Why I'm a Pitiful Blogger

So I have officially been in the United Kingdom for about two weeks now and have yet to update this blog with any of the details. Basically, I suck.

I landed at Heathrow on September 14, and was one of the lucky ones who got through immigration lightning fast. Here is a brief overview of my first week.

Kensington...
...was beautiful. We were set up at a really nice hotel for a few days to learn a little more about how things work across the pond and the university system here. My roommate Jess and my beds were literally less than 1 inch apart.

The first night, we went bar hopping to about 7 bars total. We were completely obnoxious and the loudest ones at every bar we went to, but it was a lot of fun. The pub culture is a really fun thing to be a part of. And, I had the chance to learn about some of the different beers they have here. I think either Stella or Blackthorn (the girly cider) is my favorite so far. It's very community oriented and a extremely laid back. Supposedly, the local pub is the living room for all in the neighborhood.

The second day we had some Indian food and saw the spectacular views from St. Paul's Cathedral. Even though London is cloudy, grey, and gloomy most of the time, it's still so beautiful. By this time, we had discovered our favorite pub in Kensington, Prince Alfred's, because they have an awesome sofa bar upstairs where we celebrated Mexican independence day with some locals over beers.

The next night we went to the New London Theatre to see the War Horse with people from the Arcadia program. It was basically your standard star-crossed lover story except instead of a boy and a girl, it was about a boy and a horse. As cheesy as I thought it was, the puppets they used for the horses and other animals were phenomenal. I guess the Brits love horses because everyone except us were crying at the end.

During the first couple days, I had a chance to really adjust to the lingo around here. "Lift" instead of "elevator." "Toilet" instead of "bathroom." "Cheers" instead of "thank you."

After some more bonding with fellow study abroad students over cheap wine, we were finally off to Swansea, Wales for our homestay. At first I was a little nervous about this because when I got my assignment, it only had one woman's name on it under "Mom" and "Cats" under "pets." So it was my natural suspicion that I was living with a cat lady. But it was absolutely not the case. I lived with a wonderful family of three who already had a 17 year old polish student living with them. I was a little wary of how many cats they had (4), but they were the most friendly cats I've ever met and totally turned around my opinion of them. The secret favorite was Frankie, whose picture is shown below. He slept with me and my host roomies one night and he's just adorable. I did hate one of them though, Mattie, the girl cat, who is apparently a two-timing whore who hooks up with both Oliver and Tommy, the other boy cats. She was the meanest one.

So much happened in Wales, from visiting Mumbles, to watching Dorian Gray, to clubbing and drinking on Wind Street with the crazy Welsh locals, to getting free (but weird) onion and cheese sandwiches from the owner of Maggie Dicks. We also got to try Welsh cakes (awesome), cockles, and lavabread (which is actually seaweed). But my favorite part has to be my host sister Rachel. She was the most darling thing about that place and she taught us some new Welsh slang as well. When you think a boy's cute, you call him "lusch." When someone is cool, you say they're "mondo." When someone is cuddly, you say they're good for a "cutcsh."

So that's a little about my first week in the United Kingdom (although apparently no local calls it that) and I promise to update more later with some details about my first week since I've moved into my flat in central London.

Cheers!