Ten Things I Find Interesting About London

1. Everyone drives on the wrong side of the road! They also walk on the left, pass on the right, and in general get slightly miffed if you don't follow the rules. Thankfully most crosswalks say "Look Right", but the ones that don't are dangerous...especially if a double-decker is bearing down on you. Cars are usually good to pedestrians, but motorcycles and bicycles aren't.

2. There is always a sign to answer every question, usually an embarrasingly obvious sign. Ask, "Where am I?" and there will be a map. Ask, "What is this place?" and there will be a placard. Ask, "What should I do now?" and there will be an instruction manual. Ask, "Who lived on this site in 1769 and what was his profession?" and there will be an informative blue tile.

3. Related to this... Londoners try so hard to be helpful, accomodating, and polite. They love putting up superfluous street signs and public notices, which, in their valiant attempt to inform the public, often contradict each other.

4. Sometimes you are hard-pressed to find a legit Brit. (Sorry, that was irresistible.) London's a huge city, with something like 7 million people, but I think a third of them are from outside the UK. London has the highest concentration of languages spoken in the world (300 in 600 square miles), and it hosts 13 million tourists a year.

5. Streets are not straight and change names unexpectedly. There is no street grid and no city planning. A map and a good sense of direction are necessities, even if all you want to do walk to the nearest grocery store.

6. All Londoners dress fashionably. Men often wear three-piece suits, sometimes even with a hat, and women wear lots of heels, scarves, skirts or slacks, and tailored clothes in dark colors. However, it isn't like posh parts of American cities, where anyone underdressed feels awkward. Instead, I get the impression that anyone can wear anything without causing a stir, but each person simply has a preference for looking well put together.

7. 30% of the area within London is green space. This translates into roughly a park on every other street corner. Most are the size of a city block or smaller, but there are few enormous ones which provide a quiet, peaceful refuge from the bustling traffic of downtown London.

8. Most things are smaller here - dogs, cars, roads, rooms, staircases, pound notes. Notable exceptions are buses and some parks.

9. Everything is so old. I passed a pub the other day that was built in 1471. Then I visited a church that was erected 1,419 years before I was born. It is normal for buildings to have been around for four hundred years. However, there are less really old buildings than there could have been: the fire of 1666 and the Blitz both did a number on the city; the first destroyed 80% of the city, the second 30%.

10. School officials practically beg students to frequent the four bars on campus. The Student Union, which really is like a union and serves as advocate and representative of UCL students, as well as housing student government and hosting social events, has organized four parties next week at London's biggest clubs.

Some Pictures! First Few Days

St James Park

Westminster Abbey

Houses of Parliament (aka Big Ben)

Hyde Park

Peter Pan statue

Tessa and I in one of the millions of tiny parks

London.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea...

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

- Shakespeare, Richard III

London is truly an incredible city. I've been here only a week, and I already know that three months is about ten years too short a time to stay here. But I'm trying to make the most of every single moment I have! When I arrived last Saturday and met with Tessa, my friend from Whitman, the first thing we did (after sleeping, of course) was get to know the Tube system and explore the city. We visited St. James' Park, Buckingham Palace, the Spencer Museum (a beautiful old house full of gilt and fine artwork and rich upholstery), Westminster, and Parliament. The next day the agenda included Hyde Park and a tour of the neighborhood. All of it was almost unreal: there really are double decker buses, red telephone booths actually exist, and some people really do always speak with a British accent. I've been to London before, so it wasn't quite as magical, but Tessa was like a kid at Christmas.

Not all of this past week has been touristy, though. After an epic journey via the Tube from our hostel in North London to Tessa's residence in South Kensington, we got to meet the other students on the IES London program. There are four students at UCL and eight at City University who came through IES. The four of us at UCL live in the same residence hall (though not in the same flat), about a twenty minute walk to school. Even though classes don't start until Monday 5 Oct, we go to campus almost every day for orientation activities.

They are so good to us international students! There are 6000 of us - study abroad students and masters/PhD together. The school and the Union host social events; give talks on living in London, studying at UCL, and adapting to life in a new place; and have about five trillion faculty and student tutors assigned to assist us in anything we might need.

I will have no trouble being happy here.