Friday night I went to a medical themed party in Whitechapel. Whitechapel is the town next to Mile End, where I live, and QM's medical campus is there. I went with Sammi and Anna, we met all of Sammi's flatmates there. The three of us were the only ones not dressed up, everyone was wearing scrubs and lab coats, but it didn't matter. I had fun and I met a lot of new people, especially people that live in my building. Afterward I hung out in Sammi's flat and had a very intense religious conversation with her and two of her flatmates. One of them is Muslim, while Sammi and the other kid are Hindu. I learned so much from sitting there and talking to them, but I'll have to get into that later.
Saturday morning I had an Original Bus Tour with my Villanova program. At 10 I took the tube to the Victoria station where we were meeting for the bus. Victoria is such a beautiful area, I want to go back there again. When I got there Celia (the lady in charge) told me that she had extra tickets so I invited Sammi and Daphne to come too. Kerri, Mary and I took the bus to Westminster to see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and then got lunch. Sammi and Daphne met us there and the five of us went to St. Paul's Cathedral.
Just like all of the other buildings here, St. Paul's is huge. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside so we just walked around and listened to the audio tours that they had. It was so lavishly decorated and built, so many things had gold finish and were precisely carved. The famous dome was as awesome as it's made out to be. The ceiling is painted and really high. I'm pretty sure they said that it cost 50 million pounds to build before they added the dome. I'm not sure if it's necessary for it to be as elaborate as it is, but it definitely was beautiful.
I walked to the top of the dome with Sammi and Kerri. There were over 500 steps to get to the top, it felt like we walked forever. There were a lot of different levels you could walk to. The first level was at the top of the ceiling and bottom of the dome and you could look at the people in the church. The next level was outside around the bottom of the dome. It was a pretty foggy/rainy day but we could still see a lot of the city. The last level took a long time to get to because there was a long line and the steps were very tiny, but the wait was worth it. We were so high up in the air it was really beautiful. It looked like a little computer animated town because you could see the tops of all of the buildings and the itty bitty people on the street and the red double deckers driving down the streets.
After we left we got Starbuck's and went to a pub for dinner. I just had some nachos because I wasn't that hungry. By then it was almost 7 and we decided to go home.
Last night we did a bunch of hopping around to different places. We went to a restaurant called Wetherspoon's in Stephney Green. Unfortunately we got there too late and so we couldn't get the dessert that we wanted. Next we walked to the New Globe (in the rain of course) and met some new people from QM. I talked to one of the kids that I'd met before and he invited us to a "flat party."
Daphne, Sammi, Anna and I went to this flat party in my dorm on the top floor. It was kind of ridiculous and something that would never happen in the States. It was like a giant party in someone's flat: there was a kid sitting at the door letting people in, there was a big sound system with speakers set up and dj equipment, and there were decorative lights all over the place. The party part of it was in the kitchen so there were probably 40 people piled into this little kitchen. I knew a lot of the people that were there. It's nice how small this campus is because I'm starting to recognize and know a lot of people.
Today I relaxed for a while in the morning. At 3 I took the bus to Oxford St with Anna, Sammi and Erin. Oxford St is an extremely long street full of shopping and restaurants. I don't know how long the street is, but I've never been on a street that long with that many stores. We went in and out of a lot of them and in walking down the whole street we passed four H&Ms. The H&Ms here are cheaper than at home because it's a European store, so I bought a few things.
We eventually made it to Primark's, which was the main reason that we went to Oxford St. It's a big department store, kind of like a not quite as high end H&M and everything was so cheap! There was a cute dress for 5 pounds, shoes for 2 pounds, suitcases for 10 pounds. We got there at 5:40 and it closed at 6, so it was a mad house. I've never been in a store that was as crazy as that before. It looked like the Black Friday shopping rush after Christmas. There wasn't enough time to really look at anything, but it really was crazy. I want to go back though. We ate dinner at a spaghetti place and I got meat ravioli. Delicious.
Now I want to write a little about some things that I've learned and discovered while I've been here.
I've been here for 16 days and only had four days of classes, but I feel like I've learned so much. The best part of this experience is learning from other people. There are so many different kinds of people here that have so much to share. My friends were joking with my that every other night I start quizzing someone about something that they do or know and get in really intense conversations about it. I can't help it, all of the people here are so interesting and know so much.
I thought that I knew a decent amount about politics, religion and international relations, but in comparison to the British kids and Europeans, I know almost nothing. They know so much about their own religions and governments and just as much about my religion and my government as I know. I guess that they know all of this because it's such a diverse city and they experience different cultures, but I don't know.
I love hearing everyone's opinions about things because it's given me so many new ideas that I never had before and I understand other people's actions and beliefs a lot better than I used to. For example, my religious discussion on Friday night taught me so much. I've read about Islam and Hindu in my history and religion classes, but I've never met anyone that's Hindu and I've only met a few people that are Muslim (but I never asked them about their religion). Just talking to someone and hearing what they do and what they believe was amazing and so beneficial to my understanding of their religions, as well as their cultures.
Anyway, I have to go because I'm skyping with my parents soon and I want to go get some chocolate that Kate brought back from Amsterdam. I'm also sad because the Steelers lost to the Ravens in the last minute of the game. :( boo
M
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