Arriving in London

The internet has returned to me! The series of tubes stretches across the Atlantic, apparently. Which brings us to my being in London. I'm here! This blog will now assume the task for which it was (quasi) originally intended - charting my travels. The tags for these posts will remain "Finding the American Dream in ______," Other posts will continue at a likely reduced rate.

First observation: London is really expensive (yah really). A shout out to my irresponsible lending-happy friends stateside for keeping the exchange rate abysmal. Banking failure is happening here too, and its plastered all over the free papers people keep trying to hand me. Thankfully there are (relatively) cheap grocery stores every few blocks. Unfortunately there are also plentiful (not-so-cheap) delicious restaurants, pubs and clubs just as frequently. Aside from grocery stores, however, there is a solution: Sizzling Bombay. Indian food wins.

I have been up to a lot of orientation/class oriented stuff here for the most part. This has meant a lot of free wine so that one can pleasently sleep while being told platitudes and things you already know in pretty English (they're not better than in America, just more soothing).

We took a tour of central London (where I also happen to live) to see the major sites - soldiers in funny hats, lots of beautiful parks, statues reaching for the sky, sites where Harry Potter supposedly takes place. I should have a photo album of this up at some point entitled "London Tour," but I'm having a problem uploading pictures at the moment.

Some of the pictures in that album will be from the Mayor's Thames Festival along the Thames river that night, which had cultural food and booths and shows you would expect at such a thing. Would have stayed for fireworks but we were sleepy...

A second photo album ("Sentiments and Speeches") of my tour of the gardens in nearby Regent Park and the many bookstores in the area. Its overcast most of the time here so unfortunately the pictures won't be as pretty as they would have been when I went on a run through the park yesterday.

I think that's enough for now.