Best Decision of my Life.

I'm so happy I made the decision to come here. This is better than I could imagine. Most of you know how nervous I was for this adventure but the beginning has been wonderful. It was a very smooth transition from American life to living in London. IFSA-Butler (it stands for: Institute for Study Abroad - Butler University) is the program I am using for this experience. Since Wednesday morning, we have had orientation with other American students at the St. Giles Hotel in the city of Westminster (part of London, England). Each day we had different lectures about various subjects: safety, travel tips, Britist polictical systems, Pearly Kings and Queens of the East End (a charity group-basically crazy old women who spend all their time collecting money for a variety of charities, pretty cool). We had lots of free time to explore. That was very nice to slowly get oriented with the city.

It has been wonderful finding my own group of friends. Christine (as mentioned in an earlier post) and I met on the LONG bus ride to St. Giles. She's great. Very cool. She actually knows the people (Jan and Dan Kagan) who own the camp that I worked at last summer. Such a coincidence right! Elizabeth is from Dallas and goes to Southen Methodist University in Dallas. She is very sweet and overly prepared for everything. Although she has a very poor sense of direction, her killer iphone has an app for walking maps of London. We've got turned around a few times but we figured it out.  Quite helpful. Daniel also goes to Univeristy of California- San Diego (same as Christine). They didn't know each other at all. Their school has 25,000 students. They only have 3 friends in common. Crazy right! He'll be staying in London for the semester. Pretty cool. He is into designers and fashion and has been in charge of not getting us lost when we are walking around. Daniel is basically Jonthan Spear from Butler. Their voices are identical. It's quite strange. Mikey is his roomate in the hotel. He is.... interesting. I told him he is a person I would expect to be a movie character. He is a geology and theatre major and goes to a tiny college in Minnesota. We joke about being very laid back, conservative Mid-westerners. If that is even posssible to have good jokes that aren't cheesy. He is strange and adds a different dynamic to our group. Also there is Mark. He goes to SMU with Elizabeth. They had taken one class together before but they didn't really know each other either. If you know Andrew Skirvin from Franklin Central High School, he reminds me of him.

As for what we have been doing so far.... It's been a lot! We asked some of the advisors for IFSA-Butler to recommend some mexican restaurants. Luckily, many of LOVE Mexican food. Which is absolutely perfect! You know how much I LOVE Mexican cuisine! Yummmm! We ate at "Mestizo." It was walking distance from St. Giles. We also went to a play, "Educating Rita." It was decent. Only one set and two actors so it got a bit repetitive but overall a good experience. The female lead had a different English accent. I think she was from Liverpool. Isn't it crazy that I can already tell the difference? Last night some of us went to a couple pubs. It was a fun time! I met some gents who work for Disney (which is awesome). They all had Disney t-shirts on which was slightly weird for like 20 people to all have matching shirts on in a pub, but whatever. Yesterday we had a two hour walking tour with IFSA-Butler. We got to see a lot of the non-touristy parts of London. I really enjoyed it. You know I took a lot of pictures!

We are moving in today! I can't wait to see the dorms! I will have a quicker and more reliable internet service once we move in so I can upload pictures so you can see what I have been up to. Soon enough!

I live in London. My life is awesome.