Tag Archives: london

#LDN2K15

In the past two months, I have been in five different countries, I have seen four plays, I have been on three blind dates, I have lost two gloves, and I have written 1 blog – this one.

Yes, I am two months into my study abroad in London, England and this is my first blog – sorry PSU GeoBlog! Every time I felt an inkling of a “blogsperation” something exciting in my life would fall precedent, or I would actually attempt to write it out, only to experience extreme anxiety and discomfort – no, not in relation to my irritable bowel. Turns out, putting my thoughts and feelings into words isn’t quite my cup of tea.

But we are two paragraphs in and this feels alright. While I’m on a roll, I must revisit the first moment I felt like I had something to blog about.

On a long walk one day I discovered what I hypothesized as the “coolest” coffee shop in London. At first, I even went as far as to compare this cafe to my alma mater, Saint’s Café, in State College. But at Wild and Wood, they keep the cakes out in open air, there isn’t a front counter, and they purposefully don’t have wifi to “foster conversation.” I have since proven this hypothesis wrong – because pews hurt my back and wifi is life – however, I digress.

The next weekend, in true study abroader fashion, I thought the best way to waste a few quid was by taking a stroll to my new favourite coffee spot and stopping at a bookstore on the way for a light read. What should I read over here? Some deep and meaningful fiction, definitely. While I thought the hardest part of this day would be fitting in at “the coolest coffee shop in London,” this was not the case.

I’ll save you the misery I faced in that book store – flash forward – I spent two wretched hours browsing fiction titles. All I wanted was for the synopsis of an interesting looking book to pull me in, but it just wasn’t happening. I was trying SO HARD to sell myself on some of them, but I simply could not. It is likely, that in true study abroader fashion, I was trying too hard.

I ended up purchasing The Big Short by Michael Lewis, a classic piece of financial literature that I am embarrassed to admit I hadn’t read until a few weeks ago (sorry, Dad and Gary). Also, before you say it, I know we have a “million” copies at home.

Now, did I enjoy reading this book? Hell yea, I have since re-read it. Books are expensive.

But you see, I am a finance student at home, as was my sister, and my dad teaches the subject as well. However in London I am taking my art and history credits – “expanding my horizons”, “seeing new things”, “branching out.” So here lies my first blogspiration. I am over here living in a dream, a chance to completely distance myself from my home life, and I can’t help but my stray back to my roots.

In a way my interest in the book was comforting and reassuring – “Yes, I am in the right major!” But at the same time it made me wonder – just how far will I let myself go out of my comfort zone while I’m over here? Will I always be searching for something that “feels like home”? I sure hope not. Cue scary music.

Cheerio for Now!

So, I left London, and now I’m back in Pittsburgh. The entire trip to London was extremely fun, and I’m glad I went. It was a great time, I had some great times with the people I went with, I saw a lot of cool things, and I went to a lot of cool places I had never seen before. I really enjoyed it, and I hope if you’ve ever thought about going to London, then reading my blogs has informed your opinion at some level, allowing you to further consider the prospect of going and seeing some really cool things. Because, make no mistake, going to London for a month is a huge commitment that requires time and effort, and knowing that if the most important thing you can do before you go. Sure, there’ll be fun things to do once you get there, but it’s very important that you have a plan.

But before I let this blog go for now, I have to get a wall of text off my chest and tell you about the ordeal I went through to get back to Pittsburgh, because it could happen to anyone. And man, was it an ordeal.

From Russell Square, me and eight of the people I stayed with got on the Tube to the Airport, in a repeat of the way we came to London. That wasn’t the ordeal, though, because we just rode the train straight there and got our boarding passes and everything in order. Security was a big deal, because it was really confusing which way we should go, because the lines are a jagged mishmash of ropes telling you where to go, when actually you should be over there, not there.

But security wasn’t an ordeal, because the security guard waved us over to where we should be, and that was sorted out. We waited for a while for our plane to decide what gate it was going to go to, but that wasn’t an ordeal because there’s a ton of shops and restaurants in the airport as well as a children’s playplace and a foosball table (the latter of which I played with Hunter whiel we were waiting.) So far, everything was going according to plan. We got to our plane’s terminal, boarded, and flew all the way back to Philadelphia. I watched three separate movies on the flight, so that wasn’t an ordeal at all, in fact, the flight was quite smooth.

