London, Day 1

My first impression of London couldn't be any better. The second I stepped off the tube at Holborn Station, I knew I was where I was supposed to be.  I looked like an idiot hauling over a year's worth of luggage through the station, and two old ladies were quick to point it out.  They were joking, of course, and when I told them I was moving here for graduate school and possibly (probably) a career afterwards, one of them snatched one of my bags up and helped me wag it up the stairs while the other one told me everything I have to do and see in London.

After I dropped my stuff off at High Holborn, the temporary housing I'm staying in until I can move to Bankside, I walked down Kingsway to LSE, where this was my first glimpse of campus:

And another...

I walked around for a bit more, grabbed a bite to eat (at a pub that was founded before America and located on Drury Lane), and went back to High Holborn to check into my room (check-in wasn't until 3:00).  After a quick nap, I walked around the area and found this little side street, full of cafes, restaurants and shops.

Everything I've seen in London so far is unbelievably British, whatever that means.  There are double decker buses everywhere, all the people I've had to ask for directions seem very hospitable and the weather has been perfect. Maybe I'm just really used to living in China, but when I saw people lined up (queuing) at the ticket counter, I almost had a heart attack.  I haven't seen anyone spit on the sidewalk, there are no overflowing trash cans, and I haven't seen a single dead animal hanging from a window.  Obviously, there are a lot of really great things about China, but London really demonstrates the huge cultural differences between China and the West, especially when you compare it with Shanghai. Instead of seeing fake Apple stores or massage parlors, there are handmade umbrella stores and local boat shops that look like this like this...

So, from the High Holborn area, I walked down to Victoria Embankment and onto some more touristy spots.  The architecture in London is amazing, and the lighting they use on the outside of buildings really showcases it.  My favorite thing, though, is the monuments - everywhere you look there's a sculpture or an obelisk dedicated the guy who engineered London's first sewage system, or to Queen Boudica, who led an uprising against the Romans in AD 61.  The sheer magnitude of British history is also amazing, and it's so well-documented along the streets via plaques and monuments that you don't even need to buy a history book.  The coffee shop I went to this morning for breakfast pre-dates the country I'm from.

Ok, this picture doesn't really fit here, and it's already on Facebook, but I wanted it to be on the blog, too, because I was very proud of it.  I'm still learning how to use this camera, so I surprised myself last night when this picture turned out almost exactly how I wanted it to. 

Alright, well that's all for now.  I'll just be rambling around London until classes start on 29 September, except for registration/orientation on the 21st.  I still haven't mastered the usage of "Cheers" but I gather that it's used kind of like 好 in Chinese and a bit less like "OK" or "alright" in American English. There's a party for incoming graduate students tonight at the Walkabout pub near Temple, so hopefully I'll meet a few people there.

Until next time,
Matthew