A room with a view.

So I've finally cracked and surrendered to the practicality of posting a live journal in place of mass emails. Can it be deemed the lesser of two evils? Well nevermind that, I've been in London(England) now for just over a week and I think it's about time to set the stage. I will come up with some photos eventually, but right now I'm still trying to figure out how the hell to run this Blog.

It's taken some time to get settled in here, mostly adapting to the funny money and accents. There's seven folks on my floor, we're all international unfortunately no locals that I could follow around at find the ropes but I'm still managing. On the floor we have:

Erin - Another Canadian national though she's from Vancouver she's still quite nice. She's doing Shakespearian Studies
Monika - From Hannover, Germany is doing a LLM degree
Karen - From the Barbados, Studying health promotion
Maria - Greek, from Athens is doing CompLit
Evelyn - From the Philippines is studying Child psychiatry. And finally
Dadi - From Iceland, the only other male on floor, is doing a LLM

It's a good spread, quite varying, ages run between 21 and 35.

So I arrived Saturday the 17th early in the morning or very early in the morning depending which time zone you care to look at. The flight was fairly uneventful, a couple of bad movies and mediocre food. The flight redeemed itself with free beer, but I behaved and decided it best not to be loaded when going through customs. After finding my way through the airport and baggage claim again with out adventure, I came to the reception area. In my usual dazed and confused state I came upon a girl standing there with a sign in her hands:

Student?

Need Help?

I know what you're gonna say "By George, it's a scam!" but being the trusting person I am. I decided I'd give it a shot, so I says "I'm a student, and I need help," she then asked me how she could help I told her where I needed to go. She got the assistance of an older woman doing the same service who told me how to get to my station via the tubes. The younger girl then guided me down to the tube station taught me how to get a ticket and sent me on my way. Perhaps I'm naive or just an idealist but I rather enjoy relying on the kindness of strangers.

Anywho, after a transfer of tube lines and several inquiries to locals/fellow travelers, I eventually made it to my stop. Next was the hard part. It seems the little maps they sent me showing how close and cozy downtown London is are grossly misleading, and nothing close to scale. It might have been the 50kg + trumpet and backpack, or the strange new city, but it took an eternity to find my flat.

The rest of the week took it's cue from my trek from the station to my flat and has crept along despite my running around. I have yet to get a mobile aka cellphone, but I have opened a bank account with NatWest. Finding out that it would take 48hrs to activate the account was frustrating enough, but being told that my bank draft would take a week to clear was too much. The money just flies around here, there's nothing that's inexpensive although I have found some beer to be not that expensive though I wouldn't call it cheap. I've developed a bad habit of mentally converting pounds into Canadian dollars, thereby making things that are reasonable locally seem quite expensive compared to what I'd spend in Ontario. The money aside this is quite the City! The streets run rank with culture and you can't take two steps without falling into a theater of some sort.

I've taken care to find The Maple Leaf pub, quite the hangout for Canadian expats. I met a nice girl there from Vancouver who went to McGill and is now heading to Oxford. It's quite odd how being in a strange country can form bonds between perfect strangers just holding nationality in common. Oddly enough she knows Amanda Rekker who is supposedly engaged, it's a small world(all these people my age getting married is crazy).