sam gyub sal kimchi anything in the fridge at home nengmyun basically...anything korean boba (so strange) carne asada fries from jb's lemon chicken and onion pancakes from the uc fried tofu from life cafe pat bing soo pinkberry la creperie
okay i'm just gonna stop there because i think i'll go crazy if i continue
So here it is....my first week and a half in the UK where it's okay to drink way before the sun sets...
Saturday June 21, Day 1.
I arrived in the London Heathrow airport and after some time of looking for each other, Nancy and I met! Yea...I look scary because I just got off of a 10 1/2 hour flight...and Nancy looks simply radiant. Oh, and this was my first ever Tube (underground railway aka subway) ride!
First walk out into London. For the rest of the day, Nancy took me around a small part of London and I slept over at Pastor Dave Brubaker's house with her....Cool huh??
Sunday June 22, Day 2.
Here is Nancy pushing my luggage after battling with me on who will push the luggage to the train station. Obviously, she won. I had to leave early that morning to make it to the London Gatwick airport to pick up my dear friend Erly.
Here I am with my first ever Oyster card and train ticket in England! Thank you Nancy, again....
After about half an hour of wondering where each other was in the airport, I finally picked her up and we headed to Brighton together. She looks scary too because she took a flight to NY and then had a 9 FREAKING HOUR layover to London.
Finally at school! Here we are picking up our welcome packet.
After waiting about an hour to get our keys and move into our rooms (the cleaning people were doing last minute cleaning in our rooms), we finally got to release our luggages and be free.
Here I am in my room. That face of...I don't know what that face is...but anyways...the room smelled kinda funky, but if was cleaner than I had expected.
I got comfortable real quick. It's pretty nice having a room all to myself.
Here are a very few shots of the campus. I didn't want to completely plaster this post with a bajillion more pictures than needed. There are a lot more pictures on my facebook if you wanna check them out!
To keep things short...our campus is very green. And every building is built with red bricks. Very boring.
It looks like we have a park right on campus.
Monday June 23 Day 3.
Didn't do anything important. Just had orientation and took care of logistics.
Tuesday June 24, Day 4.
The next day we went exploring some more before Erly's class.
We walked into the Meeting House and went up the stairs to find this: Isn't it pretty??? So the Meeting House is a small building where all the religious groups can use for their meetings and stuff. This area is almost like a sanctuary but really small. I think it's mostly used by Catholics.
It's very artsy.
This was taken on the bus on the way to the grocery store. Our campus is surrounded by these green fields. Not even kidding.
The super market had these cool escalator/elevator things. Spiffy!
That night we had a school event at a pub for karaoke-ing. Mind you, this isn't the karaoke you'll see at a norebang in GG or something...it's like something you'd see in the movies, people singing cheesy songs in front of the whole crowd....No shame for sure.
This is in front of the pub with Erly and some girls we met.
Inside the pub....Obviously some had a drink.
This group sang a Spice Girls song. That guy in the red is one of the staff here, the main event coordinator. He's definitely the social one...and can get a bit annoying sometimes.
That was the crowd that was there and more.
Wednesday June 25, Day 5.
Some friends and I decided to head out to Brighton to run some errands but randomly (I don't know how this happened) decided to walk down the pier.
This is one...effing...long...pier. When we were halfway down I thought it was over but we had a lot more to go. It took us an hour to go to the end and back because we stopped a lot to take pictures.
Don't let those smiles fool you. It was pretty dang freezing that day. This pier is really festive and pretty. I like it. It makes up for the dirty, green/brown water. And it also has opening and closing hours.
I love the railing on this pier. And that cement thing you see on the water (I don't know what it's called), if you stand at the end of it, you get splashed by the waves that crash against it. Kind of reminds me of standing on the bridge on that one water ride at Six Flags.
Cute couple. =]
This is what most of the little streets in Brighton look like. Nice and quaint.
They have one of these there, too! Too bad this is not that great of a deal for us Americans...99p is equivalent to $2.
The bus stops have these electronic signs that show which bus is coming in how many minutes. So convenient.
Later that day we had one of the biggest summer campus events, the pub crawl. It's basically bar-hopping, British style.
Here is Wave 1. Only half of Wave 1 actually.
The first pub. It was cute.
The second pub. This one was cuter, more classy.
Some of us were hungry and not interested in drinking so we got some fish and chips! My first fish and chips experience. They're not spectacular. I think they're just famous in the UK because there's a fish and chips shop on like every street.
The third and last pub. This one was the cutest but smelliest. Erly and I just chilled outside where the ambience was nicer.
The street that the pub was on. Cute huh??
The night ended with clubbing. They treated us to the nicest club in Brighton. It was pretty nice, athough I've never been clubbing so I don't really know what "nice" really is. But this one was pretty dang nice.
