LONDON

The DL on LDN (read: the down-low on London).

Cheerio! (:

If you want to read this in a British accent, I sure won’t stop you! Sorry about being so behind on posting. I warned you already I wouldn’t post every day. It hasn’t been because I have been busy (though, every single day is action-packed!) it has been because wifi is a joke. I mean, really. It’s ridiculous. It is something that I take for granted. People (myself included) complain loudly about the university’s wifi, but GOSH. I would love to have that right now.

Rather than posting every day, I have managed to write something every day. I have been storing them on some program called Microsoft Word… Very clever, that is. So, I will just do mass posts about each city. That means, this whole post will be about my stay in London. Hopefully it’ll tide you over until the wifi is better and when we’re out of the Czech Republic.

If not…I’m sorry. But it can’t be helped. Trust me—if I could change the wifi…I WOULD.

Enjoy my tales. (:

Day One

The flight was not as bad as a ten hour flight would seem to be. Granted, there was no leg room (at least not for someone with my height…), and it was uncomfortable to sleep in the seats. But on the bright side, I definitely watched Pitch Perfect as one of my in-flight movies! So, that was aca-awesome!

There has been no time to relax since landing! We wanted to keep super busy so that come right now, we’d be able to go right to sleep and wake up adjusted to the time zone… Oops. I’ll sleep on the transportation vehicles. Since getting off the plane we have: learned all about and ridden on the London Underground/Subway/Tube system, shopped at Mark and Spencer’s (basically a UK Fresh and Easy), went to London Hillsong Church, had a really fancy dinner/dessert, and now we’re “home” for the next four days.

For the food connoisseurs out there, I had shepherd’s pie for dinner and my dessert was a dark chocolate tart with blood-orange sorbet. So good!

It was a very a long day. To my body, I had left the States at 1pm Saturday; however, in time-zone world, it was about 10pm Sunday before I went to sleep. The joys of international travel!

It was a crazy first day with ups and downs (note: I hate cell phones; more specifically, iPhones), but at the end of the day, I am still in London and it is still unreal. Can I just say: London is beautiful! I love the style of the buildings, and I must admit, I am a huge fan of the public transport system. (: I can’t wait to see the rest—we’ve barely gotten started.

 

Day Two

A great beginning to any day is a traditional English breakfast. You can’t go wrong there!

Today was great. Winsor Castle was first on the agenda; and boy was that cool! It’s amazing how beautiful and elaborate everything was. I couldn’t imagine living there—I’d get lost on the way to the bathroom! No lies.

After that, we had a “second breakfast” at the Crooked House of Winsor. It was literally a crooked building. They served us a classic English meal/snack of tea and scones and little finger sandwiches. There was SO MUCH FOOD. Oh my gosh. But so good. Also, that definitely ruined me for tea. I have never had better tea in my life than I had there. It was the best ever. Hands down. Nothing can ever beat it. The British know their tea.

Our next stop was a corporate visit at Legoland! We got a tour of the park and listened to a representative from both HR and the Education Center present. It was really quite cool. Beth, the lady from the Education Center was super entertaining and charismatic. I still haven’t gotten over the accents everywhere—and hers was pretty cool. (: It had a different sound to it.

To many people’s dismay/non-understanding of why, the next place we went was Stonehenge. Yeah, it’s a bunch of rocks…and it was raining, but it was very cool. I wonder why they got there. Who put them there? Why? Is it a natural formation? I just…I don’t know. It became a running joke, but I still thought Stonehenge was definitely worth the time it took to get there.

A delicious lunch and one long bus ride later we had free time! Initially, I had a tough time deciding if I wanted to stay in and do homework or go out on the town. But I mean, it’s LONDON. And I don’t know how many other opportunities I will get to come here. I want to make the most of it, so I chose the smart choice and went out!

A few of us went on a search for Big Ben. Well, that was not as effective as we wanted as we got distracted by the M&M store. When we were done being overloaded with rainbows and chocolate, we got serious about finding Big Ben. And by serious, I mean: we asked three different people for directions and wandered around Picadilly Circus (London’s Times Square) and various other areas until we found it! Pictures were taken, obviously. This is me we’re talking about…

So, overall: great and successful day. Love it.

 

Day Three (a.k.a. the longest day of my life)

Though the parenthetical statement may be perceived as negative, it really isn’t. Today was a struggle, but that’s fine. It’s a struggle IN LONDON. So that makes everything better (or so I am telling myself!) But in all honesty, it was a great day, just tiring. It was one of those days where you take everything in stride, look back on it later, and laugh.

We started with an 8am call time to get to Coca-Cola. However, at the last minute, our route changed and we stopped off at PLATFORM NINE AND THREE-QUARTERS. Ahhhhhhhhh!!! Can I just pause for five seconds and be excited at how cool that was?????

1.2.3.4.5.

