Day 2

6.9.18

I am not amazed by this place. It is beautiful here! I first have to talk about meeting with the London Scottish and Scott Cherry. The cite of my internship is in Richmond, so Beena, the woman overseeing my placement over here, and myself had to take the train into Richmond. I also experience my first London bus ride since we took Bus 33 back to campus. For it being my first time, it was not bad. It will take me a hot second to figure it out, but once I do, I think I will be all over this town. On the bus back, I do believe I hit the stop button by mistake because the bus randomly halted in the middle of the street. I will have to watch out for that.

So my meeting with Scott was pretty great. I am excited to work for him. Some of my rolls, well, all of them seem like things I have done for the Dragons and my hockey team. This does scare me since I am not familar with the currency or the sports rugby. But that is also what makes this whole thing excited because I know I will learn so much this semester. I do already know that this wasn't what I was expecting. I don't know what I thought I would be doing. I am just ready to start working. Scott wanted to see me again on Saturday, however, that is when we will be going into London for the day for our orientation. Instead, I have another meeting with him on Monday at 1:30.

Speaking of orientation, today was so helpful. I found out that the classes are around the same sizes as Aquinas's and if I spell stuff the American way they won't mind. They also call their professors tutors over here. Oh, and they address their.... tutors.... by their first name. That will take some time to get used to. Image if we called Doc... Roger... After the session, I feel better about starting classes.

That is the downside: we don't get our classes for another week! I do know that my first class is bright and early on Monday at 9 am. Beena told me since that is the module for my internship.

On top of classes, they talked to us about travel. This was very helpful especially the bit about how to travel around outside the UK. Somewhere New travel company came in and spoke to us about the deals they have. I think I am going to do at least one of them. I need to sign up like now with them.

I still am going to plan my Ireland trip with Tim. I was going to do that at dinner tonight, but with Emily and Alex, we never got around to it. Emily graduated from AQ in 2014 and is now living in London with her soon to be husband Alex. It was great having them there at dinner. Alex gave us a lot of excellent insight about where we should go and what we should do while we are here. And it was nice to have a family dinner, well, minus Aidan. Maddy and Alexa just got here today. They seem fine, but we will see what tomorrow holds.

Before dinner, I went on a walk around Kings St. again and found a sweet shop with delicious ice cream. I even got some fuzzy strawberries sweets. I have yet to try them, but I have high hopes. I was told today to be a tourist and take a lot of photos so, as I walked, I did just that. I spent about two hours wandering around. I found a coffee shop where I got a London Fog Latte. I found out that most of the teas can come with milk in them. It was terrific. I will probably go back to them. I am trying to branch out from Starbucks since they don't seem to have venti iced lattes. Plus I want to try new stuff. I haven't been disappointed.

As much as I could spend drinking tea and coffee, that did not take up much time. But no worries, I found a charming bookstore. No surprise. I killed a lot of time in there. I am going to get postcards to take back with me to hang on my wall at home. My first was Strawberry Hill Castle which is actually on campus. I also found a travel book for the USA, so I peaked in that. Congrats New York City, you are the top spot to visit in the US. There were also big cities to see for each of the states and guess what Dayton, we were on that list! I also got the new Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book. It was a lovely walk, and I am very excited to see what else is in store!

This is the Cabbage Patch, a pub Beena told me about that I plan on trying soon.