets see... I've done a lot since my last post so I'll try to cover most of it. Our entire group a couple Mondays ago went to see the play, "Wicked". I really didn't have any idea going in as to what the plot entailed, but I got filled in on a little of the details from a friend. For those who don't know, the story is about The Wicked Witch of the West before The Wizard of Oz takes place. It gives her a backstory beginning with her childhood and the events that took place during to make her who she is in present. The theater was really nice and once again the acting was superb. I have never been much of a WizofOz fan, but seeing this made me a little more intrigued than before. The set was really cool, with a stage lined with huge gears on each side and an ever-changing background. Probably the coolest part in terms of effects, was the WWofW as a young girl beginning to showcase her powers. She flew up into the air and her cape draped over the entire stage with a fog and wind machine going and her singing dramatically. So, as a whole, I would say that it was a really cool experience and its hard not to become engrossed in the show when the acting is so well done. Personally, musicals start to get on my nerves because of the moments when the plot gets held up by a person starting to break out into song for the millionth time, but I can completely understand why someone would like that. I guess it's just not my thing. Anyways, all in all a good experience. This Tuesday, we went to a show as the entire group again called, "Negative Space". I was kind of prepared for a letdown as the theater we were going to was supposed to be quite small. I figured that this might reflect on the performance even though the reviews were quite good. Upon arrival, the place reminded me of an urbanized version of The Putnam County Playhouse actually. Housing about 80ish seats, there really wasn't a bad spot to be in. The show revolved around only 5 characters and the set was quite minimal with only the backdrop and a few boxes that were flipped throughout to be either a bed, table, or chairs. The walls were painted a scattered white on black that was somewhat chaotic looking. According to the pamphlet, the set was kept simple and was to reflect the dissonance between the characters and their ever stressful growing lives. The plot revolved around a family of two girls, a mother and father, and one of the girls boyfriends. Taking place in 2007 London of some sort, one of the girls (the older one)was taken from a front stair set of their piano teachers house while waiting to be picked up by the parents. The family took it horribly and it became quickly clear that she was the favorite child. The other daughter (the younger one) was always forgotten in conversation and everyday life by everyone around her who only wanted the older daughter back. Each character at one point or another expressed wanting her to be her sister in a roundabout way. It was quite intense sitting in the 3rd row and watching so many tensioned moments between the family and the younger daughter. Watching the performance at these times was like being over at a friends house awkward spooning peas into my mouth at dinner as their parents started to fight in front of me. The actors were amazing and kept me enthralled the whole show. Great performance and was a nice surprise. To shift again, recently for my BL&C class, we had to switch where we went for our initial shopping excursion for a new location. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but a while ago we had to go to an assigned shopping location in London to buy a list of items from there. (Or depending on location, what we could find off of it) My group of 4 was assigned the supermarket ASDA. This apparently is a branch of Walmart and looks almost identical in terms of advertisement. The colors were different, but the marketing was the same in your face style with the lowest price deals displayed everywhere you look. (It took us over an hour just to get to our location btw) Also, we were to watch out for the demographics of the area and the stores presentation and history as we were going to have to write a paper comparing and contrasting this store and the next assignments store. (Real quickly, The phrase, "comparing and contrasting" has always bothered me because it seems so redundant) We reported back on our next BL&C class and it turns out that we were one of the few groups to find all of our items and for the lowest total too. Way to go Walmart. One step closer to world domination. We then got to spend time in class sampling our food and even learning to properly make tea in England during the afternoon session. haha It really is quite a process actually. It really comes down to your social class in terms of the order of ingredients. I guess working class would generally have it served to them much more casually and usually would put milk in first followed by tea and sugar. The tea is standardly loose leaf by the way. The theory behind putting the milk in first is because the working class would usually be served with a cheaper cup and the tea being so hot would have potentially cracked the cup. Thus the milk first to temperate the tea. I don't know, but it was funny to watch the process and I actually got to put it in action myself at a later date, but I'll get to that later. To get back onto my original point, our same group of four were assigned a new store, but this time the assignment was different. We were paired with the rest of our townhouse and assigned to get a new list of ingredients between all of us at our stores as an entire team. Reason being, we had to make two dishes of extremely British nature: "Toad in the Hole" and "Spotted Dick". Odd I know... The former consisted mainly of a sausage wrapped in a breading of some sort and the latter was a cakelike thing with something in it to make it look spotted. Our teacher and his wife, Lyndon and Erica, were going to come over and sample both dishes from each townhouse and the one to produce the best versions was to win a prize. Our store was actually two right next to each other. 1. La Fromagerie (www.lafromagerie.co.uk/) 2. The Ginger Pig (www.thegingerpig.co.uk/) Instead of writing about them again, I'm just going to include my assignment here. The hard part was writing only 500 words as we were assigned to do. 