The dance floor. It was pretty small but glamourous.
Thursday June 26, Day 6.
Field trip! So I'm taking this completely useless class called Sussex Landscapes and after the first day of class I was really tempted to drop it because it seemed boring but this field trip held me back. It's pretty interesting and adventurous. Where else would I get such experience?
You know how I said it was really boring that every building looked the same? Well, apparently there's a meaning behind all the buildings being built with red bricks and cement. The horizontal shape of the bricks symbolize land and the vertical design on the cement blocks (i don't know if you can see it) represent trees. And all the buildings were built to unsurpass the height of the trees surrounding them. Pretty cool huh??
Beginning our 3 1/2 hour hike...not even joking.
This was basically the scenery of what we walked along for about 5 miles.
This is my teacher Geoffrey Mead. He doesn't want us to call him professor because he still goes to school as a student. He's cute. He gave me a box of apple juice because I forgot to bring water.
Sigh....It was very freeing. If that's even a word.
Pretty poppies.
Cows! We were very close. And they looked clean, too. And didn't stink.
The sky was beeaautiful.
Walking...walking...and walking. The time went by fast, though, because it was very beautiful.
Road of chalk.
We saw sheep, too! They just roam so freely here. I wouldn't blame 'em.
Going through the kissing gate....It's called the kissing gate because the door opens really close to the gate....It's hard to explain, but yea. It's interesting.
Literally prancing through the high grass and cattails.
The view from the top! The land below us stretches all the way to London.
Friday June 27, Day 7.
Going to London!
We woke up bright and early, only to wait for our coach at the wrong station.
When we found out that we missed our coach, we waited for the next coach in a cute cafe by the station we were supposed to be at. I think it was meant to be because this cafe might be my favorite!
It's really artsy and interesting and the workers are really nice.
We weren't guaranteed spots on the next coach (technically we weren't even supposed to wait for the next coach...we were supposed to pay for whatever was available next for us) but very luckily we were able to board the next one.
Venturing into London for the first time on our own!
Our first stop was at a cute but no bueno sandwich shop.
Then we just wandered around to kill time before check-in time to our hostel. This is on the Vauxhall Bridge. That building on the far right is supposedly the military intelligence unit or something. This guy who told us about this building said something about James Bond.
Do you see the itty bitty House off Parliament to the left?? And the London Eye in the middle?? And we had to carry all of our stuff for a good five hours because check-in wasn't until evening.
This is right in front of that military intelligence unit and some crazy-looking buildings that are either apartments or offices.
This is Jennifer and me at the Tube station on the way to the hostel. A backpack and a purse...not bad for a 3-day 2-night trip!
My first ever hostel!
For dinner we just got random stuff from a nearby store and ate in the hostel's kitchen/common room. We met some interesting people there like two brothers who were born in Virginia but grew up in Spain and go to school in Belgium.
Saturday June 28, Day 8.
The next morning we woke up a little later than planned and headed to central London to see the big stuff.
We went to the House of Parliament first, of course. This is me in front of Big Ben. Big Ben is actually the big bell that's inside this clock tower, not the clock tower itself.
The Westminster Abbey. It's so beautiful!
A closer look.
A different part of the House of Parliament.
The Victoria Tower.
Dang, so crazy. How did people build this stuff???
A closer look of the Victoria Tower.
Changing of the guards! This is the band.
And the guards...doing something. I don't know what the whole point of this thing was. I should read up on it. Something really funny that I noticed was that I think their silly hats get bigger as they higher in rank. Puhahahha. One guy's hat was freaking huge! And he seemed like a pretty important guard.
Buckingham Palace with literally thousands of people! Soooo many tourists took over that place.
The "front lawn".
Chinatown!!! It's basically just two blocks or so of a bunch of Chinese restaurants and a few stores that sell Asian goodies.
Soho. Crazy busy. They even have Beard Papa!
You think these red double decker buses are cool but after seeing like 50 of them each day and riding on the second floor a few times, they're not so cool anymore.
He's a real man! He was pretty good, though. He moves like a robot and he's almost as good as a pro break dancer.
After stopping at Covent Garden to rest our extremely tired legs, we headed back to the hostel.
Sidenote: It is soooo much better to make a day trip to London twice during the weekend rather than going and staying at a hostel for the weekend. Cuts the cost by a LOT.
Sunday June 29, Day 9.
Nancy took us to Hillsong London. They hold it at one of the big theaters in London. Crazy.
Nancy!! A week was too long....It was good to see another familiar face after trying to meet new people all week.
Before service started we went to grab something really light to eat. We wanted to save our appetites for some good Asian food later in the day. This is Indian/Greek food. It was so good!
Finally inside!
It was just what I had expected: concert atmosphere and crazy with production. I really don't think I could handle this every week. I can understand why Nancy doesn't go there often.
