off to school i go.....

well i started school again, how about that. after 5 months of pure summer i started school again. i dont have class on monday or tuesday so that is nice and my wednesday consist of two classes, thursday i have four, and then one on friday.

british life and culture (for international students it includes fieldtrips!!!!)
slavery and race in the usa
holocaust as controversy and history
british politics in the 20th centuryu go away from that

so those are my amazing classes. i like them all a lot minus the politics one. the teacher has a real bad stutter and he knows a lot about his subject but the second that you go away from his field he knows nothing!! you could ask him what color an apple is and he wouldnt know cause its not political or even better yet domestic politics. so we will see and i already have to give a presentation in 2 weeks. great!!! :( the slavery one is cake i know it all so far. and i get big points cause i can continually contribute to class discussion. its pretty cool. my holocaust class is going to be very interesting but i can already tell that they are going to expose us to some pretty horrific things...for sure not a class for someone who cant stand graphic details.

so i go to school in kingston upon thames but my dorm is across the bridge in hampton wick and i have to walk pretty far to class eachday. which is really strange for me since i am used to getting up at like 8:45 if i have class at 9:00 and getting there on time but here i have to walk through the town center and it takes me 20 minutes to get to campus. strange. but that walk is nice when its not raining!!!!

OH! good news i get to go to stonehenge and bath this weekend, or well actually tomorrow. i get to go with my british life and culture class. we take these fieldtrips now and again and this time we get to go to stonehenge and bath...pretty cool. minus the fact that i have to be up at penrhyn road really early ok well like 8:30 am. ok i really like you and all but my flatmates just ordered chinese and i am gonna go see what i can have that they dont eat...i am such a scavenger!!!!!!

fire alarms, ramen, being lost in london...i had a busy day

so what if i wanted to take a shower at 2:00 in the afternoon????? thats what i thought, well somebody didnt want me to take a shower at that time and those people were in 5B. i was almost done with my shower when i heard the fire alarm go off and we periodically have firealarm test and they stop after three or four times...but no not this time!! so i heard people start running towards the door because we have to be out in seven minutes or less otherwise the fire brigade gets mad. so i start yelling "noooooooooooooooo, wait for me!!! i am coming!!!!!!!" and then i heard people laughing at me cause they knew i was still in the shower. so since i didnt have time to change i had to just throw my bathrobe on and truck it outside with everyone else. it was horrible. we were outside for about 20 minutes with everyone from kingston bridge house. i felt a little better when another girl came out in her robe too. but i was so upset!!! i wanted that place to be burning to the ground if i had to be outside in my robe with sopping yet hair...ugh i was mad. turns out it wasnt even a fire but the smoke detector went off because a boy burnt something while cooking....if i ever find out who it was.....

so the reason that i was getting ready was because we had a plan. and that plan was to go to chinatown and buy some ramen noodles. we were all craving them horribly bad. so we bought our travel card hoped on the train, got off in london waterloo went down to the underground and rode the bakerloo line till picadilly circus and headed off to chinatown. two blocks and a few turns and we were there!!! we were so excited! the big pretty archway greeting us saying "welcome and enjoy the ramen". it was a perfect sight for our weary feet.

we ended up buying 10 pounds or about $20 on ramen (yes its that good). we decided that we didnt (as in we i mean my flatmates amaya and cassie) want to come all the way into central london and not do something else so we decided to go to the zoo. so about an hour we rolled on into the zoo only to discover that it closed in 10 minutes. we were heartbroken especially since we could see the giraffes inside the gate. well we decided to walk through regeant's park since that is where the zoo is located. walking and sometimes skipping with our ramen through the park we stumbled on a place called "the honest sausage" we thougt what a silly name, lets buy some water...and we did. little did we know that after this we would try to find our way home and we wouldnt get there for another four hours.

coming out of the park we instantly made the wrong turn and didnt know it till somewhere downt the road, we finally found a bus station and since that was the only one around we got on it even if it did take us even farther from home, we knew there was a train station up there. well we missed our stop and had to truck it back to the train station, then that station was closed and we waited for 20 minutes on the platform till we figured that out. then we had to go to the next nearest train station which wasnt near and it was dark by now and people kept eyeing our ramen. finally we found a station got on the train and it ended up skipping a whole bunch of scheduled stops and we didnt know what was going on at all. eventually we got off at a station that had an underground and we got back on bakerloo line, back to waterloo and then back to kingston. we headed for home at 4:45 and walked into our rooms around 9:00. we were exhausted, so we had some ramen!

fire doors are not cool, not cool one bit

you might be asking yourself what has kathleen been doing with her time since school still hasnt started well i will tell you what i have been doing. I have not been doing my laundry i have so many clothes i need to wash its unreal. its just the laundry room is downstairs and i have to get pounds for the washers and 20p coins for the dryer. and the best part is that the dryer is only 20p....for 7 minutes. you cant dry anything in that amount of time. so i have been procrastinating. i have also not been keeping my room clean. you take off your shoes in my room and its dirty. so when i have a pair of shoes along with 4 more pairs and shirts and pants and just junk all over, my room is real dirty. but my bed is made so that is a plus.
i have been doing my homework. ugh... yeah school hasnt even started and i already have 5 chapters to read and a paper due on the first day of one of my classes. gee whiz is right (cause i know thats what you are thinking...)