Here it is:

The Ginger Pig, La Fromagerie, and Asda

We visited The Ginger Pig, La Fromagerie, and Asda for our two shopping excursions. The two areas of Asda, (Lavender Hill, Clapham) and Ginger Pig & La Fromagerie (Moxon Street, Marylebone) were a great contrast. The shoppers at Asda varied from Casual Labourers to Lower Middle Class with exceptions of some higher class potential. The shoppers at The Ginger Pig & La Fromagerie ranged from Middle Class to Upper Middle Class.

 Asda, a sister company of Wal-Mart, advertises using a general in your face fashion utilizing adverts bragging of the lowest prices. Generally speaking, Asda is a large corporation that specializes in quantity of product not quality. Asda also offers clothes, books, toys etc… The website was very streamlined and to the point offering an almost search engine of Asda product. The consumer base was of high variety and didn’t feel dominated by any category. The employees seemed very fast paced and wanted to get you in and out.

 La Fromagerie was a different story. La Fromagerie was a very high-class presentation offering dining, gifts, confectionaries, baked goods, fine wine, and a cheese room. The wine and cheese were offered from varying countries and type. Products were placed about on shelves giving a feel similar to a very nice Mom and Pop shop. Everything about the presentation felt very organic and exclusive to this one location; a symptom of higher-class society. Most product here was of a specialty variety and included none of the products on our shopping list. Most consumers were dressed appropriately and the employees were very helpful and informed. They seemed to be willing to help you without a rush. Upon investigation of the website, visitors are greeted with a small animated introduction to the site and then brought to a clean cut and nicely pictured site full of information.

The Ginger Pig offered not just product, but also presentation with a counter along the store and a clear glass slaughter room in the back. All of the products were presented in a nicely lit and organized view through glass. A pamphlet collection on the table told of the company history and furthered their brand. Pictures of animals in company fields were featured throughout with text stating how they treat them the best possible. The butcher working was very helpful pointing us to the nearest store that could offer items we couldn’t get there. Granted we were dressed only decently, he offered up this information without passing any visible judgment on our characters. We were able to get sausage for the Toad in the Hole entrée here. The company website has a farm like theme and a “company that cares” feel with text or pictures scattered randomly about on a background of hay.

            The three stores were perfect for a comparison as such. All three companies were of a different style and mission. The Ginger Pig and La Fromagerie went almost hand in hand providing for the higher class and it’s complexity whilst Asda gave the common man means to afford feeding a family.

Citations:

1. http://www.lavenderhill.co.uk/

2. http://www.thegingerpig.co.uk/

3. http://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/

So in the end, our townhouse (of the 3) won for best food! Great news. Only one girl cooked though. We, as a prize, got a bottle of some fine wine from Italy, but I never got to try it as I was leaving for Munich that night and apparently everyone in my townhouse is greedy and drank it all... Oh well. That does lead into my next topic of Munich.