In Philadelphia, the nine of us who had flown over split up, and went to our separate flights and/or buses and/or cars. The true ordeal was, in fact, getting onto my flight to Pittsburgh, taking a nap, waking up from the nap to find out we hadn’t even taken off yet due to mechanical failure, getting off the plane to get onto a new plane at another gate, and getting to that gate only to find that the plane wasn’t going to land yet because of the weather, but that it was also going to another gate, and going to that gate and learning that the plane would not be taking off today because it had gotten too late in the evening. So…I stayed a night in Philadelphia.

It was weird even having to bug the US Airways employees to get me a hotel room that I could sleep in, because you’d think they’d have some available. However, a bunch of flights had gotten canceled because of weather that day, so they had already promised rooms to a lot of people, and only by asking more hotels if they could bring in more people would they be able to accomodate any of us.

So, I got to stay in a really nice hotel in Philly, and it was great, for the one night it lasted. But I was tired anyways and it was about 2 in the morning by the time I got into the room, so I didn’t get to enjoy it that much.

The other ordeal I had was the fact that I wasn’t guaranteed a seat on a flight to Pittsburgh the next day, because of the aforementioned other people who had also stayed the night. My best bet was to catch a flight from Philly to Cleveland, and have my parents pick me up there, but I just wanted to get home already. So, I got a seat on a flight to Cleveland, but I asked to be put on the standby list for flights to Pittsburgh. Now, I don’t know if you know what standby means, but they put you on a list and if there’s any unclaimed seats on a plane, they fill them up with people on the standby list. Since the first flight to Pittsburgh in the morning was canceled, I was told it might be a long shot to get home. But, what ended up happening was I stayed for one flight at 11:30, and my name wasn’t called on the list, so I went to the next gate where a flight to Pittsburgh was going to leave, and then they called my name, and so I made the flight to Pittsburgh by getting the second to last seat on the plane, and in first class no less!

And so ends my written experience traveling on Study Abroad. I had fun, and I hope you did as well!

Location: London, United Kingdom

Totus Mundus…

So, I wanted to talk about two things in this post, and I thought I’d start with the boring part first, save the interesting part for last.

First off, the classes themselves. While I’ve mostly talked about and posted pictures of the interesting places I’ve seen, the main thing you do when you Study Abroad is study, so I’d be remiss to mention it at least a bit.

Our classes were a bit different from the normal Study Abroad classes, the ones where you’re there at another university, studying under professors from that university and receiving grades from that university. On our short trip, we just had a professor and a grad student from our own Penn State teach us their own respective courses in facilities that are leased to other U.S. colleges. It was basically like high school classes, too, since all of us students and professors saw each other every day, with the exception of weekends. Also, there were the field trips, which made it feel even more like high school.

Some of them tied into our course theme; “Literary London” would not have been complete without experiencing something “literary” within London.

Which is why, for our courses, we were given the assignment to go and see a few Shakespeare plays. Specifically, one at the reconstructed Globe Theater.

The one going on at the time was Titus Andronicus, which, as you may not know, was probably Shakespeare’s bloodiest plays. Featuring things such as death, depression, rape, murder, onstage dismemberment, and copious amounts of blood.

It’s such a shame Shakespeare never wrote for TV, because audiences today eat that sort of thing up on HBO and AMC all the time.

I didn’t get any pictures of the actual performance (for obvious reasons), but what I can tell you is that, if you do happen to see Titus, and you’re a fan of blood, you’ll want to stand as close to the front as possible. It’s the best view by far. Actually, any play they perform at the Globe you’ll want to stand as close as possible, but especially this one, IF you’re a fan of blood.

Oh, I forgot to mention that if you get tickets, the cheaper ones have you stand in a crowd in front of the stage. For hours. And god is every minute worth it. Actors flit in and out of the stage and wheel things in and the crowd standing in front of them all the time, and so much is going on. Just don’t get standing tickets if you don’t think you’ll make it that long (there is an intermission, though. You can sit as much as you like.)

Location: London, United Kingdom

A Day At Court

You may not know a bit about things you can see outside of the city of London proper, but are easily accessible by rail. Now, our group was very…directionless. Not a lot of us had a plan to go and see things, so we really just followed people who actually had had plans for that day. One of the results of that kind of attitude was our group trip to Hampton Court Palace.

