California Girl in London...

Life has been crazy since I arrived in London yesterday.  My dorm is 16 stories high and is in Zone 1 of London, which is basically where everything goes on, so I’m really excited.  My room is comfortably sized, not very spacious, but not crowded either.  My roommate’s name is Kealy, really outgoing girl, who also goes to Cal.  There’s about 30 of us in the program, and majority of us are from Cal.  It’s comforting having a group of people with a similar background to mine in a foreign place.

I had arrived yesterday afternoon, and we wasted no time before hitting up the pubs :) We walked around looking for a place to eat, until we just decided to grab some pizza and hit up a pub.  The pub we went to was called Ruby Lounge.  There was a World Cup game going on, Italy vs. Paraguay…and there were some very enthusiastic Italians watching the game.  We were lucky to arrive during Happy Hour, so a friend and I were able to go 2-4-1on a drink. I love being able to drink here!! :) Of course, I won’t go 2 crazy…seeing that I barely know my way around even when I’m sober lol.  The bartender still carded me.  Do I not look 18?! haha but I guess I’ll be thankful down the road that I look young.  So even in my state of exhaustion, I had a great first night.

Today was the orientation for my internship program, EUSA.  They gave us some great advice, telling us to take black cabs only and never go on the night bus, unless we want people throwing up on us. haha.  They gave us a walking tour after orientation, but I, unfortunately, could not join because I had my interview with Ernst & Young. So I had to rush back and get ready for my interview.

I’ve taken 2 trips on the Tube today, which is the London equivalent of the New York Subway.  It’s very efficient and not hard to follow, thankfully.  I tubed to the Ernst & Young office for my interview.  Their building is beautiful, and has a fountain field type of thing at the bottom.  Across the water, you can see the Tower Bridge.  It was really an incredible sight.  It’s obvious that I’m in the honeymoon phase of my trip, so I’m gonna enjoy it while it lasts. 

My interviewers were extremely nice, and the interview went well.  Unfortunately, they work mostly in accounting and auditing, which is not really my field of interest.  So now I have to find a new placement within this week.  Hopefully, my interviewers can help me get my foot in the door of the financial services side.  We’ll see how everything goes.

Can’t wait to see what the rest of the week has in store :)

Hi all!

I finally made it!! I’m in London!

But the journey here was not easy.  I arrived at LAX at 1130.  My flight was at 215.  I couldn’t do the self check-in for some reason, so a woman told my family and I to go to social services.  The line literally did not move, and we moved about 10 feet in 30 minutes.  It was ridiculous.  So we then went to talk to a staff member who helped us out, and showed us to someone working behind the counter.  she was like “I can’t check you in because you’re flying on KLM, not Delta :-0 Apparently KLM, Delta and French AIrways or something all collaborate together.  We were in terminal 5, where Delta was.  KLM was all the way in terminal 2! For anyone who hasn’t been to LAX, terminals 2 and 5 are about a mile apart.  Definitely NOT walking distance! So after wasting an hour at Delta, we rushed to KLM. 

We arrived at KLM and the woman at the counter told us.. “There is no flight going to Atlanta.  YOU HAVE TO GO TO DELTA IN TERMINAL 5!!!”  You can only imagine mine and my family’s frustration.  The woman was nice enough to give me my boarding pass. But then my fam and I had to cut through LAX back to terminal 5!!  At this point, I was so scared I wouldn’t make my flight! 15 minutes later I ran up to the same idiot woman who sent me to terminal 2 and basically told her off! She apologized and gave me a $50 voucher that is essentially useless since I can’t use it for travel or for paying luggage fees or anything like that.  Just ridiculous. 

Thankfully I made my flight to Atlanta on time…thankfully..

4 hours later I arrived in Atlanta just in time to see my LAKERS lose :( Wasn’t the best way to leave the US.  Unfortunately, my connecting flight to London was delayed 2 hours!!  We didn’t take off from Atlanta until 1 am.  I was so exhausted that I slept almost the entire 9  1/2 hours. 

9 1/2 hours later, we touched ground in London.  Going through immigration was no problem at all, and from talking to the officer, it was the first British accent I heard :) I know it’s to be expected, but that’s what made it all real for me.

I met the man who worked for the car service I ordered, and was totally weirded out when I got in the car and saw the driver’s seat on the right side!  I forgot that people drove on the left side in England lol.  I’ll have to be more careful when crossing the street 0:-)

We finally arrived at the place I would be staying for the next 7 weeks.  After 19 hours of travel…I made it to my new home :)

Hey everyone…so I’ve never blogged before, but decided I should start since I’m leaving for London in a week to do an internship there.  I’ve never been to Europe before, and I should be able to soak up a lot of the culture in the 7 weeks that I’ll be there. 

I feel completely unprepared at this point and have a lot to get done in the next week, but I’m not too worried…hell I’m going to London! =)

There are a few things that I’m sad I’ll be missing back home.  The first is that I’ll miss being able to watch the LAKERS win the championship…seeing that it will take more than a week for them to win it all…4 me its not a question of IF they’ll win…but only WHEN ;)

the second is I’ll miss my mother’s graduation from her masters program, and my 2 cousins’ (Sasha and Kate’s) graduations from high school…I hope they all know how proud I am of them..

Well that’s all for now.  I’ll try 2 keep my blogs short & sweet

<3