London: Days One and Two

Don't be scared when you read the title of this post. I'm not going to post everyday. That would be obsessive.
I can't believe I live in London! How crazy is this? When I got off at my tube stop and walked out onto the street, I felt like I was dreaming.  It was really, really hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that I had finally arrived and was now, physically, in London. I've been here for two days and I still haven't been able to grasp the concept yet. 

I'm glad that I got to fly with other people from my group.  I flew the whole way with one girl from my group, and we met up with two others at our connection.  It was fun to fly together! And it made me feel safer.

Wow do I look good in this picture. Not. Thats us on the tube going to our flat.  We were so tired. But so excited.

The buildings here are so pretty and old!

We went on a walk with the whole group once we got there, and I saw alot of my neighborhood! So many of the buildings are so intricatley carved and so nice and fancy! They look so British to me.

This is my group. Not posed of course, but most of them. I believe there are 35 of us and two professors. The students include a married couple, two more boys, and the rest are girls.

My flat is really nice and I LOVE IT!! I live in a flat with 23 other girls. I didn't know what a flat was til I got here. 

This is my building. It is directly across the street from Hyde Park. Like my building is on the Hyde Park map.

This is the door into my flat.  Maybe this is too much information.

These are our common rooms where we can do homework and eat our meals and stuff.

This is our kitchen.  It's HUGE. We have 4 fridges, 3 stoves, 3 ovens, 2 sinks, and more cupboards than I can count.  I share it with all 23 girls.

This is the hall where our bedrooms are.  There are 6 bedrooms. Some have 3 girls, some have 4 girls in them. So I guess the number total ends up being less than 24.

These are our beds. Mine is the messiest.  Ha.

Dressers.  Not big enough. We're girls. So of course we have too much stuff.

Bathroom.  It's ity bity.

That night we decided to go to downtown London and see Parliment and London Eye. I didn't feel like I was really in London until I saw those buildings. Then it felt more real.

Please forgive how awful I look. I hadn't showered or slept in two days.

After we saw that, we walked to Westminster Abbey.  There was a crowd of people and a road was blocked off.  We soon found out that the royal couple had just left their ceremony rehearsal.  We had just missed them. Darn.  As me and my friends were standing on a street corner waiting to cross, a camera crew came up and asked if we had seen the couple and if we had been waiting to see them. We told them no, we were just walking by and saw there was a crowd.  They were taking our pictures while interviewing us too.  I felt famous. After that crew left, another one came up to us and asked us the same question! It was so funny.  All of us felt so cool, being interviewed twice in such a short amount of time.

The next day, we had our first class. Its in a really pretty church building a 15 minute walk away from our flat.

Its fun because to get to the church, we walk through "Imperial College." Its so cool to see a foreign college! I like watching the students and I LOVE hearing their accents.

After class, we went grocery shopping to get a few things and guess what they had...

Hot Cross Buns! It made me laugh.

After we went to the grocery store, me and my roommate and our friend Katie went to Hyde Park! It was so much fun and so pretty!!

The gate to Hyde Park. And random people I dont know.  As I walked in, I took another picture, and there was a man cycling by me who almost bumped me, and he said "sorry love" in the thickest British accent, it made my day and oh so very happy.

It such a nice place to go and relax!! And the park is so quiet! Thats something I've noticed about London, its so quiet! America is loud! We even saw some kids playing soccer, and it was like someone had turned the sound off, they were completely silent. While playing soccer. It was weird. When me and my friends were talking, we sometimes got some dirty looks from locals cause we were talking so loud.  Oops. I'm going to have to try to talk quieter.

Me in front of Kensington Palace. It was so goregous and royal!

This was at the top of the Serpentine Pond, it was so goregous.  You don't see things like these in America.

Everything is so large and royal like there!!

This was a cute playground we found. Kids can play in a pirate ship! It was so adorable.

This is the Albert Memorial. It was really beautiful.
Something that I did not expect is that I don't hear people talking in British accents that much.  I mostly hear foreigners talking in different languages.  I have probably heard 6 different languages since I've been here.  Its almost a treat to get to hear a British accent, because alot of the people I've talked to are Indian, French, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish. It's actually been kind of annoying.  Everytime someone talks to me, I want them to be British but most of the time they're not.

And I also haven't seen hardly any homeless people.  Which has been weird.  Walking downtown to my internship in Salt Lake I saw at least 3 homeless people. Like every 5 blocks. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but, there were alot.  Here, I've seen one.  I have also seen no vandalism or graffiti.  Britian is so nice.

I'm so happy to be here and I am so blessed for this experience.  I love it here and can't wait to get more experiences and see what else this trip has in store for me!! Thanks for reading! Next post: The Royal Wedding!