I was way too tired to post anything yesterday. That’s what a jet lag does to people, I guess. Making people massively unproductive.

Anyways today was my 2nd day in London. We walked quite a bit and figured out how to get from point A to point B by ourselves but I’m a city girl myself so the modes of transportation here aren’t too difficult to navigate. I’d love to hop on one of the double deckers soon.

We started the day with Carol’s presentation on London at one of the CIEE offices which is just a few blocks away from Citadine, our orientation hotel.

Then I, along with 3 other girls (Amber, Randal and Fatima), strolled Jubilee Gardens and watched the street performers. Their talents ranged from making huge bubbles, balancing soccor balls (they are called footballs here, if I remember correctly) and water bottles on a stick, back flipping, folding own body into a pretzel, not moving for hours on end to resemble a statue (don’t forget the bronze spray paint!), riding a 6-foot tall monocycle, getting in and out of a child-sized tennis racket and sitting in mid air with no string attached. 

Then we caught up with the rest of the CIEE team for a Duck Tour trip. The “ducks” are yellow, robust, heavy-duty buses which double as motorized boats while floating on the Thames. According to our Duck Tour guide, they used to load and deliver supplies for the military in the times of war and now provide curious tourists 90-minute guided tours around the city. Each vehicle is named after a female character from Shakespeare’s plays. Ours was Portia from Julius Caesar and the one that departed before ours was Cleopatra.

I love how London has such visible remnants of its past, both grim and glorious, in between modern glass-and-metal office buildings. I cannot wait to visit as many of the pop-culture landmarks, historic sites and museums as humanly possible this semester.

Pictures to follow soon (hopefully within this or next week, because I’m using a netbook and the way the screen works on mine isn’t best for uploading pictures).  

Location: London, UK