Living La Vida London: Day 2

I couldn't figure out my alarm on the phone I'm using over here, but I luckily didn't have to be anywhere until 10 a.m. I completely crashed yesterday after I wrote my post... I was/still am exhausted. I suppose that's jet lag for you. But today got better; I met some people after orientation who also came alone but managed to make friends more proficiently than I did. I went on a walking tour of the area and figured out how to get from where I live to key points around the area. That being said, I think I'm going to be using the Tube a lot because it's much easier for me to navigate from point A to point B without having to hassle with pulling out a map of the city and search for my location only to be confused by the plethora of streets that are definitely not set up like a grid (God bless New York City and Utah.)

After the walking tour of the area I'm living in, I went to this small sandwich shop with some of my new friends and got an egg and mayonnaise baguette. It tasted better than it sounds. We then all piled on a private coach and took a tour of London, which was nice because I got to sit and look instead of wonder and worry about how I was going to get back to Atlantic House where I'm living.

Outside of Buckingham Palace.

St. Paul's Cathedral... Apparently on Sunday they have the bells play very loudly for an obscene amount of time. I was more annoyed than in awe after about the first five minutes of this.

This is a new building in London called "The Shard," which was built by a man with the last name Piano. It's apparently going to be a resort hotel/luxury apartment complex. It's actually quite spectacular.

These are some children playing in the water outside of a restaurant. I love English children and am excited to be able to see many more of them while I'm here.

This is London's city hall building- ti overlooks the River Thames and the Tower Bridge. I think it would be pretty cool to go to work in that building every day. 

The Tower Bridge.

And here are some tourists. I think that some of the things people want to take pictures with are pretty funny. There are probably going to be more where this came from.

As soon as the tour was finished, I went up to my room, finally met my roommate, and then crashed. I woke up a little over an hour ago so my sleeping schedule has gotten off already. This is precisely why I brought sleeping pills.

My class starts at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow and I was fortunate enough to meet some of the people from the program who will be in my class, so I won't feel completely alone. I think the whole "feeling alone and overwhelmed" thing is something that I will definitely get a better handle on over here. I'm still scared that I won't be able to find my way back to my dorm room and that I'll have too much course work to do for me to go and do touristy things, but I think I'll be able to figure it all out and not be so scared of not having complete control over everything.

We shall see.