I'm an official Londoner!

I've officially found my groove in London. A lot has happened in the past three weeks since I have moved into my flat:

Living in London

A building in London near UCL
that looks strikingly like the UW Quad...

My housing is provided through UCL, so all of the people in my building are students (the picture to the left is, sadly, not my housing...just a beautiful building). There are probably about 200 people living in the building, where each flat has a maximum of six people. My flat is very diverse: my flatmates are from Australia, France, England, and Ukraine. It has been really great getting to know them because all come from such different places. Specifically, my friend from France, Elodie, is very interested in differences in language and culture between France and America. We've had some great conversations about common words, university customs, and how confused we are that people in the UK do not sleep with a top-sheet under their comforter.

I love the area that I'm living in. It's in the Borough of Islington, situated between two stations - Angel and King's Cross. Being only a 5 minute walk from King's Cross is quite convenient because that's where all of the major trains depart from (including a direct train to Paris), as well as about five different tube lines. But luckily I don't have to take transportation very often (it's incredibly expensive) because the UCL main campus is only about a 20 minute walk along the main road.

Borough Market - reminiscent of Pike Place Market in Seattle

I decided that after I was all settled in, I would start running regularly again. My goal was to do a new route every day so that I would get acquainted with the city. So one morning I set out to do just that and came across a bridge over a body of water about 5 minutes away from my flat. What initially caught my eye were two swans swimming with the current. I started taking pictures of them, and then found that I could go down to the swans. Apparently, the body of water is a canal that cuts across all of northern London, with a pedestrian path the entire way. My goal of exploring a new area every day has not been realized because this canal is the perfect running location - it's quiet, sunken down quite a bit from street-level, populated with plenty of other runners for safety, and there's lots of interesting waterfowl to meet.

Regent's Canal

I haven't felt too lonely either. I get to talk to my flatmates whenever we are cooking, I met up with a friend from high school who is also studying abroad in London, and there have been plenty of events at UCL, including a boat cruise for international students. Also, I was incredibly blessed to have my friend, Michelle, come stay with me during my second week in London. She's just finished a month-long study abroad program in India and is now traveling the world until Christmas. More about our adventures in a minute... It's also very nice to have my cousin, Kelsey, living here. She's been so hospitable and has really helped me understand and navigate the city. We've been able to meet up for lunch a few times (since she currently works close to UCL) at some delicious restaurants.

Alex (friend from UW) and I on the UCL cruise

UCL is an amazing university with so much to offer its students. I am enrolled in both the Institute for Global Health and the Department of Anthropology. The Institute for Global Health has been my favorite so far - the two courses that I'm taking are very similar to Global Health courses at UW  but all of the concepts are from a UK perspective. The courses resemble UW Honors courses: all are quite small with very engaged professors that want you to challenge their knowledge and expertise with your own experiences and opinions. They encourage dialogue in the classroom, and students are keen to participate.

One-third of the students at UCL are international, so you're bound to meet some really cool people. My favorites so far have been a girl my age from Malta (didn't know where it was...), and a young woman from Zambia who lived in Seattle for 8 years while she attended UW and worked for Fred Hutch and is now doing a graduate program at UCL in Global Health.

School work is not very demanding...yet... so I have been able to do lots of exploring and traveling:

Adventures with Michelle

Michelle outside Shakespeare's Birthplace!

England in a Day

My friend that stayed with me is a Theta from UW that graduated last year. Michelle wanted to get to know England as much as possible in the week that she had here. The first weekend that she was with me, we took a coach tour of "England in a Day." Our guide kept asking us if we knew what we were getting into because it was so long..

One of the Roman Baths

The first stop on our journey was Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace. We were greeted with scones and mimosas, as well as actors dressed up in Shakespeare-era attire reciting lines from his plays and sonnets. It was beautiful and so much fun. We toured his house and explored the city of Stratford-upon-Avon.

The second stop was the Roman city of Bath. The Romans built the city around a natural water spring to fill their bathhouses. Cool idea, but I probably wouldn't want to bathe in it now... We got to taste the water and it was pretty disgusting.

Stonehenge

Our last stop was Stonehenge. The funny thing about Stonehenge is that due to its placement on the landscape, it looks incredibly unimpressive when you first see it. You come up on top of a hill from the shuttle and look down upon it. To quote Michelle, you see it for the first time and say, "wait, is that it??" But once at the same level as the world wonder, it becomes much more striking. It's absolutely mind-blowing how people could have built it so long ago...

The Lake District

The next weekend, we continued our adventures in England. Michelle researched a town up North (almost to Scotland) called Keswick. It's in a region called the "Lake District" because it's very populated with lakes - beautiful lakes! It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere though. It took a four hour train ride, then two bus rides. Michelle went a day before I did and actually missed the bus on the last leg of the trip...and it was the last bus of the day. So she had to walk all the way to the hostel we stayed at. At least she had a beautiful view!

