It's exactly three weeks since I arrived in England! I can't believe 1/4 of my time here is gone already. Yet, I always feel like I've been here for so long already. Where should I start? My birthday maybe? I knew I would feel somewhat lonely on my birthday, having only been here for a week. But I actually felt a lot better than expected. In the morning, I went to the British Museum and went on some guided tours (they're excellent, I highly recommend them), then for lunch, I met up with two Smithie friends, Zhi and Nasheeta, and caught up. At night, I met up with Stephanie (she had a Dutch friend on her floor and he sang me the Dutch birthday song...haha...) and Nasheeta and went to the student pub downstairs in Steph's dorm. She bought me a drink (yay!) and we sat for a little. Then we headed off to a UCL party, which didn't turn out so great, given that we expected a dance party but instead, they had a band that played indie rock music. (Lesson: Always do research before buying tickets for a party). So we left after like 1/2 hour and I slept over at Nasheeta's place that night. So, that was it, my 20th birthday. I was in the best mood that day since I landed in England, so I'm satisfied. =) For the rest of the week, I was trying to figure out what classes I'm going to take. The way they work here is that for every department we want to take a class in, we have to meet up with a "tutor" to basically tell him/her that we want to be in the class. I find it quite pointless, really. The term starts on the 24th of September, but classes don't actually begin until the following week. Yup, everything is just a little slower here. On my first weekend here, I was just trying to get my room set up and make myself more comfy to compensate for the condition of my room and my loneliness. Once I cleaned up and organized, I felt soooo much better. Oh, and I must describe the showers. Get this: They're pump showers! You know when you go to these public bathrooms and you press down on the button on the sink and water comes out for like 15 seconds. Well, my showers like that. So every 15 secs I need to push on it for water to come out (talk about saving water). And there's only one button: the hot button; I can't adjust the temperature. It was so funny the first time I was in the shower. After 3 weeks, not so funny anymore. lol... Anyway, that Sunday, I met up with Steph that weekend and walked around London for the first time. We went to Chinatown! Got me all excited and loaded up on Chinese snacks and goods. We also got mooncake!...in honor of our culture. =) The seond weekend, we took a bus tour around London with "The Big Bus Company". It was really fun; we got to see pretty much all the big tourist attractions. We took a walking tour of royal london, but since we went on an "odd" day, we didn't get to see the changing of the guards, which only take place on even days. Anyway, we took a lot of good pictures and tour guide was excellent. I highly recommend this tour! It was really worth it. The ticket also included a boat trip down the Thames River, and we were lucky enough to have a very, very charming, funny, and not bad looking crew guy as a commentator. Very charming, I was tempted to take a picture of him. =) Anyway, so after being here for two weeks, I finally saw, superficially, most of the important sites in London. This week classes started as well as all the clubs and societies. I'm especially excited for one of my classes: 17th and 18th century art in the London collection; we basically meet at a museum every week and talk about paintings. Beats sitting in a lecture hall on every level. I only have total of about 8 hours of classtime. Each class gives you like a 5 page long LIST of readings for the class and it's up to you to do your reading. Of course it's all up to us how much reading we want to do and they don't expect us to do ALL the reading. That's how the British system is because British students don't pay for college and only the top students get to move on to universities after high school. They need much less supervision and motivation than American students to do independent work. I also went for the volleyball trials and salsa society. They were both really fun and things I want to continue doing hopefully. This weekend, I went for a family visit, where I went to stay with a British family in a town three hours from London called Worcester (pronounced "Wor-ster), yes, the place where Worcestershire sauce was invented. I stayed with an old couple for 2 nights and mainly the lady, Sheila, entertained us (me and this other girl). She was extremely nice, and even though she had a little trouble walking, she still showed us around town and brought us to the supermarket to stock up on cheap food. I bought a big bag of groceries and brought it back to London. Her husband was in the choir in the town and they were performing yesterday night, so we went to see that, instead of going to the pub, which we can do anywhere in London. The men's choir was really good, and it was interesting hanging around so many elderly people, especially when they all got tipsy after the performance. The next day, Sheila brought us to a flea market which they call "car boot", and got some absurdly cheap stuff. All weekend long, they just fed us soo well. It was good to just sit and watch tv with them. After coming back to London, I felt so homesick, again. I forgot to mention that I live around the corner from a major shopping street, Oxford Street, and I can see Selfridge (a huge department store like Macy's) from my window. The first week, before I found a shortcut, I walked on Oxford St. to get to school, and I would pop in and out of stores, shopping at like 10am in the morning. Very bad for my self-control. Anyway, so three weeks have passed, and I've visited a good number of places, but I still feel like one semester is not enough to see all of London. It's so culturally rich here, and there's so much to see! London is actually a very green city; according to people here, a third of London is covered by parks, and the Thames River is actually the world's cleanest commercial river. And also, people don't honk here. They actually use the honk for it's intended purpose, which is to alert someone for safety reasons, not to tell someone to get moving the milli-second the light turns green, like they do in New York. Note to self: write journals more often to have short journal entries. I still miss you all very very much, and a part of me is yelling "can't wait to go home and see friends and family". Anyhoo, keep me updated on your lives as well!!