Adventures, and a few pictures

So! I have had my first few London and LSE adventures in the last few days. Yesterday I went down to campus which was crazy. It's Fresher's Week and there's a fair for all the societies. It was crazy! I joined the dance society, the American Democrats, and I may play rugby. And I explored the library a bit - they don't have the Dewey Decimal system, what's a girl to do...

At 3 I had the PolComms induction. There are about 35 people in my program and they're from all over the place. US, UK, Canada, Australia, Italy, Monaco, Germany, Switzerland, India to name a few. We got some of the admin stuff done, and I have three compulsory classes this fall. I have the option of taking an extra course, but I think I will audit it and then take my two optional courses in Lent Term. After induction there was a welcome party for Media postgrads. I hung out with a few people from my program, and I think we'll get along great. They're really nice and everyone has interesting and different backgrounds. I look forward to getting to know people! Everyone broke off around 6, so I headed back to Bankside. At 8:30 I met up with Andy for drinks - the poor boy has to deal with me until I get a more stable social life.

Today I got up, went to the gym, picked up my debit card - YAY for money! Not that it'll last long. Things here are insanely expensive. Twice (or more) as expensive as the states. Oh, and I dropped by Borough Market and picked up some dried apples covered in cinnamon! They taste just like apple pie! So I had those to snack on all day.

I took the tube over to the V&A and spent a couple hours there. There's a fashion exhibit which is amusing - it will make all of you laugh to know that a Juicy track suit is actually featured in the exhibit as an example of the influence of athletic apparel on fashion. I'm not sure we should encourage the track suit... I also walked through the architecture, some of the sculpture, iron works and musical instruemnts area. The V&A can take days to go through so after about an hour and a half I figured I shouldn't miss the year's last sunshine for a museum that I need to come back to anyway.



The garden at the V&A
















Some beloved dogs memorialized at the V&A


After the V&A I walked over to Hyde Park, which was one of my favorite bits of London from when I was here last year. It was about 65 and sunny so I sat around for awhile and watched the geese wander around. There was one point where they were all queued up and it made me think of Make Way for Ducklings. :) I wandered around, then through Green Park, past Buckingham Palace and through St. James Park. One thing I had never seen was the memorial for the Canadian's contribution to the world wars - there's a picture below that doesn't quite do it justice. It's a simple water feature with bronze maple leafs in it. After all that walking my feet were killing me so I came back here for a nap.



Prince Albert Memorial - I hope I like my husband as much as Queen Victoria did. Though perhaps not in such an outlandish fashion.
























Geese in Hyde Park
















Part of the Canadian war memorial with the colors of Green Park in the background.