It was probably the most historically authentic place any of us had ever been – you got to go through the halls where Henry VIII had lived, and they were set up like they might have looked back then – there were big fire pits and tables in the main hall set up for dinner, with little factoids written on the tablecloth about how the king always got first dibs on the food, etc.

There were big pillows you could lie on, and a metric ton of paintings within. But besides the inside, there were a ton of things on the outside as well.

The lawn of Hampton Court is huge – it’s bigger than 3 football fields. If you go, and decide to walk around the gardens, the lawns, the fountains, the hedge maze, then you might want to bring your best pair of walking shoes. By the end we were so exhausted of walking everywhere that we were so tired. And we still hadn’t seen everything! To see everything there would’ve taken up an entire day, whereas we just came after class was finished in the early afternoon.

It’s another tourist site I would highly recommend, and even if you’re not a fan of walking, there is a horse and carriage you can pay for and you can ride around the massive lawn instead of walking across it.

Location: London, United Kingdom

Cue Sensory Overload

But first, an introduction is in order! My name is Zaynab, and I will be a junior this coming fall semester. I am a double major in Public Relations and Psychology, and am studying abroad this summer in London through the Arcadia London internship program.

Why study abroad? It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been traveling since long before I can remember, and have been to more countries than I can count on one hand (which may not sound all that impressive but apparently is uncommon for someone my age.) Though I am grateful for all the places I have been in the past, I always find myself looking back and just wishing I had more time. Visiting an unfamiliar culture does not afford quite as many opportunities as does the chance to live in an unfamiliar culture.

So there I was, an over-eager sophomore sitting in my advisor’s office in early Fall 2013, telling her that I wanted to spend Summer 2014 either interning or studying abroad. She offered me a program that would allow me to do both, and now here I am writing to you from a coffee shop in London.

I never imagined myself choosing a study abroad program in Britain. Initially, I thought it was too familiar, that the culture would be too similar to America to really get a “foreign” experience. That misconception was quickly shattered.

My first day in London, I set out to purchase sheets, pillowcases, towels, and everything else necessary for me to take a shower, do my hair and makeup, live, etc. Mind you, I spent the entire previous night on a plane; this excursion was purely an effort on my part to combat jet lag by doing things that would not allow me to go to sleep.

I had never felt culture shock so acutely as I did standing in Boots Pharmacy (the closest thing Britain has to CVS,) staring at a shelf full of shampoo and conditioner brands I had never seen in my life. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you have illogically thick and curly hair like myself, and when you are running on little-to-no sleep in the past 48 hours, it can be quite anxiety-provoking. I did, eventually, get everything I needed, but not without feeling exhausted and terribly homesick.

Getting sleep and acquainted with the girls in my building helped me get through that initial sensory overload. I began to be more so intrigued than intimidated by the little cultural differences I found. For example:

It is easier to find tikka masala sauce in the grocery store than it is to find pasta sauce
The pasta sauce is imported from Italy, so even out of a jar it’s bangin
Your orange juice is “no bits” not “no pulp”
Don’t ask the barista for your coffee with milk and sweetener- that’s something you do yourself
Milk comes in two forms: skimmed and semi-skimmed
If you don’t get your food “takeaway” you have to pay a small fee to sit down
The bars close at midnight. That’s not early; if you’re out any later than 5:00pm, you’re late
It doesn’t get dark until 11:00pm and it starts getting light at 3:30am
Don’t tip anyone. It’s rude.

I could sit here and list off a thousand more things, but I will let them be noted in future posts.

Until next time,

Cheers 🙂

*NOTE*

1. I have been here since June 3rd; this post is just extraordinarily late.

Location: London

Eye Spy

Hey guys!

Last time I talked a bit about the Underground. This time I thought I’d mention a bit about the places I’ve gotten to using the Underground.

You might’ve noticed some of the pictures I took weren’t taken on the ground. That’s because that day I went with my fellow students to the London Eye.

It was worth every pence, really. The view of the city in every direction is astonishing.

There wasn’t a single thing anyone disliked, except the optional “London Eye: The 4D Experience”, a ten-minute film which annoyed a lot of people on our trip, because it was “pointless, and you had to wear 3D classes.”

