The Time I Moved into a London Flat

Hey there blogosphere! It's the end of day three in London and once again, we're doing big things. Yesterday morning, my favorite travel companions and I successfully squished ourselves and (more surprisingly) our ridiculous amounts of luggage into a classic London black cab and journeyed all the way to Regent's College, where we will be taking classes for the next five weeks. There, we were reunited with our eighteen fellow classmates and our professor, Dr. Sauer, for the first time since April when we last saw each other in East Lansing. Although we were pretty jet lagged, we looked practically chipper compared to some of our classmates who had just arrived that morning. After a brief tour of Regent's College and a peek at our classroom in the Acland building, it was time for us to move into our apartment - excuse me, our flat - in London. Holly, Mal and I got the "penthouse suite" on the 12th floor of the building! We were pretty excited about the fantastic views (our living room has windows on two sides!) but when it came to figuring out how to work basic appliances in our flat, it turned into a comedy of errors. Also fairly frightening was the itty bitty elevator. According to the health code sign, it fits four people, but the three of us were worried we were going to break it when the elevator started to make ominous rickety noises and sudden stops. Since our flat has a pretty well equipped kitchen, our next adventure of the day was grocery shopping. We went to a cute little grocery store called Waitrose about a block from our flat, and spent a good half hour trying to decide the most cost effective food to buy. Fried eggs and sandwiches for dinner, anyone? Today was the first day of class at Regents. The college is about a 20 minute walk from our flat, including a brief walk down two major streets: Baker street (and the statue of Sherlock Holmes!) and Marylebone. The lecture today focused mainly on the properties of bone, its composition, and the biology of its growth and repair. After class, our super trio went on another adventure to Oxford street in search of a ticket office where we could buy tickets to see the Wireless music festival in Hyde Park in July. Even though we looked up walking directions before leaving, the confusing streets meant we probably asked about twenty different people for directions at various points on our journey. As it turns out, Oxford (and the neighboring Market street) comprise a major shopping district. We got distracted by the four-story TopShop clothing store and all its amazing clothes (it's essentially an upscale Forever 21 on steroids). I wanted to own at least 70% of the clothes in that store...guess I'll have to go grab some money off my money tree later. Ha. After another twenty minutes of aimless wandering and some sheer dumb luck (it wouldn't be a day out with us without getting lost), we happened upon our ticket office. We successfully bought tickets to day 1 of the Wireless festival on July 6th. Yay! You can purchase everything from concert tickets to musicals and plays, and now that we know where it is (near the corner of Regent Street and Oxford) we will certainly be going back. Tickets to see Wicked for 15 pounds? Yes please. Our final adventure of the day was using the Tube to get back to our flat from Oxford Circus. In retrospect, 5 pm was probably not a good time to try out the Tube for the first time, because it was packed. Like Tokyo subway packed. Luckily, we had our oyster cards and it wasn't too much of a hassle, although it took a few minutes to figure out exactly where to go and how to swipe our cards. Clearly we ain't from here. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll post some advice on how to function in London, with thrilling tips on working English appliances, using the Tube, buying groceries, and much more. Links of the day: Stargreen box office (where we got concert tickets): http://www.stargreen.com/about/contact London Tube map: http://www.tubemaplondon.org/ Regents College: http://www.regents.ac.uk/