Busy, crazy, intriguing first week.

The first week in London has been incredibly busy. Throwing yourself into one of the largest cities in the world and being handed two summer courses is more than a handful. There is so much of London I want to visit, and multiple countries I would like to travel to during this trip, but there isn’t near enough time to see everything.

I absolutely love both of the courses, British Media and International Advertising. I am a Public Relations major so neither of the courses were required, but I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to expand my view on the journalism and advertising world.

This week, outside of class, we visited the British Advertising Museum, British Museum, took a bus tour around London as well as a boat tour on River Thames. A few of us also went to an outdoor theatre to watch Pride and Prejudice, the play.

We took the bus tour and boat tour on Monday after class, which introduced us to about half of London. There was not an actual tour guide on the bus; the tour was guided by a voice recording that each individual listened to with headphones. We saw many of the famous monuments and famous in London, as well as the downtown shopping districts.

The British Museum was incredible. I felt like I was in an interactive history textbook. For me personally, the most intriguing aspect of the museum were the statues that were dated 350+ B.C.  Standing inches away from a statue that was made before Christ still shocks me. Also, the Rosetta Stone was much more fascinating in person than in pictures. I didn’t realize how detailed the Greek alphabet was until I saw the stone in person.

Pride and Prejudice was held at Regent’s Park Open Air theatre. It was my first outdoor theatre experience, and I’m so glad it was in London. Theatre here is much more popular than in America, which I learned when the tickets to the play were sold out weeks in advance. The play was almost 3 hours long with a 20-minute intermission, and worth every second of watching.

In addition to the school trips, I’ve learned so much about the culture just from going out with my classmates. I’ve also discovered the food service is worse, the food is cooked healthier, and a service charge/tip is included in the bill at almost every food/drink establishment.

            Yesterday, Mollie, Alisha and I attended London Yahoo Wireless Music Festival at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We were among an estimated 70,000 people watching Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, 2-Chainz and many other artists perform. I’ll talk about that in my next blog.

  Until then, Cheers!