Uni

Outside the KCL library; never going back to NU.

Hello everyone! Lots of exciting news to impart, so I will lead with that before I get to the boring stuff (aka my first couple of weeks in class).

First, this weekend—well, really, tomorrow—I'm going to AMSTERDAM. A few days ago Bria and I sat down to plan some trips, this weekend worked well schedule-wise, and we booked! Still can't believe I've been booking trips to major European cities on days notice, but we decided you only live/study abroad once. So Netherlands, here we come.

This week we also planned the rest of our trips. Over reading week (reading be damned), we'll be heading out to Italy to spend two days in Rome, a day in Tuscany, and one in Florence. Then, at the end of November, we'll be going to Barcelona for three days with some of the British kids on our floor as a last hurrah. Still can't believe I'll be seeing so much of Europe while I'm here; between the stress of scheduling and booking and budgeting, it feels great to have everything planned out. I could not be more excited.

My library...casually used to film Dumbledore's office.

....So how am I paying for all of this, you asked? Well the original plan was to use more of the money I've been saving up for the past four years to travel above and beyond my living expenses. HOWEVER, I just found out two days ago that I am a recipient of the Study Abroad Excellence Award from King's College. The best part? It comes with a £2,500 scholarship. That's $4,000—never have I been so happy about the ridiculous dollar/pound exchange rate!!

Anyways, on to more mundane topics. After hopping off the train from Paris, I successfully made it to my entire first week of classes. Uni (apparently not college here), while pretty similar to school back in the U.S., does have some major differences.

First, all of my classes are in one building. Yes, one building. This would be great except for the fact that everyone else has all of their classes there too. That makes for really horrible passing time traffic jams worse than high school, with hundreds of college students pushing past eachother to attempt to make it to their next class in 10 minutes (or just make it out of the building and be able to breathe).

Proud of my cooking: puff pastry pizza!

It's also definitely different having a commute to school—though this is a fundamental part of going to a city university rather than Northwestern in suburban Chicago. It's not too bad: a bus to a tube to another tube line, all taking about 30-40 minutes. It also makes for good bonding time as we head down the the Strand Campus together. One of the perks of being in central London is that many of my classrooms have these insane views of Big Ben and the London Eye. I still stop every time to look at them—I only have three months to appreciate, after all.

The lectures have really left a lot to be desired thus far (both of my English professors literally stand in front of the class for an hour reading off of a notepad in monotone), but I'm hoping it will get better. We also get a list of about 6 page of books that we can choose from to read. Combined with the fact that books are generally impossible to track down means hardly any reading gets done. For now, I certainly don't have much inspiration to actually do school work—sorry Mom and Dad. But it will get done...eventually...

Harriet and I in the Ellison Kitchen.

When not in class, life in Ellison is fantastic as always. The floor generally cooks dinner together, and sometimes when we feel like avoiding work we head over to the student bar for drinks and pool (which, apparently, I'm much better than the British at...well at least Tom).

Last weekend, we even had an American day as Mel, Bria, and I headed to another touristy outdoor market, and I led the entire crew to a Chipotle off Baker Street. They hadn't even heard of a burrito before—shocking, I know. I didn't know people like that existed out there. Needless to say, they converted pretty quick.

After that, we came back and watched the 'Cats (American) football game, which was fantastic until the fourth quarter. Then the heartbreak set in. Ah, well. I'm in England with some wonderful friends—I guess an NU football victory would be too much to ask for.

More next week from Amsterdam! Miss you all at home.