19 Sept.
Hi family,I'm at my hotel in London right now using the computer for £3 for an hour so I thought I would send you an email. It was great talking to all of you who I talked to today! I just slept most of the day after I got here and then called (some friends of my mom's friend) Dan and he and his dad, Mark, took me out for dinner so it was a good night and I wasn't too lonely. I am meeting Dan again tomorrow so he can show me around a bit and I can hopefully start getting familiar with this huge city. I am starting to learn my way around on the bus and tube so I won't have to take £60 taxis anymore :). Well, I think that is about all for now. I will try to check my email as often as I can and I'll talk to you later! I love you all!
21 Sept.
Hi again everyone,
Thanks for all the emails and updates from back home, and thanks for the pictures Angela! I checked out of my hotel this morning and I'm at the hostel now, but can't get to my room until 2:00pm so I thought I'd get on the computer. The hostel seems pretty nice, I haven't seen the rooms yet, and there are lots of people close in age, but I wish I didn't have to stay here so long. I'm ready to move into my apartment and get settled. I'm feeling a bit lonely today and missing home. I'm just ready to get started with the internship.
22 Sept.
My meeting with Rachelle (the London internship coordinator) went well this morning and the interview was fine too. The job sounds pretty interesting and I will get to work with and shadow everyone who works there. My meeting didn't last very long this morning and I will start tomorrow morning at 10:00am. It's really close to the hostel I'm staying at so that's good for now, but it will probably be further once I get my permanent housing. I went on a bus tour this afternoon and saw a lot of the sights I saw a few days ago, but it was still good. I could get off at various stops and did a couple of times to eat and get coffee. It started raining a bit this afternoon while I was on the tour though, and got a bit colder today.
23 Sept.
As you know I had my first day at my internship today. It was all very interesting. A group of new clients started today so I got to meet all of them. They started with doing introductions and ice breaker activites. They went over administrative procedures, took a tour and talked about safety, and did an online questionnaire in the afternoon. I also got to sit in on a session where they started working on a poster about coping with a brain injury. The people there are all really nice too. My supervisor took me to lunch and to a pub for a beer after work. He is also going to get me in touch with the other intern from the US so I can meet her and her friends and have more people to hang out with. He is also trying to get me to see a lot of places around here and in England. Dad, my job is at Rehab UK and is in Southwark near the London Bridge tube station. It is on St. Thomas Street and near Guy's hospital.
I do not yet know where I'm going to be living come October 4 and probably won't find out until Oct 1. I really wish I could get in there sooner as I am not really enjoying the hostel. A couple of my roommates are in bed before 9pm and were still asleep when I left for work this morning a little before 10am. It is also very difficult living out of my suitcase and I have had to open the big suitcase. I've also had to get out my coat as it got pretty cold today. I would kind of rather go back to the hotel, but it's also nice being so close to my job and at least around other people. Only 11 more nights here and then I get into my apartment.
27 Sept.
The move (out of my hostel room) went fine and I moved out again this morning and I think I move again tomorrow and Monday...It will really make me appreciate it when I finally get to move into my flat. The one good thing was I had a room to myself last night and it had a TV in it, but it only got 3 channels. I'm back in a 4 person room tonight and then back to a 2 person room.
I don't really have plans for the weekend. Last night we had a drama and storytelling workshop for work over at the Tate Modern and then a lot of us went to a pub. Today I'm thinking about going to the British Museum and might do something with the other intern from the US that I finally met yesterday. She is here with her school doing study abroad so she knows lots of other people here.
29 Sept.
I just finished up day at work and thought I would send an email from here. I sat in on sessions all day again today and I'm really enjoying it. We had some stress management sessions this morning, another about brain injury awareness, and then the clients started vocational profiling (figuring out what type of job/voluntary work they want to do). I've been listening to sessions and talking with the clients and helping them out with what we are doing.
If I haven't talked to you lately, I went on a London Walk on Saturday at the British Museum. It was just a highlights tour so I spent some more time there afterwards, but will have to go back again to see everything, as it is so big. I also tried fish and chips and it was not so bad! On Sunday I went to lunch with Mark and Dan again over near where they live. I got to see their house too. It was a really nice house and built in the 1880s. We ate at an Egyptian themed restaurant and had an English Sunday lunch, roast beef, yorkshire pudding, potatoes, and green beans. It was very good.
Haven't been up to too much else, just moving hostel rooms a lot. I'm finally in a room for 4 nights now and won't have to move again until Thursday and that will be my last time until I move out!! I'm in a 2 person room right now and had the room to myself last night. Wouldn't mind if I had a roommate, but it's a much smaller room with barely enough room for my 2 suitcases. I will hopefully find out Wed. where I will be living and I will let you all know as soon as I find out.
6 Oct.
Hi family!
I'm just finishing up another day at work and thought I would send an email before I leave, especially now that I don't have the same access to email as I did in the hostel. I hope you all had great weekends, except for the Iowa loss of course :(. My weekend was frustrating getting moved into my flat. I had to go to London Solutions (the rental place) to pick up my keys and pay my deposit. The deposit was £200, but the ATMs would not let me take out that much so I had to go cash my travellers checks at a bureau de change (the one bank that was open wouldn't do it) and got £124.24 for $250! After I got my keys I had to take both my suitcases on the tube to get them to my flat since I couldn't get out any money for a cab. That was a mess and then getting into my flat was a bit of a shock. It is a hallway with 4 bedrooms, a kitchen, a toilet, and a room with a shower and sink coming off of it. There is no living room and the kitchen is the only common area. The place is not very clean, freezing, and people smoke in there. The kitchen only has a fridge and a stove. The oven I guess is broken and there is no microwave or toaster. Everything in there is dirty too and people do not like to clean. Everyone buys their own food so the fridge is crowded and their own toilet paper. I had planned on cooking at the flat a lot to save money from eating out all the time, but it doesn't look like I will be able to do much of that. Anyone have suggestions of what I can cook on the stove besides pasta and rice? The one good thing is that I have a place to unpack my stuff.
