First week in London

This first week in London has been great! I've learned a lot about the rich history that this city has by touring the Tower of London. There I got to see thousands of diamonds that make up the extravagant Crown Jewels, which are an icon of the British Royalty. There is also a tremendous learning curb to navigating around this enormous city, in which I've only been lost a few times. I'm still clueless as to how the bus system works but I'm starting to feel like a pro tube rider! There are some cultural differences that have stuck out to me such as how everyone seems to dress nice here and how drinking beer during your lunch break is acceptable. I feel like we should bring both of these practices back to America with us, however I'm not sure we could ever be productive with alcoholic lunch breaks! Most people have been really friendly here, especially Charlie the train conductor who got us onto the train and then hooked us up with free sleeper suites for our trip to St. Andrews in Scotland for The British Open.

Our class trip to the Bank of England Museum was very interesting, I liked seeing the currency that they used hundreds of years ago and was intrigued by how they essentially developed their entire monetary system based off these primitive coins. Meeting with the London Police officer was also interesting, I had no idea how widespread white collar fraud really was until we talked with him. When he brought up police monitoring the internet all I could think of was how that would put this society one step closer to being like the one in George Orwell's book 1984. Ultimately, it was a great first week and I'm excited to see what next week will have in store!