Furry Friends and Day Trips
London is very different from Chicago, as expected, but I’ve noticed that some things are universal.
Like mice.
In my last post I mentioned that parts of my flat were duct taped together when I moved in. I wasn’t joking. We’ve figured out that the duct tape covering up the corner where the kitchen counter meets the wall is actually covering up a mouse hole. We’ve bought mouse traps (no-kill ones because none of us have the heart to buy anything else) and put all of our food in Tupperware and cupboards, but we’ve had no luck in catching any mice. Seems like our furry little flatmate may be here to stay. However, I’m still a firm believer that the good outweighs the bad as far as the situation of my flat. I’m still entirely in love with the location of where I live. One of my favorite things to do is get coffee (still not a fan of tea) and walk through Regent’s Park. It feels like I discover something new every time.
One very cool thing about being in a country I haven’t been to before is that there’s always something new to see. Last Friday, I woke up and realized I wanted to see Stonehenge. So that’s exactly what I did. A program called International Friends has extremely affordable student discounts to go on all sorts of trips across England and Europe. So on Friday two of my friends and I bought tickets for a tour of Stonehenge and Bath, an old Roman city about 100 miles away from London.
Stonehenge was actually a lot smaller than I first imagined it, but I feel like most big monuments are. It was almost surreal being there in person, just because it’s something I’ve only ever read about or seen on TV. The real reason behind Stonehenge being built is still a mystery, but I’m still fairly certain it was aliens. Next, our coach headed to Bath, and it was a super cute town! After taking a quick walking tour and learning a bit about the architecture and history, we were given a good chunk of time to wander the city ourselves. There were a bunch of little shops and cafes to stop at and we wound up spending a lot of time in the park.
This week we actually started doing things in classes. Unfortunately. Lucky for me I have some classes that seem like they’ll be pretty interesting! On Tuesdays I have Policing in Practice in the mornings and Victims and Crime in the afternoons. On Wednesday afternoon I have Crime, Media and Technology and on Thursday afternoon I have Serious and Serial Offenders. It’s a lot of Criminal Justice classes for one semester but luckily I’ll get credit for all of them back at Loyola. Getting used to the British school system is taking a bit of work though. There’s a lot more independent work and reading and a lot more talking and discussion in classes. Luckily I think I’m starting to get the hang of it (except for understanding the grading scale)!
Yesterday the 3 people in the flat above us, my 4 flatmates and I all went on a day trip to Brighton, which is a seaside town south of London. If you get tickets for times that aren’t super busy, you can actually travel England for very cheap! It was really nice spending some time out of the city with my friends, and hanging out on the pier was a ton of fun. I’ve begun to notice that I can only go on a few fair rides before I get a headache now, but I’m still really bad at carnival games, and I still really love fair food! We spent a lot of time after the pier wandering the streets and shops (there was a ton of very cool street art that you don’t really see in bigger cities) and hanging out at a seaside pub in the evening. Our train was a late one (in order to get the cheapest fare possible) and we were all exhausted on our way home, but it was an incredible day trip!
Due to our early morning/late night yesterday, I’ve spent most of the day lazing around the flat today, but luckily I have a four day weekend every week, so now I just have an extra day to put off my homework!