I have 5 other flatmates, 3 guys and 2 girls. 3 of them are French, including my roommate, and they don't speak much English at all. The other guy is Italian (also doesn't speak a lot of English) and the last girl is from Amsterdam and speaks the best English. Some of them are there studying and some are working or trying to find jobs.
After I got settled in Saturday I went over to Ally's flat (the other U.S. intern I work with) since she and her flatmates were having people over. She lives with 2 other friends from her college and their place is SOOOOO much nicer and they pay the same rent as me, they really got lucky. Didn't do too much Sunday, got groceries and other things I needed around the flat.
Work is still going well and I think I will be doing more soon including leading a session or two. Also, I'm going to Ireland this weekend! Ally and her 2 flatmates have fall break beginning this weekend so they're going to Ireland this weekend and other countries next week. Since I wanted to go to Ireland while I'm here they said I could come along, and now I have people to go there with. We're flying to Dublin on Thursday night and I will fly back here Monday. We also plan on going to Galway for a day. I'm really excited!
17 Oct.
Hi family!
If I haven't already talked to you a bit, I had a great time in Ireland. We got in late Thursday night and walked around Dublin for a bit. We went to a pub for a little bit and stayed in a hostel in Dublin. On our first full day there we started off by moving hostels. For the rest of the weekend we stayed in a coastal town that was about a 15 min train ride outside of Dublin. It was called Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Lawry) and it was really nice there. We took a bus there the first time, which took a lot longer, but stuck with the train the rest of the time. We walked around Dublin some more that day and tried to find Trinity College. We saw parts of it, but did not get to go to the library. We also saw the Dublin Castle and went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was really pretty and we stayed for the Evensong (a choir sung evening mass), which was really good too. After that we went to a restaurant/bar for some Irish stew. It was really filling and delicious! We ordered 3 between the 5 of us and barely finished. There was about a half a roast in each! We heard some live traditional Irish music in the pub after we ate and went to another bar to hear some more. On Saturday we went to Galway for the afternoon. We had hoped to stay the whole day, but it took almost 3 hours by train and then we had to leave by 6:00 to catch the last trian back to Dublin. We had a good time though. We met up with Mom's friend Ryan who went to Iowa and is doing his master's in Galway and he showed us around the main streets. We also walked around by the water and took lots of pictures. It was really beautiful and it really is as green as people always say it is! On Sunday we visited the Guinness factory and took a tour to see how the beer is made. It was fun and at the end we got a free pint of Guinness. I had never really had it before and wasn't sure I'd like it, but I did. We met an interesting group of people at the hostel where we stayed too, I will have to tell you about them some other time. The other girls left early Monday morning to fly to Madrid and I flew back to London a little later.
I got moved into my new flat last night! I had not expected it to happen so soon, but I like it so much better. There is a little less space in the room and bathroom, but there's a table with chairs in the living area, a microwave, an oven that works, a kettle for making tea or coffee, and my flatmates are much friendlier. I share my room with an Italian girl named Luana, but she is moving out a week from Saturday. Another Italian guy, Tomaso, has his own bedroom and a Spanish woman, Jema, has her own room and shares our kitchen. Most of them are there to study and learn English and they were excited to have an American living there when I moved in. There is a French girl who lives downstairs too. She works for London Solutions and showed me the flat. It's in a house that has been converted into flats (the other place I was in was more like an apartment building) and it's really cute.
21 Oct
I spent the majority of my weekend outside of London. On Friday night the Spanish guy in the flat downstairs cooked a Spanish meal since it was his last night, for his flatmates and me and one of my flatmates joined them. It was really good and I enjoyed spending some time with my new flatmates and neighbors. Half of them speak French and half speak Italian (or both in some cases) and they all speak some English. It's great how multi-cultural it is living here.
On Saturday I went on the BUNAC trip to Bath and Stonehenge. We were supposed to go to Stonehenge first, but the bus driver took us to Bath first. It was beautiful! I toured the Roman baths, which was pretty cool and walked around a lot and saw a lot of old architecture like the Royal Crescent (look it up if you want). I also went to the Assembly Rooms where rich people used to go in the 18th century to have tea, play cards, and have balls. I saw the Jane Austen museum too, but didn't have time to tour it. After Bath, we went to Stonehenge, but got there just as it was closing! They thought it closed later and we would be able to get in, but we couldn't. We just had to look at it from outside the fence. At least I got to see it, but it would have been better to get a bit closer and walk around it and see how big the stones really are. They're giving us a refund for it though.
On Sunday my roommate, the two girls from downstairs, two more friends, and I took a bus to Cambridge. That was a really pretty town as well. We spent the afternoon there walking around and we saw some of the colleges. It was a pretty nice day, but a little windy. There's a small river that goes around a lot of the colleges and tons of people were out there on boats. I really wanted to go on a boat ride, but it was a bit more than we wanted to spend.
I think that's about it for the weekend. I plan on staying in London this weekend since I haven't been here for the past couple of weekends and I still have so much to see before I leave.
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