{"id":46,"date":"2016-08-21T09:26:24","date_gmt":"2016-08-21T09:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/?p=46"},"modified":"2016-08-22T16:41:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T16:41:10","slug":"good-morning-paradoxical-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/2016\/08\/21\/good-morning-paradoxical-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Morning From A Paradoxical Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Flat
My flat’s view of Eastern London. Note the double decker bus on the ‘wrong’ side of the road!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a good night’s sleep, I’m rested and ready to take on the day! Currently, I’m\u00a0enjoying some\u00a0coffee (because, well,\u00a0tea isn’t really my cup of tea) and taking in the view of the city. I feel entirely\u00a0comfortable and at home and yet distinctly foreign and unfamiliar.<\/p>\n

One of the main things I’ve noted since arriving in the city is that overarching idea of contradictions: everything from the dialects used in print\u00a0versus in\u00a0the streets, to the\u00a0official and unofficial rules\u00a0of the road, it seems as though two\u00a0very different takes on London\u00a0coexist harmoniously.\u00a0Even the buildings themselves are a pleasant hodgepodge of sleek, modern high-rises and squat,\u00a0historic brick churches or cottages.<\/p>\n

\"Thames
Crossing the Tower Bridge over the Thames! The London Eye and Parliament can be seen in the background on opposite banks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the drive from Heathrow to our housing, it became very clear that, similar to California, drivers here pay little to no attention to the many, many street signs (another odd juxtaposition). Our cab driver took a creative route through town that involved several u-turns and short-cuts through alleys to avoid traffic, and during that ride we passed by everything from Buckingham Palace to Alfred Hitchcock’s house to Westminster Abbey. While we (that is, Katie, Hayden and I, who had flights that arrived around the same time yesterday) ogled at the sights, to\u00a0our driver, it was no big deal to pass a palace on a daily commute!<\/p>\n

\"Formal
An excerpt from this yogurt’s nutrition information: “Fat… of which saturates… Carbohydrate… of which sugars…” Also, ‘colours’ and ‘flavours’.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We all went out to dinner last night to Nando’s, and this was our first mass-exposure to British\u00a0accents, which vary extremely\u00a0in understandability, yet all\u00a0share a heavy use\u00a0of slang, idioms and a casual tone.\u00a0Afterwards, we walked to a nearby grocery store, Sainsbury’s, where I noticed that\u00a0the labelling of nutrition facts was far more polite than both how locals speak and how our food is labeled in the States. It’s very odd seeing the prices of things labelled in pound sterling\/pounds\/quid, because everything looks cheap!<\/p>\n

\"My
My flat – I love it!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday was full of excitement, so I was ready to get to sleep\u00a0when I got back last night, which was roughly the same time as when I would\u00a0normally go to bed back home; in other words, the adjustment to London time was way easier than I’d expected! Hurrah!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’ll update this post with a few more pictures\u00a0later this evening, as we’re going to visit our classroom and take a barge along the Thames this afternoon!<\/p>\n

Update:<\/p>\n

Our barge was actually through the canals of Little Venice, which was<\/p>\n

\"You
You can almost hear the accordions of Italy…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

beautiful! Some of the highlights of our boat excursion were seeing the second largest garden in London (in the yard of a sultan, whose property acreage was\u00a0just\u00a0slightly less than that of the Queen’s at Buckingham Palace),\u00a0getting to know each other post-jetlag, and, of course,\u00a0people-watching as walkers and runners passed by on the shore. After our tour, we took the tube to Paddington Station, which is the<\/p>\n

\"The
The OSU Honors College crew!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

closest stop to our classroom. Although we couldn’t get into the building since it’s closed on Sunday, we located our\u00a0college campus\u00a0and were then set loose to roam the city. I went with several\u00a0friends who also wanted to explore this area of\u00a0town, and together we found a cute\u00a0marketplace\u00a0to try fish and chips for the first time (yum!). A<\/p>\n

\"Upper
Upper level of a red bus! Great view, and made for fun turns!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

famous double decker red bus was our ride home this evening, which was really fun!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a good night’s sleep, I’m rested and ready to take on the day! Currently, I’m\u00a0enjoying some\u00a0coffee (because, well,\u00a0tea isn’t really my cup of tea) and taking in the view of the city. I feel entirely\u00a0comfortable and at home and yet distinctly foreign and unfamiliar. One of the main things I’ve noted since arriving in … Continue reading Good Morning From A Paradoxical Paradise<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7R7eI-K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}