The Lake District - Keswick

Overall traveling with Michelle was a blast. We were friends before our adventures just from living together at Theta, but we have become much better friends. Next weekend, I'll be meeting her in Barcelona!

Ireland

The tour bus departed at 6:50am.
So we got to see this amazing sunrise!

This last weekend, I met up with Jonny in Dublin, Ireland! We both arrived on a Friday night and we stayed in a very quaint bed and breakfast about twenty minutes outside of Dublin. I had been told by multiple sources that the Cliffs of Moher on the west side of Ireland are a must see. Jonny and I weren't sure if we wanted to see them though because the weather forecast was pretty grim for Saturday. Nevertheless, we booked a coach tour that would take us across the country, stopping in a few different towns on the way.

It was so worth it!! First, we stopped in a town on a river with the remains of a castle. It was very pretty. Next, we went to the "Barack Obama Plaza." Apparently many American presidents have Irish roots, including Obama. So, they named a plaza after him. Pretty cool! The Kennedy's are also really big in Ireland.

Driving through the Irish countryside

After that was the cliffs - the most anticipated part of the tour. And they absolutely surpassed our expectations! It's difficult to describe just how amazing they are and pictures cannot do them justice. Not only was it not raining, but it was sunny with just a few clouds when we arrived. Then all of a sudden as we were walking, we saw a storm coming. The coolest part was that you could actually see the storm - you could track it because there was a line on the ocean made by the rain that would come closer and closer. On the way out on the cliffs we didn't walk behind the barrier because we wanted to get as close as possible. It was a different story on the way back because the ground was so slippery...

We left the cliffs and then went for lunch at an authentic Irish pub. Jonny and I both got fish and chips which were delicious. We ended up eating lunch with a couple from Vancouver, Canada. It was great to meet them - they've been living and working in Prague for the last year or so, so they had lots of fun stories and advice to share. From there we drove a little further on the coastline. As you'll see in one of the pictures, we were amazed by how much rock there was...everywhere... we'd never seen anything like it.

The Cliffs of Moher

The last three stops on the tour were another pub, right on the water in a little marina area, an old cemetery, and of course - my favorite - a chocolate factory. The factory was in the middle of the countryside, so far removed from everything. The chocolate itself rivaled the chocolate from Switzerland. We liked it a little more than the Irish coffee we tried at the pub...

The next day, we wandered around Dublin going to a nice park, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and a great Italian lunch to top it off. Overall, I loved Ireland. I had no idea (I actually brought British pounds thinking that that was their currency...) that there were still tensions with Britain. It's mostly in the older generation, but you can definitely tell that because they gained their independence relatively recently (compared to other British territories), people still have bitter sentiments - especially if they or their parents lived through it.

Looking down at the water. Much higher than it looks.

In one of my global health classes the week before, we discussed how western, developed nations talk about and view developing countries - the view that 'the west knows best' - and how that shapes our actions and policies. My professor talked about his experience working in Nigeria for his PhD. He said that it was perfectly normal for him to go to Nigeria and simply observe and study them, and then write a paper critiquing how they do things, talking about his observations, etc. He contrasted that with the idea that if someone from a different nation, especially a developing nation, came to the US or UK to study us or tell us how to do things, people would think that was very weird. He said it would make people feel uncomfortable.

I was thinking to myself during that lecture, of course it would be acceptable! I would love it if that happened! I critique America, I don't care if anyone else does it - that would be great to get someone else's opinion!

The amazing rock plains that stretched on forever..

When Jonny and I took a taxi back from Dublin to our bed and breakfast, we had an African cab driver who openly criticized US foreign policy, and it made me feel so incredibly uncomfortable. He told us he hadn't been to America, he's never lived there - and I kept thinking you have no idea what you're talking about. It's seen as normal in the eyes of developed nations for your average American to go on trips to the developing world and tell people how to do things, regardless of their experience or expertise.

I was quite of upset that I felt uncomfortable because I thought back to that lecture from my global health professor - how confident I felt about the fact that I would be open-minded, unaffected by the western 'norms' - and I realized just how ingrained the sentiment of 'we know better than you' is in my mind. It was a really strange feeling, but overall a good learning experience.

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To top off my adventures for the past three weeks, I have finished the Harry Potter series! I never read them as a kid, so I started reading the books at the beginning of the summer, at Jonny's suggestion, and I got hooked. They are absolutely magical. I finished the last book in King's Cross station. What I didn't know was that the book ends right in King's Cross station!! It was a wonderful experience. Now I'm on to the movies... two down and six to go before I am able to go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour in November. And now there's rumors that JK Rowling is coming out with a new book.........