Not long enough, but moving on anyway.

We barely made it to Coca-Cola on time, but we made it happen. That was pretty cool! They’re literally a well-oiled machine! Then, after Coca-Cola, we found ourselves on a crazy rush. We had been scheduled to do a bike tour. We needed to check in at 1:45pm and then start at 2pm. Well…nothing seemed to go right. We had to take a bus and a few tubes (the subway) to get back and then we had about a 5 minute turn around to change out of businesswear and into biking-in-the-rain-wear, grab food (yeah, that didn’t happen), and make it back to the tubes and get to Queensway.

Needless to say, we were late. AND. The directions to the place were wrong so we spent some time wandering around trying to FIND the tour place. Whoops…

Eventually we found it and started our 3 hour bike tour of London. I don’t know how exactly that sounds to you, dear reader, but it was a lot of fun! (: I missed the feel of my calves burning. Plus, the sights were beautiful. Did I mention it was raining? Yeah, it was. But it was still fun. I mean…biking around London and seeing various statues, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey…so worth it!

But by the time it was over everyone was soaked and pretty unhappy and very hungry. The last time anyone had a full meal was our traditional English breakfast at the hotel…at 6-7a.m. So, that was great.

We finally had time to spare at the end of the tour. The plan was to get the group (all 22 of us) to go to Hard Rock Café. Well, with a party that big, the wait was 1.5 hours so we split up and each ate wherever in smaller groups. NOTE: best italiam place ever. It was called VaPiano (or something of the sort) and if you ever hear of one…go there! It’s self-serve. They give you a card, you go up to one of the counters and order whatever and scan your card…it’s just super cool.

And half of us that went there ended up just going back to the hotel…like myself. I mean, it may not sound like a long day, but when you go 12 hours without eating and add lots of rain and running around…it’s just bad voodoo.

So, tomorrow is the free day. Literally nothing is planned except our 2am curfew. I’m really excited.

SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to Hogwartssssssssssssssssss!

Day Four

Well, Hogwarts was AMAZING. Oh man. That studio tour was not what I expected, it was so much cooler! I don’t even have the words to describe it. Getting there was stressful, but once we were there, it was amazing. Yeah, it was freezing cold for the outside stuff, but it was completely worth it. To see the magic that has kept me captivated for 12 years and counting was truly something else. I can’t even…

I took almost 200 pictures. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then, clearly I have a lot to say. Hopefully the pictures will make up for the lack of words here that I can say about the whole experience. Because honestly, my words will fall flat.

Afterwards, a few of us went to Hard Rock Café in London. That was delicious!!! Then, after spending an hour walking about Picadilly Circus and shopping, I went back to the hotel to start packing. Our call time for the next morning was 5:30am. So, that required a lot of pre-prep so that I wouldn’t have to get up at 4am.

Day Five (end of London, beginning of the Czech Republic)

4:30am. Not a pretty time to get up. It should be illegal for humans to be awake that early. Seriously though…it was rough. But I had repacked the night before, so it was just shower stuff and weighing bags, etc.

The plane ride to Prague was uneventful seeing as how I literally slept the entire way. Two hours of sleep never felt so good.

NOTE: the one takeaway from flying with British flight attendants…they are quite rude. I mean, honestly. They’ll put “please” at the end of everything, but that doesn’t stop them from being RUDE. I just can’t deal with it. Customer service is different in every country, I suppose.

So, my first bout of culture shock definitely came from Prague. It was incredibly weird to see another language everywhere. I mean, with Spanish it at least looks familiar. But Czech looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I mean, honestly. I couldn’t even begin to figure out the pronunciation of everything. It was very cool, but it threw me off.

The group of us then spent the next few hours walking about Prague in a guided tour. Let me tell you, I have never seen architecture that beautiful, ever. It was truly amazing. I wish that America had building facades and churches as elegant as these ones were. After the tour, we were released into the town into groups to wander and shop for a bit before meeting up for a traditional Czech dinner.

The requirement for the groups? One guy per group. There is a reason we do not overnight in Prague, but rather stay there for a few hours during the day before going to our countryside location. It is a sketch city. REALLY. But it was beautiful and I got some pretty neat souvenirs. I don’t know who’s reading, otherwise I would tell you what they were. But, they had some great stuff. (:

After a two hour bus ride, we got to our countryside location and were able to relax. It is truly beautiful here. Tomorrow is a 9am call (SLEEPING IN!) and we get to work with the orphans for the first time.  I can’t wait to see how that goes.

Where does homework come into this, you might ask? Well…I’ve been trying to do that. But there’s something you need to understand about European wifi. It is just not built to handle 22 technology-dependent, American teenagers with Facebook addictions and homework to do. So…that’s been great. Hence why I changed my system to mass posts.

UP NEXT: Details on Harry Potter, then Czech Republic. (: