Update!

Ok, so I've been doing absolutely terribly at keeping this blog up to date, but I have been keeping a simple journal of what I have been up to so far on my trip so I think that I will just put all of that into this post and call it good haha. Here's what's been going on in London for the past few days:

July 10 continued...
Had our orientation and got a tour of the school which is very beautiful but fairly small (only about 3,000 students). Got a bus to our flats where we were told our groups and given the keys. The flats are small and scarcely furnished with 3 bedrooms split one, three, and two. I am on the bottom bunk in the triple room. We have two small bathrooms but one has a bathtub with a shower head hose fixture and no shower curtain so it is basically useless. The toilets are weird and often hard to flush. The water comes out hot in one stream and cold on the other.
Went out to dinner at The Duke of Wellington and got a roasted chicken salad with beets, green and red tomatoes, and other veggies. Came back and went to bed after a very long and exhausting day!

July 11
Slept in til 11 since we were all exhausted from the traveling. Went to the grocery store (Waitrose) to get some supplies. Went on the city bus tour as a group and were able to see a ton of London sights including St. Paul’s, Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye, Tower of London, London and Tower Bridges, and lots more. Went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant (Spaghetti House) with a group of girls. Went to a pub to watch the second half of the Spain/Netherlands “football” game. Tried a Pimm's which is supposedly a very English drink...it was pretty good but very sweet.

July 12
Woke up at 8:00 to get down to Buckingham Palace around 10:15 to see the changing of the guard. Went to buy our oyster passes for the tube. Stood behind the gates right at the front but behind a lookout hut so we had a bad view so we only watched some of the ceremony and then got overwhelmed by the people and the slowness of it all. We took the tube to Oxford Street and walked along and did a little shopping. Went to Carphonewarehouse to get a phone and had quite the ordeal there. I tried to get minutes on a phone I already had, it didn’t work, went home and set up the other phone that I thought wasn’t working and was luckily able to put my non-refundable SIM card in that phone. Went to Pret a Manger, a sandwich shop, for avocado and chicken sandwich for lunch. Got a straightener from Argos (where you oddly do all of your shopping in a catalog and then just take the item number up to the checkout where they find it in the back and bring it out for you). Came back to our flats to relax before we went to Regent’s College to talk to the travel agent about weekend trips. Went to dinner in the refectory and then went to a short meeting to discuss the syllabus and plans. Came back to the flats to try to plan weekend trips and all became very overwhelmed so we decided to call it a night haha


July 13
Woke up and got ready for class. Took the tube to King’s Cross/St. Pancras and walked to Chandler’s House for classes at University College of London. Had an intro lecture about National Health System and education in the UK. Had a welcome lunch of sandwiches and desserts with some of the UCL faculty. Walked over to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children for our first site visit. Listened to multiple Speech Language Therapists’ (SLT's) lecture about various topics (cochlear implants, dysphagia, TNE department, etc.). Went back to the flats and got McDonald’s for dinner. Took the tube to Westminster and walked around and saw parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, and the London Eye which was very relaxing and gorgeous! We all so excited to finally be seeing everything up close and personal! Took the tube to Paddington because we heard that Platform 9 ¾ was there but it was not haha. Came back to the flats for the night.


July 14
Our morning class was about augmentative and alternative communication (AAG). We did a little bit of role playing and also watched several cool videos of persons with different forms of AAG. We went to City Lit, an adult learning center, in the afternoon for our site visit and had an incredible visit there related to stuttering (in the UK they call it stammering). We first had a bit of an orientation session and then split up into groups. I first went to a room where two stammerers talked about their experiences and shared how the stammering courses at the school helped them with their stammers. We then went to another room where we separated into groups and had small discussions with other MSU students and a couple of stammerers about perceptions and beliefs about stammering. The stammerers then gave brief presentations about their own personal experiences. It was a very touching and interesting day and was a great opportunity to have personal interaction with these people!
After the site visit we went out to eat at Wagamama’s in Kensington with the whole class and our professor. It is a modern Japanese restaurant and very tasty. Brittany and I ordered a Chocolate Wasabi cake for dessert…it was very interesting but pretty delicious (at least I thought so...a lot of the other girls didn't agree lol) ☺ After dinner we came back to our flats and spent a very stressful few hours planning our weekend trips to Dublin and Paris. We are all very thankful that we got all of that planning out of the way! haha

July 15
Went to class and had a presentation about lip-reading and deaf communication. Had lunch and then went to an elementary school where we met with a group of about twenty deaf children. Some of the children had hearing aids and many had cochlear implants. The kids came from all sorts of backgrounds and tons of different countries. Many of them spoke two to four languages. It was amazing how well the children could communicate having been brought up in the school system with spoken English as the means of communication. They were absolutely adorable and very intelligent! Even though they were deaf, most of the kids had very distinctive British accents and very normal sounding speech. It was a great experience to spend an hour with them and hear what they had to say about their country and their experience with deafness.
After our visit to the school we went to the British Museum and walked around for a couple of hours. It is a huge museum and would take days to see everything! We did a fairly quick walk-through and saw artifacts and sculptures from all over the world including Egypt, Greece, China, and Europe.
We then came back to our flat and had dinner and planned trips for the weekend. We went to the store and bought some Marmite as recommended by the woman who gave our presentation this morning….it’s definitely some interesting stuff haha. That’s about it for today. We’re off the Bath tomorrow for the day and then heading into a whirlwind of activities and day trips this weekend. Still doing well and having a great time here in London! ☺