ALSO our flat has been getting in trouble. i dont know what it is but there is this security gaurd, and i hesitate to call him that because his attention is always focused on our flat that they rest of the building could have robbers all over the place and he wouldnt even know. but there is this "security gaurd" and i dont know what we ever did to him or if he is just mad at the world but he is always checking up on us! like we were all sitting in the kitchen the other day and we had the door open (its a fire door and it is supposed to ALWAYS remain shut until you have to use it) anyways usually we have the door propped open cause it gets soooooooooo hot in there but i was standing in the door and i was leaning up against it because i had just come in and was asking amaya a question...the exact same time he hastily opens the door to our flat and runs in and just yells at us for like 3 minutes that we cant have the fire door open EVER EVER EVER EVER! and then he is like you are all too loud because he could hear us outside. we live on the 3rd floor and you couldnt even hear us down the hall. so he told us we needed to whisper...it was 5:00 pm on a friday night, yeah right.

i dont think i can get the idea across very well typing but this guy is a jerk and he always periodically pops in. we asked the other flats if he did this to them and they dont even know who he is. so somewhere at sometime this guy started hating us.... i pay 89 pounds a week to live here for the privacy i guess.

i found the most annoying people in ALL of the uk

you may be asking yourself what is kathleen doing since her classes dont start till september 27th even though university starts on the 25th....well not much folks. i have been filling my time with trips to central london and walking around the town center. sure i have some meetings that i have to go to and stuff like that, but other than that i have snothing to do. sure i could go shopping but i dont want to spend any money (it is so hard not to spend it...you cant even imagine). i am not the only person that feels this my other flatmates are rowing in the same boat. we all ask what do we have to do today and when one of us answers with the "nothing" we all kinda settle in to an "oh". we have all talked about it and we are ready for school to start, especially because we have all been out of school since may...i have basically had an almost 6 month summer...thats crazy. almost half a year of bumming around.
anyways...... the other day me and some of my flat mates made the long journey into london (20 minutes by train) and hung out at the festival along the thames. it was pretty cool they had vendors and street performers. it was pretty crazy strolling the little shops and then turn around and big ben is just across the river, so weird but a GOOD weird. so we all decided to stick around for the fireworks that would be going off around 9:45 and we had a lot of time to kills so we went and played on the underground for awhile and ended up all over the place.
BUT the main part of this is the fact that when we were up on the bridge to view the fireworks better when it finally came time we happened to situate ourselves right behind a group of people that were hands down the drunkest people in london and they were SOOOOOOO annoying. they were singing songs in different languages and heckling people and if i wasnt american i would of punched them in the face..agh.

and to top it all off the fireworks sucked. the "finale" is what usually is the show.

me in front of the dorms....

so we had just gotten home from a long day of sightseeing and shopping. this is me in front of my dorm (kingston bridge house) its really nice on the outside but the inside needs a little work. the room that i am in i would expect to be not in this kind of house.

(j/k this is buckingham palace)

we are moving up in the world...

we went to Brighton for a day, which is down by the sea. People used to go there for what was called the "cure". royalty and others would travel down to the sea and be dipped in it and drink the sea water combined with warm milk, seaweed, coral, and crushed termites. yummy. anyways george IV liked it so much there he built a house and it was in indian architecture and chinese/oriental influence on the inside. something you would not find in england....anyways when we were hanging out on the royal pavilion we ran into the mayor of brighton. after a kiss on the cheek and a picture we were on our way.....

this is where i live now

this is my dorm room...that is all my own. i havent really decorated it since i am still waiting on a box that my mom is gonna send over soon. i have my own sink in there and its really nice. i like it. i have 2 people on the right of me and three on the left. we all share a kitchen with a table in it (that they try to call a kitchen and a common area) and two bathrooms...its a sweet set up

i knocked on a door and out came victor

my building that i live in (kingston bridge house) only hold about 218 people and so far only the international kids have moved in and the locals come later. in my little flat there are 4 girls and we are all from the states (we thought one was a boy but it turns out she just has really short hair...our bad). anyways long story short we came home early last night (pubs close at 11pm...dont get me started) and we noticed a light on in the hall that was on our floor. so we went upstairs and who answers the door???? VICTOR!!!!!!! he is from spain and he was making a pizza. we chatted awhile....3 americans and a spanish man with facial hair. it was a good time.

