London - Day 3

A view down the street we walked along

Today was a bit of a boring day.  I’m still getting adjusted to the change in time, so I actually didn’t fall asleep until 2am here.  I did make myself wake up earlier than I have been in hopes of making myself a little more tired in the evening.  My cousin’s wife, Ally, played wedding planner for some folks yesterday and was completely exhausted from the whole event, so they both slept in a bit.  I didn’t want to wake them, so while I woke up around 9:30, I stayed in my room for a few hours piddling on my ipad and playing some games.  I came out and sat with them for a late breakfast and listened to Ally talk about the wedding and then started to figure out a game plan for getting from their house to Roehampton University.  

All Bar One - Where we ate

If you were to look at a map of London, Roehampton is on the Southwest part of London and where Andrew and Ally live is in East Dulwich, which is Southeast London.  It doesn’t sound much like a trek to get to Roehampton, but it really takes a long time to get through the city.  I really like the public transportation here (buses, tubes, trains, and cabs) but they make so many stops, it can take one a really long time to get anywhere.  Andrew says I’m bad luck because every time we have been on a bus we seem to get delayed for some reason.  

Needless to say, I left around 2:30 from their house and got to Roehampton around 4:00.  

The river we walked by

After I arrived here, I checked in to my room.  It is pretty basic with a bed, desk area and has its own bathroom.  It has a solitary confinement feel to it though.  Everything is concrete except the desk and bed.  I have a wonderful view of everyone coming down the stairs, so I have to be a bit careful in the morning and evening.  Oh, and another thing…if anyone has ever seen “28 Days Later” they’ll know what I’m talking about.  There is absolutely NO ONE here.  It is completely empty and everything looks like it was just abandoned.  I walked into the cafeteria and it looks like people just stopped drinking and eating and vanished.  There are wrappers and glasses everywhere.  Really kind of creepy if you asked me.  Has a feel of a Zombie movie.  Unfortunately, because of international travel rules, I wasn’t allowed to bring the necessary things one might need to survive a Zombie attack.  

I feel pretty confident I could hold off a good number of them if they are slow walkers, but if they are the fast ones, like in 28 Days Later, then I’m a goner.  All that being said, here’s to learning…  

Panoramic view of the bridges and river. Also a guy playing the guitar

We met up for an informal meeting with the whole staff and students and went over the expectations for the upcoming weeks.  After that, we headed out as a large group to grab a bite to eat and headed in to Richmond (some nice part of London) and got to know one another.  FYI, half of our program is made up of University of Maryland students and the other half are Memphis.  So we have a lot of kids from New Jersey and the other half is southern which should make for some interesting dialog and convos.  There are two people that latched on to the Maryland program from University of Michigan and two from the University of Toronto. 

After dinner we walked down by a really nice stream and bridge (I have no idea what it was called) and then headed back.  

Some of the houses that overlooked the river

Heading to bed now, so hopefully tomorrow brings more to my day than this one.