Submitted by Cole Armour on the 2024 Spring program in London England…
I landed at London Gatwick at around 6:00 AM London time on January 18th, and was greeted with immediate culture shock. From the second I stepped outside of the airport I saw different parking garages, different street signs, different roundabouts, different currency, driving on different sides of the road, among many other things. I met my 5 new roommates, who all had a few things in common with me and were just as eager to explore London. The first couple days I did not do too much, we had some orientations for different things like our neighborhood, our housing, our classes, etc. The first few days I mainly just used to kind of get myself familiar with using the tube (London Underground System). Luckily, we got Oyster cards with our program so it was pretty much free to travel throughout most of London, but it was still super confusing especially for someone who has never lived in a huge city like New York. On Sunday, we went on one of the optional excursions to see Big Ben and London Eye, along with many surrounding places as well such as the Shakespeare Globe. As shown in the pictures, I decided to branch out from my normal diet and try some Thai cuisine at the market there, which ended up being really really good. I also got to try Nando’s here, which was one of the main restaurants I was looking forward to trying when I first decided to come here. Nando’s is a chicken restaurant based around African cuisine and different Peri Peri sauces and dishes. Safe to say it definitely lived up to my expectations. Fortunately, the Nandos’ menu has many options on it, so it’s somewhere that I can visit multiple times while I am here. Something that I found funny is that they refer to chicken sandwiches as “chicken burgers” here in the UK. Besides that, I have pretty much just been eating homemade meals in my flat, from ingredients bought from our local TESCO grocery store near our flat. I have been eating a lot more ham here than I ever did in the US because it seems to be a lot more prominent here in sandwiches and such. I absolutely love fashion, and was one of the reasons I wanted to travel to London. I have thoroughly enjoyed traveling throughout the different boroughs and seeing all the different fashion styles, especially the wealthy part of Kensington. I definitely feel a lot more comfortable with this new culture after being here for a week, and look forward to seeing what else London has to offer in the upcoming semester. (Submitted on January 25, 2024)