Today I finally arrived in London! My travel buddy, Teresa, and I landed in London around 11:30 a.m., waited forever in customs, caught a train, caught a taxi, and checked into the Nutford House. Basically we will be living in a dorm building that is not exactly modern. Our rooms are very small and quaint. We will be sharing bathrooms/showers with the others on our floor (none of whom I have seen or met yet). When they said they would provide us with a towel, I expected it to be bigger than a napkin...this might be interesting. I live in the main building while Teresa lives across the street in the Annex.
Since the rest of our class will not be here until tomorrow, Teresa and I walked around the streets surrounding our dorm to check out the area where we will be living. The taxi driver was nice enough to give us all the important information we needed to know: "don't talk to the Arabs or the Blacks....really don't talk to anyone...and don't let them see that you have money". We were both confused by why he would have said this (over and over). As we walked, we found out that we must be in the ethnic region of the city because there are tons of exotic foods and stores. Apparently our cab driver isn't too fond of diversity. I hope to try some of the unusual restaurants (and I just may talk to some of the locals despite the advice not to)!
Towards the evening we both noticed the streets were nearly empty. No one was in sight. However, we could hear people shouting from the bars, salons, and apartments nearby. When we investigated the situation, we found that everyone was watching The World Cup. Even St. Mary's Church was cleared out and huge TV screens were put up to show the game! Imagine what would happen if in the US we just turned our churches into giant Super bowl parties...I doubt that would go over well with some people (although it would probably get more people into church). I guess people here really like their soccer...or football...whatever.
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