I traveled to Munich with a group to the Mecca of Beerfestivals... Oktoberfest! I can't believe that I can now say for the rest of my life that I've actually been to Oktoberfest... Strange feeling. Germany was awesome though and the people were really really cool! To start from the beginning though.... *sighs and breaths deeply* I was invited by others to go to Munich with them for Oktoberfest extremely last minute. And by extremely last minute I mean. Kim: "Hey Joel. You wanna go to Oktoberfest with us this weekend?" Joel: "That would be fun". Kim: "Were booking the tickets right now" Joel: *Glances over at computer screen to see itinerary layed out with prices for two people being finalized* "Sure, I'll go." Kim: *Adds on another ticket* So, we were all set to go for about a weekish and we had yet to find a hostel to work out between us all. (7 people) Fast forward to day before we're supposed to leave. Joel: "Hey Kylee. What time is our flight out?" Kylee: "6pm Thursday" Joel: "I'm pretty sure that it said 6am when I looked at it". *Gets on computer and checks* Joel and Kylee: *Looks of horror* So it turns out that Kim accidently booked our flight for 6am Thursday morning instead of 6pm Thursday night. This is only for our 3 tickets though, the other 4 people weren't on that list. So we start freaking out. Keep in mind that this is the night that Lyndon and his wife are due to come over for our dinner. We didn't realize this until 5pm that night. (Wednesday) So, we start looking up how we are going to get to the airport that early as it is about an hour away from us. Turns out that the latest we could have transportation there is like 12am that night. So, we decide to book an Easybus for 10pm that night. We go and print the tickets from a nearby library using a friends card. The Easybus would meet us from the Fulham and Broad stop which we already have to take the tube to get to. So we hurry and pack and leave at 9pm that night to try and go to the airport to spend the night till our flight and then arrive in Munich at 9am to try and stay up all day and late into night after a day of Oktoberfest... Also, I only got like 5-6 hours of sleep the night previous. So we're on the tube to get to the Easybus... Of course, it goes extremely slow for some reason and stops for a while 2-3 times... Of COURSE!!! We arrive at 10:03pm...................... We wait for 40 minutes and the bus never shows... We annoyed and tired walk to the tube again and take it to Victoria station. From there, we take a train which was 16 pounds a person to get to the airport. At this point, we didn't really care though. We get on the train, which was admittedly a fun ride considering, only to be told by the guy walking through checking tickets that we could have shared 1 ticket between us.... We really didn't care and pretty much laughed about our luck at this point... So we enjoyed the train ride and got to the airport where we walked around for like an hour for fun and then found our gate. Turns out we couldn't check in till like 3:30am. So, we stayed awake for the rest of the time because we couldn't find a bench to sleep on and then checked in through security. By the way, I somehow stayed overwhelmingly positive the entire time...Really we all did. We then found 3 close together benches, I put my wallet in my front left pocket under my body, put my backpack face down, and took a 1:30-2hr nap. We then woke and went to go board our flight. I passed in and out of consciousness for the 1:20 flight. I was once hit by a stewardess pushing a cart through the aisle. haha We arrive in the Munich airport. I go to an ATM and get some Euroage. We eat at a random spot there. I got a bratwurst. A legit German bratwurst at that. It was really good. I definitely got another one again while we stayed in Germany. So good... From this point we bought a ticket for the underground system there and travelled to our hostel area. Got out to ground level and asked an old German guy where our building was to make sure that we went the right direction. He was really nice and was excited that we were there for the festival. We went to our hostel and checked in there. Hung out for about a half hour and headed to Oktoberfest! From this point I am sorry, but I have been writing this forever and I have to go get ready and travel to see Porcupine Tree at the Hammersmith Apollo tonight! I'm hyped for the show as it is they are from London and just released an album last month and playing almost the whole thing plus a wealth of other older material! It's gonna be amazing.... I will continue this story soon though with a part 2. Hope that it's been ok so far and I promise part two will have some interesting things in store even including an "it" that lived on the ground floor of the hostel... Thanks for reading as always and I enjoy telling you all of my travels and can't wait to finish the blog. I know that I've said it before, but this really is an amazing experience and I'll never regret it for a second. I do so much so fast that I feel like I've been here for months because of all of the experiences rushing by. If I ever had advice to throw at anyone who considers themselves adventurous in nature. Don't be ok with just being where you are. Go see what's out there for yourself, whether it be hundreds of miles away or a mile away... Explore, as it is our nature.


Joel

What a Great Week!

