Lady Jeff in London

London Update

Well, I’ve been kind of shit at keeping up with this, huh? I’m blogging for students gone global here, in case you’re interested. I’m also about to start writing for AC Voice so I might be a little blogged out. I think I’ll use the tumblr for random things that don’t fit anywhere else? And more pictures. I should take more pictures.

Another reason I haven’t been posting is because the early weeks were consumed with a lot (I mean a lot) of drama in my flat and friend group. As glad as I am that I made British friends early on, they are all freshmen. During orientation week. It was crazy, both in good and bad ways. Now I’ve settled into a mix of British freshmen (sorry, freshers) and some other study abroad students from America. Seems to be a little more chill this way.

I’ve done quite a few tourist-y things with my time here. I had two free weeks (actually it turned out I was supposed to be organizing my modules the second week, but I didn’t get the memo until later so I was just gallivanting around) so I saw a couple museums (National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery) and even went on a day-tour to Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge. This is my first week of classes and it’s been a little… well, overwhelming. Basically I’m behind on all of my reading and I’m using this tumblr post as procrastination. Tonight I need to read the rest of Don DeLillo’s White Noise (about 150 pages left) and take notes on a couple articles on post-modernism and modernism, respectively. I just automatically signed up for second and third year English classes, and only now I’m thinking I should have thrown in an easy one in there. My reading load for the rest of the semester seems like it’s going to be three novels, a Shakespeare play, and 6-8 articles per week. Per week. My classes do seem really incredible, though. I wish Amherst had as diverse an English department as King’s does.

I’m gradually getting used to 24-hour time, which I never thought would be a problem. But apparently it’s really hard not to think 8 o’clock when I see 18:00. Who knew. I discovered beans on toast today, which is funny because I’ve definitely had a full English breakfast before. I just always kind of ate the beans with the sausage and “bacon” (that is not bacon) but today I was starving and thought I’d try it. And it was heaven. I’m totally fine being the weird girl who eats this back home because I’m addicted. My running shopping list now starts with “BEANS.”