Finally the wait has ended! After months of dreaming what "it" would be like, a week of packing, and an 8-hour flight, I reached " The Heathrow International Airport". My first instinct of London was, If America would be defined as “big”, then, The United Kingdom would be as “little”. On landing initially everything seemed shrunken, from the taxis/cabs to the small apartments. But this was just an image of a second, until I visited downtown London, as what they call it “Central London”, which seemed all so marvelous filled with years of history and rich architecture.

I live in Manson Place, which is technically in central London. I am in a triplet room, just like I had requested, and I am very happy with the size of the room. Our apartment has a fully equipped kitchen and a shared bathroom. This area known as “South Kensington” is the one of the most expensive & the most beautiful areas in London, just about a 10 minutes walk from Hyde Park. The weekends here seem so laid back. Just today, there was a musical festival at Hype Park where crowds gathered and laid around in the grass, simply enjoying the weekend.

Our second day here, we had Orientation. FIE is the institution is which we will be taking out classes in. It is about a 10-minute walk from our residence (Manson Place). Orientation was just an introduction to London. We went for a walking tour, and a bus tour. This area has everything one can think off, just around the corner - Tube stations, which make it so accessible, amazing restaurants, grocery stores, drug stores, shoe repairs and cafes.

The weather, well, one of the most discussed topics in London, is definitely not as expected by most of us. The “summer” seems to be buried in all the rain and clouds, which cover almost 50 % of the day. There are frequent showers of about 5 to a 10-minute drizzle and then it gets completely breezy. Hopefully July is suppose to be better, but in conversing with a few locals, I found out that this is the worst that London has ever been, and many of them, have never seen such a summer.

At orientation, we got our schedules for the coming two months. In the month of July, I have classes only on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but these classes stretch all day. This gives us a great long weekend to travel around the U.K. and Europe. Here, they seem to be pretty rigid on attendance, and it is definitely not an easy “A” but; regular studying should do justice to us.

So, being in London, for just 3 days, I feel overwhelmed with the amount there is to do. Hoping to make the most of my journey here, I look to making the coming days, the best days of my life.