Day 1-I made it to England...and this is what I saw...

15 June 2007


This is a photo of the street view of the Study Centre. The main entrance is located at #99 however there are actually 5 or 6 doors that enter the building.




This is a picture of my room. This is after a post-flight nap.




This is a picture of our living room. There are three sofas, 2 small tables and a 13 inch television that gets an impressive 5 channels. I have already learned that the British have seem to have an large interest in the Big Brother show because every time I turn on the tv they are either talking about it or showing an episode. The BBC One channel does a lot of documentary type programming. It's pretty much like Saturday Afternoon PBS from back home.



This is the lovely view from our living room window. Note the overflowing rubbish containers. Apparently, this is not the norm but rather the result of a the mass exodus of Summer A term students leaving to go back to the states and once weekly trash pickup.



This is our small kitchen. It has 3 refrigerators, 1 freezer, a microwave oven, a regular oven and an electronic tea kettle.



This is a picture of "the loo". There is a very small sink and a toilet on one side of the hall and a small shower stall on the other side of the hall. I think the sink with a separate hot and cold water tap will take some getting used to but otherwise it should be ok...aside from wondering what it will be like with 5 people sharing it.

Another thing to note in this photo are our interesting windows. The windows do not have screens (despite the fact that there are mosquitos here and without a/c it can be hot) and they tip out. They also have their own built in shades.

Here are a few snaps from walking around yesterday afternoon.



This is a shot from outside of the British Museum. It is a very large and imposing building that has a Roman architectual influence.



This is a picture of the top of the British Museum. Here you can also see the sky as it has been intermittantly since I arrived. Today it was raining off and on all day and the wind was at times gusty enough to turn my umbrella inside out. I noticed that many people do not wear any rain gear or use an umbrella and just walk around as though it was a normal sunny day.



This is a picture of one of the famous red phone booths. They really are everywhere. They are pretty cool because many of them are equipt with phones that have keyboards incorporated into them so you can send text messages to your friend's cells.



The final picture from my first day is one of the back side of the famous Double-Decker busses. These busses are very popular around town as well as another bus which is also red and are 2 single level busses joined together with an accordion like joint.