well today was actually filled with something borderling scholastic...we went to orientation for like 8 hours, it was rough. the room was hot and the british lady didnt speak loud enough to hear in the back (cause thats where we sat!). anyways long story short i got my new school id card, enrolled in classes (15 credits here and only 9 back home which is gonna be a problem since that isnt full time back at MSU i need 12 for full time). but the best thing about all this is that i dont have class on monday or tuesday so we are talking A FOUR DAY WEEKEND. so it makes it a lot easier to travel all about and i think that is sweet. well i dont really feel like typing anymore right now i think i am gonna go clean my room and hang up a map of central london and the underground system.....

i have an address....dont be shy

here is my new address.....

Kathleen Lowell 3D4
Kingston Bridge House Hall of Residence
Church Grove
Hampton Wick
Surrey
KT1 4 AG

i know its long and british but what are you gonna do? sorry for all the people i told wrong....my bad.

i thought the maid stole my bobby pins

(<----- hampton court, king henry VIII old house, 5 minutes from my place)
its true i did, i thought she stole my bobbypins. on our move from our southern london hotel, the gallery hotel, to our new hotel in kingston/hampton wick i lost my beloved bobby pins. i was upset because it was early i was hungry and all i wanted to do was pack up my stuff and head out to the next place....but i couldnt because i couldnt find my bobby pins. i looked everywhere (or at least i thought i did) i blamed england, i blamed my mom, and mainly i blamed the maid for stealing them. i was upset because they are cheap in the states maybe costing a dollar but here here they would be 2 pounds ($4) and your first born child. that is how expensive it is here...hence why i was upset and didnt want to go buy more it would of been a pain. good thing after some ranting and raving i found them under a shirt. haha my bad.
so my mom and i get to our new hotel which by my mother's grand booking happens to be above a pub. sweet you are probably thinking.....well think again, its not so sweet. we could here people all night long being loud and early in the morning when they were throwing away the tons of beer bottles into a metal trash can...they could of been in our room doing it, thats how loud it was. ugh.
well after our tossing and turning of a night's rest my mom and walked the long walk of oh about a block and half to my new home...kingston bridge house. turns out i am sharing a wing, 3D, with 5 other people. three boys (all british) and two more girls (all american)...funny how things work out. nobody else has moved in yet except for me and a girl from iowa who goes to school in virginia ( i instantly thought of mary when she told me this). so once we introduced ourselves i guess you would consider us friends. so i have a friend now....just one but thats ok, fingers crossed i meet more people and they want to be my friend. my mom and i spent the day in the town center which is walk across the thames (2nd largest shopping center in the uk besides london) and got my room all fitted out with a bed set and bathroom things...you know all that stuff.
we spent the rest of the night eating dinner at our new hotel which was right outside the grounds of hampton court (my mom didnt want to spend her last night above a pub...she was better than that she said). so we watched a few good men and laughed at all of the funny british commercials. our favorite one was about parents hitting their children as a form of discipline, it sounds horrible but the name of the show is "i smack and im proud". we liked that. gotta love british television........

ok lets do this...

ok well let see where do i even start??? well i am in london, my mom and i made it here safe and sound. the flight was good and on the big flight from atlanta to london (gatwick) we sat next to a 30 year old girl named brandy, who i really liked, and turns out she was going to london and surrounding europe to go on a 3 month adventure BY HERSELF and she was stoked about it. sounds scary to me but she was all for it.

so my mom and i got to our hotel in london and it was very nice...and very british. we only spent 3 nights there and we had an adventure while we were there. we were able to see big ben, the london eye, the crown jewels, tower bridge, tower castle, the wax museum and lots of other things since we were on this awesome hop on hop off sort of double decker tour bus. we did all those sights in one day and it was super cool. it was weird though cause i have seen all these things in pictures my whole life and then when i get to see them in real life its not a let down but its not as sweet as i thought it would be since i have "seen" them my whole life. does that make sense? probably not but i dont want to backspace and delete all that so....moving on.
oh and i forgot to tell you all my mom and i also got to go to windsor castle (for all you people who dont know that is the royal's last name so that is where the queen lives). it was huge and castley and i liked it. mom and i got our own private tour guide (his name was john). he was really nice but oh my goodness that man could talk until the sun went down and about silly things as well. but he took us there and then to hampton court which turns out is about a 3 minute bus ride or a 10 minutes walk from where i live (yes i live next to a castle...what did you expect i live in london now). king henry VIII lived there with his six wives and all that jazz...he had a pretty sweet pad there. if anyone comes and visits i will take you there and you will have a good time.