There was also the confusing queue. Here we wait in line for tickets, meanwhile the sign points in another direction, which confused us quite a bit.

It was a 30-minute ride, during which there were views of nearly everything, except perhaps, as one child observed (whose parents and he joined us in the carriage), the Tower of London.

You could see Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben of course, the Shard (the tallest building in London), London Bridge, and plenty of other possible destinations.

I would highly recommend going while you’re there. If anything, you can have a few moments for taking very nice pictures, something we all took advantage of.

Location: London, United Kingdom

Parting is such sweet sorrow. Goodbye, London

It’s been 2 days since I came home in Shanghai. I am still in shock that I left London. I had a fair share of short trips outside of UK here and there and I would dread going “back” to London at the end of each trip. But now I left the city, how much London felt like home to me (not to say how much I took it for granted!) started to sink in. I’ve met a lot of people, left my mark and beheld many things I could only dream about. In the wise words of my much-missed Westminster neighbor, Celia, I’ve “done quite a lot” in a very short time. It was one heck of eventful semester but 5 months wasn’t enough. To talk about the very few regrets, I haven’t visited Stonehenge yet. But that would be a good excuse to come back. And I didn’t make too many British friends. Many whom I was close with were American, Japanese and Chinese. I am not complaining though, it was a valuable experience nonetheless to bond with these people. Also I haven’t gone to any of the extracurricular activities of the Uni (although I went to one guest speaker lecture). I will miss London dearly. I will miss how cosmopolitan this city is, how different centuries coexist in such proximity, how connected it is to other major European cities. And I will miss the semi-robotic public transport announcements reminding me to ” mind the gap.” I believe I will run into the adventurous bunch of people I met in the future in the most obscure corners of the world. And I also firmly believe that this will not be my last time visiting London. But until then… fare thee well ye jolly olde England! I await for the day we are reunited again! Thank you all for reading, following and commenting on my posts! You have been incredibly patient!! And to future study abroad students: bon voyage. Only YOU can stop yourself from embarking on a life-changing journey.

Victoria hits London Town!

Now that I’m done with all of my course work for the semester, I shall dedicate more of my time to uploading pictures of and blogging about a few recent adventures of mine.

Sorry for the delay, as always.

So before leaving for Morocco, as I have mentioned in the previous entry, I took Victoria on a one-day tour of London. I will not say that I am the best tour guide in the world but Victoria seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself which was GREAT. She gave me excuses to ~~ogle~~ marvel at archaeological treasures of British Museum and pose for pictures at Trafalgar Square and do other touristy things.

I took her to the Sherlock Holmes statue at Baker Street tube station, Trafalgar Square and National Gallery, British Museum, IceBar, Hamleys toy store and Covent Garden. There were a million other things I wanted to show her but we only had half a day.

Fortunately we were greeted by a clear, blue sky that day. We even sat outside British Museum while eating our hotdogs.

IceBar was such a unique experience! For most bar-loving folks, this may or may not be the first time you feel like you want to leave the place after 30 minutes because heck, it is MINUS 5 degrees Celsius (that’s 23 degrees Farenheit for you Americans!) inside and everything is frozen–including the chairs, tables and glasses. I was literally freezing my butt off and my fingers turned red after 40 minutes in the sub-zero temperature.

At Covent Garden we had the loveliest Indian food for dinner at Masala Zone. The Chicken curry was warm and nice after IceBar, the dip-and-naan-bread combo is always heavenly and the mango lassi was beyond awesome.

Showing Victoria around felt different from visiting these places on my own. She left a lot of decision-making to me sightseeing-wise because London is a foreign place to her and I didn’t want to disappoint. I wanted her to see London the way as close as I see it, I hoped she’d like London as much as I do. I wanted to show her the very best of this city. And I’ve only had 4 months to get to know “the best” of London. It was a bit like being put on test.

But I think this was a good practice for me. As I expect some more showing around in the future, I was inspired to make a decision that I will rediscover my hometown Shanghai, do a touristy thing or two. I will go to the very museums I’ve avoided all these years because they are touristy. Maybe I’ll join a walking tour of the Jewish quarter, or the Bund.

Thanks again for reading!

The pictures of IceBar are posted on my Tumblr page here: http://krazzykitty.tumblr.com/#50024363793

My next few posts will also feature links to the photos of Morocco on my Tumblr page, so stay tuned!!