So, as you may have seen in my last post, I went to an Arsenal game last night. I cannot believe how much our flat owners (Anglo American) hooked us up! We left for the game last night and low and behold the tube we were supposed to take to Arsenal was down... Luckily, we had left earlier on to go to the store before the game and just have some extra time. So, after moving 1 stop down we had to leave the tube and head to a bus stop... Now, normally this wouldn't be much of a problem, but on the way, we passed a lot of fashion stores and it's apparently London's fashion week or something. This definitely seemed to slow things up a bit. So, we took the bus to the Piccadilly Circus underground stop and got off to take the tube the last bit. You would know that it was a match night in the area as many Arsenal jersey wearing fans go on the tube to head that direction with us. We arrived at the Arsenal stop and stepped out into a fan filled street. It was pretty awesome to see them all and hear people doing chants and screaming things like, "Red Ar-my". (Red is team color) So, me and 3 others walked, following the fans, the little bit towards Emirates Stadium. We then, ran into the merchandise store and true to others words, jerseys were 40 pounds. Not too bad really for an official jersey. We then headed in and I bought a program for 2pds. Good souvenir I figure. Well, I was actually wrong about the price of the tickets being 30pds as they were 25! (Or roughly 40ish American) Also, we were 5th row club level seating! This meant that we had access to the restaurant and bars and it was quite fancy. We weren't high up at all and I took a lot of pictures even though you weren't supposed to when players were on the pitch. muahaha I'll try to upload them soon! The game was going great and competition was fierce as they took on West Bromwich Albion. It was so amazing to see such a talented group play so intensely. It was awesome to see how much communication they had going all of the time and most could generally put the ball where they wanted it and had incredible touches on the ball. The fanbase was amazing! The stadium houses a little over 60,000 and it was filled with 57 and some. Pretty impressive turnout. Everyone was so excited to be there and cheer on their team! Even the foreign West Bromwich fans were going crazy chanting. I sat next to a dad and his kid and the kid would occasionally get mad at their fans and once yelled some obscenities. haha It was pretty funny in the accent and all! Halftime came and the game stayed a scoreless, but very entertaining, match so far. We herded into the lobby close by and were greeted by tables filled with pints of beer. What kind you ask? Why... The best kind. FREE! So, we hung out in the lobby for the remainder and headed in shortly after the 2nd half started. In the second half, Arsenal scored two goals and we ended up hanging out in the lobby for a bit after the game and got some free sandwiches as they were going to throw them away. So, all in all we had a great time and it was so much fun to actually see a professional game here! Especially one in the Premier league! (Top league) We headed back on the tube pretty late and I went to bed for the night. I then woke up at a bright and early 7:40 to get ready for a 10am meeting at the base of Big Ben. Well, on the way there, we entered the underground and took an escalator down to the tube. Strangely, it stopped partway down and we walked the rest of the way down in a stairlike fashion. No big deal right... Well it wouldn't have been if it wasn't a forshadowing to the tube stopping 3 different times for delays on our way to meet Dr. Pinger. (The trips American Director) So, we arrived 25 minutes late. Really it wouldn't have been that bad, but I was tired and standing on a hot and unmoving tram is not good early in the morning... The day was great after that though as we walked from Ben over to the closely located Westminster Abbey. And all I can say about that place is that it is amazing! Such elaborate architecture adorns every wall and crevice of that church! Sadly I was not allowed to take any pictures inside of the building... I did get some of some inner courtyards and halls outside though! This is another thing that needs to be looked up if you have the time... Description really won't do it justice, but it was so beautiful in there. There was so much to see and it was very peaceful. I guess that the general public can attend service there on Sundays free of charge and I think I may try to actually do that one Sunday just for the experience of it all. After we had left there, we had a lunch break and then met Lyndon under Big Ben for a tour of the Houses of Parliament! Amazing architecture inside that place. The ceilings were very elaborate. It was also really cool to be able to put to picture what we'd learned in class about Parliament to the actual rooms that these things take place in. We got to see the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Once again, no pictures inside though... We also got to see where the Queen sits in there with a throne and very decorative area around it that is apparently painted in 23k gold. Very neat experience to be had and it was pretty interesting even with the monotonous old English tour guide lady. Then, later tonight I met up with Cassie and Carey at about 7:30ish. We went out to eat and took the tube down to the Westminster stop that outlets you right by Big Ben and walked the Thames some. Very pretty at night to see all the lights on the water and The Eye lit up in blue. Anyways, it was great to see them and we parted at the Tube to go our separate ways and here I am now. It was nice to hear from them what they had been up to and how the Au Pairing was going. I might eventually try and visit them as they are in Northern Italy on a lake by mountains. It sounded like a really cool area! Well... Thanks for reading!


