Reflections-A 10 year journey back to London

10 years ago yesterday I left the United States for the greatest adventure of my life. I chose to study abroad in London, England during my college years. Little did I know exactly how life changing that decision would be. I got to thinking it might be fun to recap my visit and share my travels with you all. We were required to keep a journal while there and it’s fun to see the difference in what I thought then and my memories of it all 10 years later. So let’s begin...

We landed in London on January 12, 2008. After picking up our luggage and got through customs, we headed to our bus. I remember being confused because the door to the bus was on the opposite side. I was mildly confused for a second and then remembered where I was...the land where people drive on the opposite side of the road!

Onwards we went to our home for the next four months. We arrived early and the front desk wasn’t open yet to provide us our assignments so we relaxed after a long flight in the bar area of our beloved ISH (International Student House). After room assignments were made, most of use needed to walk to our location which was slightly down the road. Our backyard was Regent Park. Our front was the Royal Academy of Music. Could I have asked for a better location? The answer to that was simply no. No, I could not.

(This was the view from our window)

We quickly realized that the trek to our room would be an interesting one as we were on the top floor and all of us had luggage for four months and our carry on bags. Thankfully the four token gentlemen on the trip assisted us with carrying that luggage up to the fourth floor. We four girls in our room quickly got settled in and we went off to explore. We walked around quite a bit that day, but had to be back for a meeting that night so we couldn’t go for long. We all wanted to sleep but due to that lovely thing called jet lag, it was recommended that we stay up as long as possible. As college kids that didn’t seem to be an issue (insert smirk here).

We found dinner later and then headed back to sleep for the night. It was an absolute whirlwind of a day and there were still four months more of adventure to come!