P.S. Here’s how IceBar works, if you by any chance are in London and want to give it a go (:

Go to IceBar London’s website (http://www.belowzerolondon.com/icebar-make-a-booking.html) and make a reservation. Every group is given a 40-45 minute time slot during which they can enjoy the free first drinks and looking like a bunch of Blue Little Riding Hoods-esque weirdos.

Show up to the reception at least 15 minutes early on the day for which your party is booked.

Receive a ticket at the reception and get bundled up with the cloak/cape and the built-in gloves (the downside is, they are regular ski gloves NOT tech gloves, you’ll have to put them on and off several times as you attempt to snap pictures).

The first drink is included in the ticket price. Just give the bartender the ticket when ordering and you’re all set!

Location: London, UK

Best of London Jan. 3-29 in pictures #1

As I promised, here are some of my favourite photos taken by yours truly and my friends! I still need to figure out a number of things with the GeoBlog/MovableType website apparently (I keep running into technical problems). I apologize for the pictures not being in a chronological order (technology hates me).

To see the pictures, scroll down. Enjoy!

London Evening Standard about 2 weeks ago. Unlike in State College, snow is rare in London.

The British Museum

Yes, I live SUPER close to Baker Street

Tower Bridge from Thames

Parliament and Big Ben

The Beatle’s Abbey Road Studio

The London Eye

Location: London, UK

Week 2, St Paul’s Cathedral & Belly dance workshop with Claudia

The amount of readings for Week 2 was not overwhelming–yet. I ‘reserved’ a book (Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children) to read in my free time. Let’s see if I will finish this book without disrupting my study.

Our 2^nd destination for A&S fireld trip was St Paul’s Cathedral. Saying that my neck still hurts from constantly looking up at fresco paintings and the building itself was a magnificent yet exquisite piece of art is an understatement.

Too bad we weren’t allwed to take photos of the interior. Our professor was looking forward to taking us to the top galleries (it’d be his first time to see the city with the persistent snow) but the two of them were closed that day. We ended up visiting only the ground (Cathedral) floor, the Whispering Gallery and the basement (Crypt). He said, from there we’d able to enjoy a good panoramic view of the city of London. Considering that admission to St Paul’s isn’t usually free, I am still not sure about coming back for it.

Aside from schoolwork, I have been researching about the belly dance scene in London and I discovered a cyber community for London belly dancers (www.londonbellydance.com). That’s also where I found the 5-week advanced/improver workshop with Belly Dance Body Mind (www.bellydancebodymind.com) run by Ms Claudia Yasmina.

She was recruiting students for shorter ‘drop-in’ sessions to fill out the gap between her much-longer ‘courses’ on the London Belly Dance forum. In her post she mentioned Camden Town then something inside my head went “DING!” Her studio just happens to be a 10-minute bus ride away from my dorm.

I attended her free session on Monday but since it was for beginners, I didn’t feel like I learned much but it felt great to stretch out my stiff muscles. But oh my! I really need to work on my flexibility! I use to be a rather flexible person but now I’m the least flexible person in the belly dance class!!!! Good grief!

I told Claudia was unsure, and she offered to let me attend another session (the advanced-level one) on Thursday for free! Claudia is by far one of the nicest people in the world, hands down. She greets by kissing on both cheeks and hugs. She hugs me so tightly, by the end of the lessons I start to smell like her. We went over shimmies and layering today. Maintaining two or more movements at the same time–AND SMILING THE WHOLE TIME–was definitely a challenge. But the sour/numb legs and hips confirmed that the improver workshop is the one for me. I paid the fee (40 GBP) and signed my name. I was informed I will get my invoice via email. I’m so excited for new moves I’m about to master and new friends I’m about to make there! I’m very happy to be able to continue to do what I love the most.

Thanks again for stopping by and have a nice day everyone!

Location: London, UK

Education Abroad GeoBlog

Penn State bloggers from around the world

Tag Archives: london

#LDN2K15

Cheerio for Now!

Totus Mundus…

A Day At Court

Cue Sensory Overload

Eye Spy

Parting is such sweet sorrow. Goodbye, London

Victoria hits London Town!

Best of London Jan. 3-29 in pictures #1

Week 2, St Paul’s Cathedral & Belly dance workshop with Claudia