Morris Dancers

I walked out of my flat (apartment) the other night for a quick pint with my flatmate Mark. We walked just around the corner to the local (you call the bar that's nearest to you "the local") and saw a few dozen people participating in what looked like Irish dancing. It was kind of like a Lord of the Dance show, but with less spring in their step, and more hitting of large sticks together.

Apparently this is a traditional English dance called Morris dancing. And it is thoroughly entertaining to watch people with bells on their knees dancing and knocking sticks together while you grab a beer. We're thinking of hiring them for our next party. On a related note - I love that England, and especially London, is oozing with culture. I run into little surprises like this everywhere - like the Queen's uniformed guard that rides on horseback past the business school each day.

The new apartment: my bedroom

Now that I'm semi-settled in my new apartment, I think I'm overdue for providing some pictures. In general, I spent three weeks looking around, and I think I finally found the "holy grail" of apartments in London. The search was painful and involved looking at tons of places. But I think it was worth it, in the end.

We'll start with my bedroom. Oh - first of all, this is a furnished apartment, which is fairly common in London. So it came more or less as-is, with the exception being that I bought the sheets in this picture (really nice ). Relatively for London this is a big bedroom, with a double bed and a good amount of extra space. In general, the furniture is fairly modern. You can see blinds in the left corner of the window; the window lets out into a very small "courtyard"-type area that is private to the apartment. Near the window is a built-in wardrobe, and when combined with the set of drawers that you can see, I've got plenty of space. The marble floors run throughout the entire apartment. Also you can't see the lighting, which I could add an entire post about, but it's dozens of Italian small lights set up on a central control for dimming (it has different light programs / settings).

To the right of my bed is the bathroom. You can just make out the black sheets of the bed in the mirror's reflection. It's a good-sized bathroom and very modern looking.

The right hand side of the bathroom has a walk-in rain shower (the water all comes down from the fixture on the ceiling). My roommate's shower is similar, but his also features a steam shower. Actually, if you look in the glass in the shower door, you can see some of the bedroom lighting that I mentioned (several smaller lights, maybe 10 - 20).

House warming party

I promise, I swear, this is the last post before I start taking / adding lots of pictures to the blog.

Last night I had an open-invite housewarming party and it went off without a hitch. I would guess that we had 100 people throughout the course of the night, with maybe 75 at the peak, and we were up until the wee hours of the night. I love to host events for people and this was a great way to socialize with my new classmates.

Tomorrow is a big day. The first day of school! Ok, so there aren't any classes or work to do, and I've already met 50% of the other students. But I find out who my stream is - we're divided into smaller sections of maybe 75 people, to make it more manageable, and these are the people we take all our classes with. I hope I get a bunch of my friends! Even more exciting / intimidating is the prospect of a study group. We'll have a lot of group projects to do among a much smaller team of 6 - 7 people. Groups are randomized by nationality, prior work experience, and gender, among other factors. Getting good study group members can have a huge impact on your first year at school. So a lot is riding on tomorrow!

Be it ever so humble...

So after searching high and low, I finally have a home. No pics for now as I don't have internet at the new place yet. I'm jumping online at my b-school for just a bit. But soon! And there will be an air mattress for anyone that would like to visit. And you know you do.

Living it up in London

I am thoroughly enjoying London. Most of my first week here has been spent more or less as I expected - making new friends among the LBS students and going out every night. The group pictured above are actually some of my best friends here - Molly (USA), Trisha (Philippines), Hernan (Peru), Mark (Canada), and yours truly.

The bars here are similar to what you'd see in the US. You go out, chat, and have a few beers. And beer here is mostly cold, contrary to popular belief - I guess it's something that changed a few years ago. So it's a fairly familiar routine for me, but going out every night is wearing me down a little bit.

I'm a little disappointed on my progress with practical matters. I bought some socks, which was a nice baby step. But I still have some loose ends in the US, I don't have an apartment yet in London, and I don't have a bank account. This upcoming week is just going to have to be super-productive!

Adios, America

I've landed safely in London. My final weekend was truly frantic - rushing around to see people on Friday and Saturday, then packing / purging my things on Sunday. I ended up moving with virtually the clothes on my back - two checked bags, one backpack, and one laptop bag. I own nothing more (ok - keep me honest - my house is still for sale).

The way my friends reacted to my departure reminded me very much of when I left for India. Certain people stepped up and wanted to see me more, while others faded away. It's a very good indicator for who will or will not put effort into keeping up a friendship going forward. And this is not a sad note, FYI - this is a happy note, in fact. Most everyone that I expected made an effort to see me, and a couple people who are relatively new friends surprised me with an exceptional effort to spend time with me.

Wow. I mean, what can I say? It made me feel good to feel loved. But it also mires me in melancholy now that I have moved away from some of those great relationships. I'm sure I will form new bonds in London, but they aren't in place yet. They will come, and I will learn to love London. But in the short-term a move is always hard.