I Can See the London Eye from My Kitchen

The visual proof on that is yet to come, but you’ll just have to take my word for it for now. I arrived at the IES center and checked in, hobnobbed, tried to nap, etc. Also, I group of us went on a short excursion with Greg the IES guy to South Kensington tube station to buy Oyster cards for the week. It was all going smoothly with one guy ringing up the same thing for each of us when a new cashier opened and a gentleman began to berate us for not going to him. Or berate me, as I was at the front of the line. The problem was that he didn’t know exactly what to ring up, so IES Greg had to swoop into my rescue and promptly inform him. I managed to sneak in a chat with Greg on the way back. He’s a nice chap. Originally from the North of England, grew up in Wales, went to uni in London. He says that he likes the country but after a while it gets “claustrophobic”.

Around 1:00, my roommate Dan arrived and shortly after a group of us (Dan, Andy, Tom, Greg, and myself) headed to a nearby pub for drinks/food. I abstained from drinking but did order a chip butty, or what we would call a “French fry sandwich” in America. It was relatively filling and at 3.75 pounds one of the cheaper items on the menu. After a good long chat session at the pub, we headed to the Waitrose grocery store that’s just around the corner and down the street. They bought food while I just opted to check out what situation was. As in America, store brand is the way to go. Waitrose brand cereals and vegetables looked very reasonable indeed. Meat, as could be expected was rather pricey. Then we headed back to hall.

We went through the standard “dorm rules” meeting with the Resident Director, Mieke. Afterwards, a return to the pub was made, but I sat it out in favor of sleep. So far, the rest of the night has passed uneventfully except for a fire alarm. The odd things about fire alarms in this building are that they are rather common, that steam can set the alarms off, and that the Chelsea Fire Brigade is legitimately no more than a 30 second walk from the hall. So they drive over 2-3 trucks with sirens on about 500 feet to investigate a false alarm. Brilliant. That’s it so far.