My First Week at Uni

Monday marked my first official day of classes at City University. I was fortunate enough not to have my class, criminal justice, until 2 pm (or 14:00… we are all trying to get the whole 24-hour clock thing). Kaitlin and I are in the class together, so we weren’t alone in experiencing our first taste of the British education system. The class seems interesting, maybe a little confusing, and quite a bit intense – only one exam makes up our entire grade.

The view of Northampton Square from one of the university’s buildings as I walked to class.

Smiling on the outside, crying on the inside after parting with 14 pounds.

After our first classes we were feeling a little dazed and overwhelmed, so we knewexactly what to do to forget about the day and boost our spirits. Mahiki Monday. Now, Mahiki Monday is quite an experience. After waiting in line to get into the club via our promoter, we entered a tropical-themed paradise. Except it wasn’t exactly paradise.

The ceilings were low, I had worn heels and there were tons of people. The claustrophobe in me was not happy. The penny pincher in me was also not happy when I had to spend 14 pounds on one drink. That converts to about 20 dollars for the drink. Margaret and I looked at each other, pain in our eyes, and took the plunge. YOLO, as they say. When in Rome. Whatever. The bartender had to practically tear the money out of my and Margaret’s hands.

Since that night we have compared everything we have purchased to a drink at Mahiki. So far, it is the single most expensive item we have had the displeasure of buying.

After Drinkgate, the rest of the evening was actually really fun. Now we just know to stay away from the bar.

On Tuesday I had two classes, performing arts in London and journalists in fiction. The first is a class that covers the history and culture of performing arts in the city, and through it we will get to attend multiple shows, including an opera, a ballet, a musical, and a couple plays. I’m in the class with Margaret and a few other girls on the program, and we are all really excited about it. Journalists in fiction is all about the representation of journalists in books, movies and more. It should be an interesting class.

Tuesday night we went to a bar called O’Neill’s for our friend Dina’s birthday. Dina goes to Wisconsin and we met her through a mutual USC friend. She lives just down the street from us, so we are really excited to be able to hang out a lot. What we have learned so far from Dina: Wisconsin kids do not think it is cold here, and they love to party. It was a really fun night.

Wednesday is a pretty easy day, I only have one class at 3:30. The class is just for us USC kids and is basically just a space for us to talk about journalism and complete a project. Our professor for this seminar is amazing. He has so many stories to tell of his career as a foreign corespondent for Reuters and he is extremely excited to be working with us and to give us help and advice.

Thursday morning is when I attend my international reporting class, the last class of the week. Our professor is cool and knowledgeable – we almost don’t mind that we ended up with a Thursday morning class. After the class ended, Margaret and I returned to the flat just as Kaitlin was about to head off for her weekend in Amsterdam. With our shepherd leaving for the weekend, Margaret and I felt aimless and lost at first, but we decided to head out and explore.

Margaret found out that we could take a free tour of Somerset House, an old estate right on the Thames that is now a museum and center of arts and culture. Lots of London fashion week events are held here and I will definitely be back once those kick off. The tour was interesting and the building and grounds are beautiful – I can’t wait to see what it looks like in spring when the fountains in the square are turned on.

Somerset House, right on the Thames River. Fashion Week events are sometimes held at this historic building.

The tour, while informative, was a little dry and we split off from it after about an hour. We strolled through the grounds and walked into an exhibit by Chris Stein called Me, Blondie, and the Advent of Punk. It featured photography of Blondie, Debby Harry and other musicians. All of the photos were paired with a personal caption written by the photographer. We loved it and spent a long time looking at the photos and thinking about what life must be like as rockstars of such prominence.

A photograph by Chris Stein of Debby Harry, Blondie’s lead singer.

After Somerset House it started to rain, so as newbies to actual weather, we dashed into a Starbucks to wait it out. Without our city guide (Kaitlin), we had a little trouble navigating to our next destination, Primark. This is the Forever 21 of the UK. We both needed some clothes for hitting the town, so we figured this would be a good place since it’s inexpensive. A somewhat considerable amount of money later, I now have a wardrobe to suit the nightlife.

We headed back to a bar that we went to last week, the Shoreditch, with some USC friends and had a really fun night celebrating the completion of our first week of school. We had survived.

On Friday we meant to wake up early and get going on a day trip, but we slept in. So instead, we decided to pay a visit to the Natural History Museum and spent awhile wandering through the dinosaur halls, an exhibit on human biology, and the mammals hall. We barely scratched the surface and will definitely have to make a return trip.

The Natural History Museum, the great hall inside the museum.

Feeling hunger creep up, we walked through South Kensington (so nice, so pretty, so expensive) to find a pub and satisfy our fish and chips craving. We found a perfect pub called the Queen’s Arms and sat down to a delicious meal.

The Queen’s Arms pub in Kensington.

After that, we headed back to our neck of the woods to shop for groceries and do our dreaded first load of laundry. The Celsius/Fahrenheit conversion is a little tricky and the washing machines are extremely small. But, nothing was completely ruined… well not yet, I write this as I wait for the dryer to finish its cycle.

Tomorrow we will do afternoon tea (location TBD) and the Camden pub crawl, and hopefully explore a little more of London. I’m very excited to see what we find. Until next time!