Joel

Beginning My 2nd Week of Classes

Today I began my 2nd week of classes. Mondays consist of a British Life and Culture class that is 4 hours with an hour and a half break in the middle and an Art History class. Everyone is required to take the BL&C class. I awoke to a rude awakening as I, along with most others, were under the impression that class this week started at 9:30, but apparently it was to begin at 9... So, at 8:31 my roommate Adam wakes me up telling me that we have to be there at 9. So, I get up and get dressed and pretty much immediately have to head out to the bus stop towards the College. (It takes about 20 minutes) I make it at 9:03. Not too bad really. The day was actually pretty great as our professor for the BL&C class is really great. In the first 2 hour session we spoke about some research that we had done for a river walking tour last week. This entailed researching either a King or Queen and telling about each of them in a chronological fashion. We also, had to have done research on a futbol team we were assigned. We discussed each of our teams and what their presence meant and represented throughout history. We have much more to do on it, but it's amazing how much religion and region has played into futbol history. I already am gaining a much greater passion for the game than I've had before. This is perfect because I, along with two other guys on the trip, got tickets through the group that owns our townhouses to an Arsenal game tomorrow! Going to be an AWESOME experience. Especially when you're 5th row for only 30 pounds and get free drinks at half time! Incredible deal... Moving on though. Then, we talked about what we had learned on the tour by diagraming out a circle plot in groups. Following this, we took our lunch break for a while. After returning to class, we started on a different subject. We had a homework assignment from last week to answer quite a few questions on England's Parliament. This was actually quite fun to research as I have a much firmer understanding of how their Government runs here. We set up tables and chairs all over the room to represent the official positions of members of Parliament and their tables. (Complete with Queen, Prime Minister, and Chancellor) Then, we went through a fake official process of creating a bill to be passed. I was part of the Labour Party and in the House of Commons group. We got to decide what law that we wanted to pass and exited to the hallway to decide on a "real" law to pass. We ended up settling on changing the side of the road that people drive on from the left to the right. haha It was quite fun to see Lyndon's reaction. The day then passed from there (3:05) to catching the tube to meet at The British Museum for Art History at 3:30. Our professor for that class, Mr. Giovanni, is really, really cool as well. (Way too perfect of a name for an Art History Professor right?) Amazing building! I suggest looking it up as the roof in the lobby is an all glass cover as of the year 2000. It used to be open air I guess. The entire place is set up in sections of continental history showcasing artifacts. We took today to go through the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sections. I had a really good time there. Giovanni kept it very engaging and is very enthusiastic about the subject. I learned a lot about each and actually took notes. We also went through to see the Rosetta Stone and at the end saw pieces of the Parthenon. Today had a lot of talk with religious overtones honestly. I knew that religion had caused a lot of clashing through history, but it was something to hear of some of it. After this, we left and went on about our own business for the day. So, I came back to the townhouse and cooked and Iceland deep dish, chicken sweetcorn pizza I got for a pound! mmm It was actually the best one flavorwise that I've had yet. Then, I tried to upload pictures 2 times and they failed at the very end both times. So, I tried again and got them to work. Thankfully! I'll finish captions later as I have some homework to do now. Thanks for reading and I'll update again soon.

Joel


Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that Cassie and Carey are coming to visit me on Wednesday! For those who don't know, I originally met Cassie years ago because of being friends with her brother Andy circa 5th grade. haha Carey is her boyfriend. He is awesome as well. It's going to be so cool to meet up with them here in London. They are working as Au Pairs in Italy right now. Also, I was going to schedule a last minute trip to Ireland with some other kids from the group, but ticket prices skyrocketed as they were booking so I'm not going... It's cool though. I'll still go soon!

Finally Right?

