It's Already October?!

I cannot believe that it is already the first week in October, which means that I have been here for 5, almost 6 weeks already! You'll have to forgive my writing, I know I'm not the best but I'm starting to like this blogging stuff. That being said, time is flying by, which is good because I do get home sick some days and I miss everyone at home, but bad because London is an amazing place and I am liking it more and more with each passing day.

With five weeks down I think its time for an update on life in London, not just documents of my trips. Let me begin with academia because, after all, that is why I am here! My classes are so different than what I was expecting to have because I was told by previous students they were supposed to be 'easy'. Not so fast my friends, each class has a lot of readings for each week and most of them are paired with an essay to summarize those readings. So that's nothing like what my classes are like at UConn in Storrs, which have tests and usually only 2-3 in a semester, these classes have 4-5 papers accompanied with smaller response papers. Aside from the classes, I like most of my professors, and the only one that I didn't particularly like was only teaching for the first 5 weeks anyways so I don't have her anymore.

My two volunteer placements are very interesting as well. My first one is at a secondary school (middle - high school) where I meet with 4-5 students individually because they are students that have a reading level of 4th or 5th graders and they are between 8th and 11th grade (instead of grade they say year 11 or year 7). I read with them for about 30 minutes and then briefly go over what they read and talk about whatever else they might want to talk about. So far they haven't opened up much except for asking where I am from and why I'm there but nothing about them.

At my other placement, called South Bank Mosaics, I get to work with young offenders who have to do community service and they get the privilege to go to this organization and make mosaics that get put together with the other youths work and are put up across the city as art. I really enjoy this because I get to make some too, and I don't usually do that sort of thing and because it is doing something positive for these kids.

Adjusting to life in London has been a bit rough in the beginning because obviously, I come from a small town, and UConn is in the middle of no where. So it's just like moving to Boston or New York except the currency is completely different, cars drive on the left side of the road, and I'm just not used to living in a big city. City life is cool though because there is always something to do. Having said that, I would not want to live in a city for that same reason, there is always something going on and the pace is very fast, sometimes its nice not to hear the sounds of cars outside the window and people everywhere. I don't want that to sound like I don't like it though, because it is an awesome experience, it's my first time in an apartment having to cook every meal (hypothetically, I eat out more) and to buy everything for myself like light bulbs and little things that you take for granted when you don't have your own space.

Since my last post I have planned one more trip, for our mid-term break, which is quickly approaching (3 weeks). For this, my last planned trip we will be going to Italy! It is the same group that went to Amsterdam, and we will be going to Venice and then on to Rome for 6 days. Since our internet is so terrible when we went to book the trip we could not all get the same flights because pages wouldn't load and there was a big stressful backlash from that. So, the next day after 4 of us had booked, I still had not so I had to get arrangements on my own, but I will fly over to Venice with the group but I could not get the same flight with them from Venice to Rome so I only get to spend a whopping 28 hours in Venice before flying over to Rome by myself. The others will join me the next day so it isn't a big deal really, I don't mind traveling by myself, it's kind of fun only being responsible for you and not worrying about anything else. But it should be a really fun trip, Italy was top on my list of places to visit while I'm here. So that rounds out my list of places to go, started with Amsterdam, next weekend I am taking a train with my best friend from home, Geoff to Paris for the weekend, then for our mid-term break is Italy, and then finishing out is a trip to Stockholm Sweden for a weekend in mid November. Time is going to start speeding up even more with trips coming every second week so stay tuned for the last 2 and a half months because a lot is going to happen and hopefully some great pictures will result! P.S. anyone out there that likes my photos, please hook me up with someone, I would love a career!