I made it!

Can I just take a moment to say how much I love it here? I love it here! The city is beautiful, the house I’m living in is comfortable, and I’m surrounded by interested, intelligent American students who love discussing every nerdy thing that I love to discuss (* cough cough * Doctor Who Harry Potter period dramas children’s literature * cough cough * ). Today I wandered around the city, enjoying the sunlight and the street performers.

My room is on the second floor (well, they call it the first floor here) of a four-floor house in a “posh” neighborhood about 10 minutes from the study center. It has creaky floorboards and is much narrower and colder than at home, but I love it! I get along really well with all of the girls in my house (and everyone on the program, for that matter). I think what really sealed the deal was our mutual fascination with Victorian Pharmacy, a competition show on the BBC that we discovered while attempting to watch Bridget Jones’s Diary. We got quite distracted, as you can imagine.

Orientation has been fairly helpful and definitely a good way to get to know the staff and other students on the program. We’ve also had plenty of time to explore the city, go shopping for things we’ve left behind, and find lots and lots of good, inexpensive sandwich shops, cafes, and cafes. We’ve even had time to get library cards, which (as you probably already know) is one of the first things I did. I know I will be saying this in every post of this blog, but I find it hard to describe how incredible it feels to walk down the street to grab lunch and pick up conditioner and to walk past places like this: 

On Wednesday we had a special tour of Bath Abbey. Like the rest of Bath, it is incredibly old and incredibly beautiful. It was built three times, first as an Anglo-Saxon Abbey Church in 757, then as a Norman cathedral in 1090, and finally (more or less how it is today) it was rebuilt in 1499 and completed in 1611. And they served us tea and cakes!

Today Andrew Butterworth, the internship coordinator, took me to see my internship placement at the American Museum. It was a really lovely experience! The building the main part of the museum is housed in was where Winston Churchill gave his first political speech. I had tea with Andrew and one of my supervisors at the museum, and we shared a “Connecticut Snickerdoodle” (what makes it from Connecticut I have no idea) at a table outside. Andrew gave me a very speedy tour of the museum, and I’m very excited to get a chance to go back and look around in more detail. Also, there is a Marilyn Munroe exhibit there until some time in October, and the first thing I saw when I walked into the room was the sheer, sparkly dress she wore in Some Like it Hot! Tonight we will be going to a fancy reception at the Victoria Art Gallery and we will get to schmooze with our tutors, and tomorrow we will be checking out the local farmer's market, so keep an eye out for an update!