On the way to London

After waking up in Brighton Sunday morning we met the group in the lobby and ate another bland breakfast.  After that, we hopped on the bus and made our way to Battle Abbey.  We had an audio guided tour of where the 1066 Battle of Hastings took place.  It was kind of boring, to be honest. After that we went to a place called The Lamb Inn. The food was alright. After lunch we went to the Bodiam Castle. That was kind of neat. There were so many ducks there because the castle is in like a lake or whatever surrounded by water, so that it'd be harder to attack.  Finally we were off to London after that. We arrived here, and went into ISH (the International Student House) and had a brief orientation where we found out a little bit of information. Then we had to walk a bunch of blocks down to the Mary Trevelyan Hall. I am rooming with two girls from our group, Brittany and Olivia. We live in a room in the basement of our building. Our room is suite style, and the name of our suite is called "Goat Flat." We're the only ones who have a ridiculous name for our room, whereas the others just have a room number.  Inside the suite there is a kitchen, a couch, and a  bathroom.  Also, there is the room that the three of us are living in, and then two other bedrooms with strangers living in.  I briefly met one other girl living here, since I had to ask her how to turn on the bathroom light.  Before I continue on, I must say that England doesn't seem to care about hygiene. I can count on one hand (maybe not even five fingers) of how many places where the bathrooms happened to have soap. It is disgusting!! After one week, I've almost used up a little bottle of hand sanitizer. Also, they have hand dryers, and only one place so far has had paper towels. The toilets here are also harder to flush. Its just stupid. Back to my journeys, after a nights rest, we had to go to the University of London Birkbeck to have a short orientation and get registered for classes.  Four of us from the group had British and European Cinema this morning from 10-1.  It is hard to find the buildings right now, because we haven't even been in London for 24 hours to get adjusted at all. That really bothers me.  We don't know where anyone lives, we don't know how to find our ways around, and its stressful with the added fact that we have to find our classes where we got the room numbers today at orientation.  My class this morning was actually interesting. We watched some film clips from the films Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Fishtank, Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon), and The Ghost. Next class we are already going to the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. After class, we met up with a couple others from the group and we bought notebooks, and handsoap. The papers that get handed out in class are not the standard 8 x 11.5 in the States.  It is like 8 x 12 or something like that. It is longer than what I'm used to, so none of the sheets fit in my folder... it's just stupid. For lunch me and another girl went to a sandwich place and I grabbed one that was like chicken and bacon, and it had listed that it contained mustard. No other sandwich appealed to me, so I thought I could just choke this down, but the mustard is just nasty. I can't eat it. Later on I'm meeting up with a few people from my group to go eat supper at ISH. Tomorrow, I have another class from 2-5... let's hope I don't get lost on my way to finding it or run over. The drivers here are crazy.  Also I've noticed that people here in England are rude. I haven't run into very many friendly people. For one, if you're in the way, they just stand behind you and never say "Excuse me". Number of times our group has had to say "Lisa, someones behind you" or "Claire, move" because the people here just don't ever say excuse me. If you're walking on the sidewalk and people are coming towards you on the sidewalk, they will not go to the side or move around us, they will just barge right through and expect us to move over. One girl in our group actually got nudged pretty hard by some girl walking around. It just blows my mind at how rude people are.