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. It's been great spending time here just getting to feel out the city and adjust to being so disconnected. I appreciate everyones support and will hopefully be updating this more often now. Wow... So much has happened so far. Lets see... We went to the Globe Theatre on Monday to watch Shakespeare's, "As You Like It". I went in with no real expectations and came out very pleased! I was one of the lucky, or unlucky if you get tired easily, people in our group who got to stand in front of the stage for the entirety of the performance. This used to be a standard thing for commoners who payed, I believe, 2 pence for it. I liked it a lot though as it really gets you up close and personal with the show! The acting was awesome and made it a lot easier to stand for the duration. It was such a strange feeling to know that i was in London in the Globe watching British performers... I was also glad that we went to a play that was a comedy as it was fun to laugh with the audience and the performers obviously really enjoyed it. The play apparently was the sparking of the famous line, "The whole worlds a stage" and the origin of the term, "too much of a good thing". Very cool. I think that I am going to come back in incredible shape at no effort as much as I walk here. Sure the tube helps you get around, but you'd be amazed at how much you really walk outside of this. I enjoy it though because it allows me to take time to soak in the little things and nuances of the vast array of culture that London offers. I really can't believe how many different kinds of people there are in the area! London is definitely a multicultural existence. It's really cool to see everyone interact and get along with that culture gap being so prevalent. As a side note, I feel incredibly safe here and have no worries honestly. As long as you take a few safety precautions such as: wallet in front pocket, don't wonder around in shady areas at night, don't go too far South of the Thames at night and you're good. London is an expensive city, but luckily we live close to central London, but not right in it. This is ideal because food and drink is so much cheaper outside the touristy areas. Their soda here is great and doesn't contain all of the unnecessary high fructose corn syrup that our drinks offer. They use sugar and it makes for such a better drink that isn't so thick... blegh Fruit is incredibly cheap here and actually makes it easy to buy. haha I stopped by a vendor and got a bowl of apples and a bowl of oranges for a pound each. This gave me about 7 of each product. A pound is sitting at about $1.60 right now so it's still a great deal even at this rate. Also, we generally shop at a store close to the townhouses called Iceland. I would compare it to Aldi I guess. They have awesome prices and when not eating our I have gotten great deals on food there. Anyway, to get back on task, we went to Canterbury Cathedral and Dover Castle on Wednesday! There is no comparison to in a book or movie to seeing these sights... Just ask some of the girls on the trip that are considering skipping our flight home and finding work in the small cosy town of Canterbury now. haha It really was amazing seeing the Cathedral. We had a tour guide, but we had a limited time there before heading to Dover so I kind of lagged behind and took pictures and video instead! I hated to miss some of the details, but I can read all about those in books and the internet. I can't just be there again right? One standout detail to me though was that there was so much history in the architecture of the Cathedral. Our guide said that they constantly updated the architecture through the years so we were seeing the design work of at least a couple centuries! Awesome... We even went down to the crypt there! I really wanted to take pictures in there because it was straight out of a horror movie, but they wouldn't allow it. :( We then left and ate in the town. I had a really good lunch of a baguette sandwich that had ham and tuna on it. We also tried some ice cream from a small shop there and I actually got vanilla. The only reason being was because it was kind of yellow and looked like it was different than ours. It was quite different actually. I'm not really sure that it was better or worse. I also made a purchase of "Cough Candy". It's basically a thicker jolly rancher shaped hard candy that tastes a little like licorice, but sweeter and not so strong. They are really good actually! Back to order though.  I was so excited once we left for Dover Castle though! We saw some of the typical England landscape of large fields and sheep. It was cool to actually see that to me. Approaching in the Coach bus we had was so awesome. A legit castle that sat up on a ledge overlooking water to France and the town of Dover below. It was incredibly windy up there and I just sat for a while outside the walls of the castle on the grass overlooking the water and just felt the wind for a while wishing Anna was there to sit with me. (You would have loved it!) Going inside the castle was indescribable. The setup inside was too cool. You could take a winding stone staircase up to the top of the castle to see off below. On the way up there were side rooms to stop off in with banners and crests and beds and even a few actors to fit the bill of commoners in the castle. Also, there were windows that were just a narrow vertical slit on the staircases. On top of the castle there were four corners with the typical square towers and you could take a small staircase up to them and see off the castle by look between the stone squares cut in the sides. There was nothing like it... To imagine that people once lived and battled there is one of the coolest things in the world to me. So awesome. The money for the trip is already out of my mind. It's one thing to imagine being here, but to actually BE here is incredibly worth every penny. I already have so many memories and I'm just out of the gates in scope. People here are so friendly. Yes, you do have the fast city life people, but someone who is a native or just takes the time to live outside the fast lane is so nice. I've already talked to two policeman here and both were actually nice and informative and had no sense of a powertrip about them. It's almost impossible to get lost as people are so helpful in helping you find your way and a tube stop is usually relatively close so I can just get on there and figure it out on the way. There are so many signs in stations that you always know where your are at on or off the tram. It's so cool to even just hear the accents in everyday life. Some are much thicker than others and people from Liverpool are almost speaking another language! haha Some people pronounce "th" as an f. So instead of saying "three" or "through" it becomes "free" or "frew". We went to a pub called Powers the other night and watched a few live acts play. (One of which is a friend of ours from here that one of the girls has a thing for) An interesting observation is that they sing, generally, in an American accent... I don't get it. Another thing, the United States is truly infecting the world... They listen to all of our crappy music here. I was so sad to see this and hear songs like Fergilicious playing. Ouch America. I will do another update soon and upload a ton of pictures tomorrow probably of my latest ventures. I want to thank all of you so much for your support as this is shaping up to be one of the best experiences I'll ever have and I wouldn't be here without influence from most of you at some point in my life. Till next time...

