Week One

This first week has been interesting. I’d be lying if I said that I had any particular idea what this trip would be like, I had hopes and wishes of what the trip might be like but those hopes and wishes were a bit exuberant. The thought now after having been here a week that I once thought the trip could ever amount to my original hopes is truly ludicrous. The orientation people at my school called it culture shock but I have to say it wasn’t really the culture that shocked me, but more a disillusionment. I had thought that people wouldn’t be people and I wouldn’t be me. To the contrary of how morbid this sounds I’ve actually had quite a bit of fun, I just had to accept this for what it is and treat it as such. The First couple days of structured tours and then sightseeing around London with people I barely knew were great. The classes were interesting, (but they were still class) the field trips were the better parts. I also enjoyed the food quite a bit especially the experimenting with new foods. This trip is going to be focused quite a bit on me getting out of my ordinary and learning to relax. More recently in this week I had begun to think that I was being an obligatory tourist, going to places because people said that they were cool places not because I had any real interest in seeing them. I was beginning to get really frustrated about the trip because certain people were becoming tiresome and I really hadn’t had fun the last couple days with the trying to follow the groups seeing what everyone else wanted to see even though I really wasn’t all that interested. After one especially bad afternoon I was beginning to feel ready to go home but that night I had a lot of fun with friends, completely stepping out of who I generally am.