So, I'm in England now! I've actually been in England since Saturday morning, but we were doing an orientation in London before we drove to Oxford (about 1hr by bus) this morning. The trip here was uneventful, although my poor suitcase has met an unfortunate and quite untimely death at the hands of Delta. They had my bag for just over an hour, now it no longer rolls and anything plastic on it is in multiple pieces. I might have to ship everything home in August...

London is AWESOME. I can't say I saw too much of it in the 2 days I was there, but what I did see was amazing. I shall make a list of cool things about London:
1. Public transportation: Apparently Londoners like to complain about the Tube (it is SUPER hot in there) but the whole system is actually really incredibly engineered. Double decker buses are cool too.
2. Diversity: People in London are from everywhere. Walking down the street, it's easy to hear upwards of ten languages in five minutes. So many people from so many places!
3. The drinking age is 18. While I personally choose not to drink, I think it's absurd that Americans can't drink (legally, that is) until we're twenty-one.
4. Proximity to cool places: You can get from London to Paris by train in under 2 hours. Round trips can be less than 60pounds (about $90). How cool is that? We're also day trips from much of the rest of Europe including Amsterdam (dunno why people seem to be so excited about that...).
5. Cool things happen in London. Throughout London, there's always something going on in the squares. Yesterday when we were on a walking tour, we went through this massive gay pride march which was sweet. Lots of drag queens and other such awesomeness.

Now, in order to stay fair to my country on this 4th of July, I shall also make a list of things that America seems to be better about.
1. Smoking: Apparently, Brits don't really have the whole "smoking is bad" thing down yet. The overall percentage of smokers is higher and the areas in which they are allowed to smoke are far more prevalent.
2. Prices: Things here are expensive! Everything from souvenirs to food is much higher priced here than I am used to at home. The prices look about the same, but since pounds are worth about $1.50, things are actually about 50% more expensive.
3. Okay so this isn't really fair, but time! The time change of 5hrs is a bit rough, but I guess London isn't really to blame for that.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that London is great, and I will definitely be going back there to see some of the sights and such later this month. I have to go to King's Cross, of course! I have the Oxford orientation in about 20 minutes, but sometime tonight or tomorrow I will certainly write more about Magdalen College and Oxford.

Miss you all!!
~Annalisa~