This is part of our The Abroad Blog series, featuring our editors and writers exploring the world this semester.
Cheers from London! Well, my first two weeks in Londontown have certainly been eventful to say the least, so I have plenty of news to share. London is a magnificent city, rich in history, full of diversity and GREAT pubs. I am currently living in the district of Chelsea on Kings Road, considered the birthplace of the punk rock movement in the late 1960’s and 1970’s.
Johnny Rotten, The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are all former residents. Fast-forward to 2013 and Kings Road has become a shopping mecca with every designer imaginable lining the famous street. Great for a wardrobe, not for a bank account. You may have heard about Chelsea from the hit British TV show-Made in Chelsea-a variation of The Hills-I highly recommend it for late night telly watching. The bottom line, Chelsea is where many twenty something’s come to live, shop, eat and party. A dream come true for any college student! Last week I was deciding what to blog about. It occurred to me that before I sit down and start writing about my adventures in London and how lucky I am to have the opportunity to study abroad in a city I have dreamed about visiting my entire life, I want to share a few things with you I wish I had known before my semester across the pond.
When I got to the airport with my two bags, I placed each one on the scale and they were both too heavy. My parents knew that we were going to have to pay extra fees for luggage-hello, I am a female spending the semester in London, but my bags were not only too heavy, they were too heavy to accept as a checked piece of baggage period. My father had to run downstairs to buy a third suitcase as I had the mortifying task of opening my two bags in front of a small line of angry people so I could evenly distribute my belongings amongst three suitcases. FYI, carry-ons are limited to one piece, not one piece (backpack, tote, etc.) and a small suitcase. Buy canvas duffles so you can roll them after you unpack and put them on a shelf in your wardrobe. My life would have been so much easier if I had known there was a maximum limit for accepting overweight bags. Shame on me.
I am studying at the Foundation for International Education, a non-profit institution that provides academic and internship study abroad experiences for colleges around the country.
The professors are interesting, engaging and experts in their fields of study. Academically, my semester is packed with four six-week courses followed by a six-week internship. Music in Twentieth Century Britain is by far my favorite. Who wouldn’t want to sit in class and listen to The Beatles or The Who and then go to gigs on the weekends as part of the coursework? That being said, there are a ton of dense readings and papers. Because of the impending internship during the last six weeks of the semester, a semester’s worth of academic work is crammed into the first half, making my planner burst at the seams! However, when classes are over I will have a lighter academic schedule, leaving me plenty of time to explore London, travel Europe and track down Kate Middleton. Lesson here is to plan ahead!
Before coming to London, I looked online at the dorm I was going to live in and was thrilled because it appeared to resemble a modern New York City apartment.
Stainless steel appliances in the floor kitchen, white lacquer wardrobes, and my own en suite bathroom, gorgeous! It couldn’t get better. The day I was checking into my room I received a call from a friend who was upset because she couldn’t fit all of her suitcases in her room at the same time. She had three. Uh oh… The butterflies in my stomach began to flutter at a rapid pace. I definitely over packed. I walked into the room, which I am sharing with one of my best friends and started to laugh—hysterically. This must be a joke. This cannot be our room. It must be for one person not two. But right in front of me were the white lacquer wardrobes I saw online which in person are the size of half of a dresser. The room is beautiful, modern, has a flat screen TV and is tinier than I expected.
To my female peers who plan on traveling abroad. And I cannot stress this to you enough-DO NOT OVERPACK! Pack your wardrobe, toiletries and living essentials in duffle bags so they can be rolled up and stuck on a shelf in your room. There are drugstores (Boots) for toiletries, container stores (The Holding Company) for extra storage and shops for food (Marks and Spencer) within a quick walking distance of the dorm. I was told multiple times by my parents and study abroad advisors not to over pack. Of course I didn’t listen and look what happened, many of my clothes are still in my suitcases that are in the front of the room because there is no where to store them. My own fault! My desk and its shelves now serve as a dresser. Guess it’s true what they say, space in London is at a premium! But enough with the complaining, I am living and studying in London. How lucky am I?
I can’t wait to share more of my study abroad adventures with you, collegiates! Cheerio!