Howdy everyone,
I have been in the United Kingdom for about three weeks, and I can honestly say that I am loving my time here! I am currently staying in a dormitory at the University of Nottingham where I will be participating in a semester exchange program and even living here is so completely different than back in the states. From the food served (definitely miss my mom’s Mexican dishes and Taqueria El Sol in Bryan) to the slang used, it has been quite an experience being able to get accustomed to everything here.
I arrived in London, England around 3 weeks ago at Heathrow Airport on a Monday early morning and IMMEDIATELY decided to spend the day traveling and enjoying my time around the great city, even though I was experiencing serious jet lag and had not slept at all. The airport was around an hour bus ride to Central London (where I had booked an Airbnb) but it was so worth it, as I was able to see the transition of the great plains to busy roads the closer we got to London. As soon as I got to my Airbnb, I quickly showered and headed to Tower Bridge, where I had lunch at a famous diner near the Shakespeare’s Globe. I spent that day walking as much as I could in the 8 hours that I had, making sure I Facetimed my parents every once in a while to try and make them experience what I was doing.
Following day – UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DAY! For those that know me, know that I am a huge football fan, and one of the clubs that I support is Chelsea F.C., and I had the opportunity of attending the first Group-stage match against Zenit F.C. It was so odd to so many people that I spoke to in the stadium how I was able to get a ticket; I was sitting on the best section of Stamford Bridge next to fans that have access to Sport Passes for the last 30 years (there is a wait-list for people to purchase a Sports Pass of over 15 years, pretty crazy!) Chelsea won 1-0 that day, a memory that I truly will never forget.
That week I had the opportunity of visiting all of the great tourist sites in London, eating amazing food/falling in love with fish and chips, attended football stadium tours and British museums, and had a 1-day getaway trip to Oxford. To be honest I had no idea how big Oxford and its colleges are, and how gorgeous their architecture is.
Now that I am at the University of Nottingham, I am making sure to be able to explore the city as much as I can, meet new friends, and get ready for school. Our university gave us 2 weeks of “Howdy Week” which are meant for first-year students to get accustomed to the university and attend events to meet new people, and I took advantage of that. I have friends that are from many countries in Europe and Latin America, and I think that is one of the best things to have while studying abroad, even than traveling a lot. My friend-group likes to call ourselves, “The International Group”, because of how diverse we are – there’s an American, Mexican, Chilean, Peruvian, British/Spanish, and Italian.
University begins on October 4th here, which is so odd to me because I have been texting friends from back home and a lot of them had exams already, and I am barely starting next Monday. Overall I am having such a good time here, and I can’t wait to have way more experiences and create many memories.