Joel

Day 2

Well I've survived two days in London and it has been great. I think that it is finally starting to hit me that I am going to be here for more than a slight vacation. Not complaining though! haha We actually had a really good day for the first day even though everyone was quite tired. The nap didn't inhibit my sleeping for the night as I was pretty worn out still. It was just too hard to sleep on the plane from the excitement. After getting the bus to our townhouses from the airport, Dr. Pinger and his wife had made us sandwiches. It was really nice so we could go on with our day. At this point we took naps for a bit. Later that day, we got our tube passes set up. (Which is an incredibly simple system to use) The stations are set up so that every stop is announced and very clearly marked outside the tram. The bus system is very easy to use as well and is also included in our tube pass. We also took a bus over to the Westminster College where we will be taking our classes. Other than that, we were free to do what we wanted and most went shopping and searching for electric adapters or converters. Luckily I found out that my computer, hard drive, and camera are all rated from 120v-240v. This meant that I could buy two adapters for 2.99p (or roughly 5ish dollars) and run my components easily and safely. Moving on, I fell asleep at about 11:30-12 last night. Then, we woke up to leave at 8:30 to meet Lyndon Sly, our soon to be British Life and Culture Professor at W.C. to hear a little introduction and set up our student ids. Annoyingly, I was assigned into the last group which was due to process them at 11:10 when it was currently 9:50 at the time of group assigning. In the end, me and some of the others from late groups went to a nearby pub coined, "The Green Man" for coffee. (My idea) haha Of course I needed a cup of joe! I got a cappuccino , which was quite tasty, and relaxed and visited with the others for a bit before heading back. After going and getting our id's, we left and got in a larger group to go eat at, yet again, "The Green Man". Always Sunny in Phil. fans rejoice! I ate a "spicy beef", which I guess is their equivalent of a burger and some chips. (No, not Lays or Ruffels... Fries) Pretty good, but nothing special in the end. We then took the tube back to our flat to meet for a River walking tour by a man from the Anglo company. (The company that owns our townhouses) We took the tube down from Kilburn to Oxford and transfered over to the Central line, which then took us down to Holborn. This was an awesome tour that had so many great stops along the way! The man was an awesome tour guide who really knew his material. We started at Bloomsbury (apparently the area where Wendy and family from Peter Pan were to have resided) and traveled through around to Picadilly, Leicester, China Town, Charing Cross, The Shaftesbury Theatre, Temple Church, and over to Fleet Street. I got a lot of video footage, which I don't have done yet. Other than that, we went back to the flats and were free again by 4ish. I stayed around and messed with some video footage. Sorry for the delay, but I'm still adjusting to this awesome city and experience around me! Hopefully I'll have pictures and video soon! The Thames is just as cool as I thought it would be, although we only saw it briefly off of the Waterloo bridge. I'm going back very soon needless to say! Sorry for the somewhat long post, that really didn't give that much detail... I'll have better ones soon when I'm more adjusted. For now, Thank you for reading and I'm hitting the sack.