We left service early because the intro itself took about 40 minutes.
We headed over to Kensington park and saw pretty artwork set up along the street.
Taking a stroll towards Princess Diana's memorial.
No, that's not it. Haha. But it's supposed to be a replica of the palace she stayed in, Birmingham Palace? I don't even know.
This is her memorial. It's like a fountain in the shape of a ring, and people come and have picnics around it and dunk their feet in the water.
Ain't she cute?
Then we stopped by a McDonald's on the way to Notting Hill. Or I think we were in Notting Hill. Anyways, they have real flowerd in this McDonald's! And nice couches! Nancy looks hot.
Walking towards the Travel Bookstore where Hugh Grant worked in in the movie Notting Hill.
Picadilly Circle! Crazy busy.
We went through Picadilly Circle to Chinatown to get some goooood Singaporian food. It was so good....I think we really needed this.
After some more walking around and stopping by Hyde Park, we went to the coach station to head back to Brighton. Crazy tiring weekend, it was.
Monday June 30, Day 10.
Woke up late and did absolutely nothing productive because I was still dead tired from the weekend.
Tuesday July 1, Day 11.
Went to class (late =[ ) and spent the day just recovering from the weekend... again. Hehe.
Wednesday July 2, Day 12.
Woke up freaking late and did absolutely nothing. It's seriously so hard to find something fun to do here because if you wanna do something, you have to take a bus out to Brighton and it costs money. Nevertheless, I needed this recovering time.
Thursday July 3, Day 13.
Field trip #2!
This time we took a train out to a small town within Sussex.
Of course, he had to pull out his map.
The 3 1/2 hour hike (yes, again) started off with a walk through a field of wheat.
So cool!
Lots and lots of wheat.
Very nice view.
We entered the village and in the village was this small Parish church.With tombstones in the lawn. Eeps!
The village school. So cute!
More walking in nothingness. I seriously wonder how my teacher finds these random trails that sometimes don't even look like trails.
I believe this is a field of barley.
We ran into some horsies! Definitely in the countryside.
Up close and personal. I've never touched a horse before.
The cutest cottage ever!!! It's like right out of a storybook.
We also ran into some chicken. LOL.
Cute. I would love to grow old in a place like this.
Beauty.
Or last stop was at a pub in the village where our teacher wanted to treat us out to some drinks. He basically bought a pitcher of beer and passed it along. It was my first ever beer. It was nasty. I only took like four sips of it so I really don't consider it my first drink.
It's almost like a picnic area. Very cute.
With my first ever cup of beer....No bueno. I didn't even drink 1/4 of it.=[
I end with this picture of my teacher buying some plants for his wife. He's so cute!!!
Okay wow....I told you that was long!!! And I can't believe that it's been almost two weeks since I arrived here. It's madness. It's been difficult to adjust because being around people 24/7 is hard in itself but also not having a lot of fun because everything I do here is tiring is hard. I'm either extremely tired from an activity or extremely bored. I have yet to have some real fun. I should go out more.
Well, thanks for keeping up with all this! If you wanna see more pictures, I have a lot more uploaded on my facebook.
Oh, here's a snippet of this random old guy that was singing at the King&Queen pub for the karaoke night. He was really good.
right now i am sitting in the computer lab of my dorm in brighton the weather is super wonderful! blue skies with beautiful white clouds and nice and chilly...the air smells like it's about to snow.. so basically it smells like it would when you're up in the mountains for winter retreat or something
other than that...being abroad is super tiring...to the point where i would much rather be at home, bumming around and watching some entertaining korean videos and sleep by my mommy.. there are so many things to take care of that i really don't want to think about but considering that i only have 2 1/2 months here, i must get them done asap
most of the pictures that i've taken are scenic, but i hope to take so many more pictures that capture excitement and a newfound love for different places of the world...and FOOD! i have yet to eat some good food here but from what i hear, i really shouldn't have any high expectations
it's okay...i have my haet ban and geem and korean brand-canned tuna =]
oh, btw...i have the most....AMAZING friends...to the point where i feel so undeserving because i haven't done much for any of them.. but i will put my new camera to good use and really make you guys a part of this trip...thanks and i miss you
that reminds me...my parents forgot to remind me to pack some ramyun...that would've really taken my senses back home
it's aaaaallll good...must try to enjoy every moment of my time here
i will soon be going on a supermarket tour and tomorrow is the first day of class...i want to change my class...it seems way too time and energy consuming...and tomorrow night is the pub crawl.. it's like bar hopping in the states...should be interesting and don't you worry...i won't get wasted...i probably won't even drink at all...but it's all for the experience!
alright...i think that's about it...the people who read this are probably deep into their sleep right now so...good morning...(?)
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