Arrived at Hotel

View from my window in the St. Giles Hotel.
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Yvette and I arrived in London at 6:30 AM. We were supposed to meet Yvette’s friends who were going to take us to Notting Hill where the Butler office was located. However, at the arrival terminal we could not find her friends despite waiting 45 minutes and paging them over the intercom. We decided to see what Butler had to say about getting to the office. In their packet, they mentioned taking an airbus for $26/person (13 pounds but I can’t find the pound symbol). It was the cheapest and easiest way to go. However, when we asked the airport information desk we found out that the airbus has been disbanded and hasn’t existed for a while! Okay, plan B was to go with a taxi. Splitting the fair between the two of us came to $40/person (20 pounds). Somehow, we managed to get all of our luggage (4 bags each) into that small cab, which looked like a hearse (no idea what the make, model, or year of the vehicle was). We arrived at the London office without a problem. We were greeted by the Butler staff there and were given some light information about the Butler orientation to come. Then, they told us that we had to find our way to the hotel, St. Giles Hotel. They weren’t going to provide transportation for us so we had to hail another cab. Another girl was there (I can’t remember her name for the life of me) and so the three of us mashed all of our luggage and bodies into the cab to cut costs. The hotel was very nice but the first thing I noticed was that everything was so small! I was staying in a room with two twin beds and the room seemed to be about the size of my single at Harvey Mudd! My roommate hadn’t arrived yet so I unloaded my stuff all over the place and met the two girls back in the lobby. We took a walking tour of the surrounding area, just getting lost and seeing the shops on the street. We stopped at a restaurant to eat, which turned out to be a gay restaurant. The restaurant was flanked by tons of bars and pubs, none of which were open since it was only 11 in the morning. The three of us were jet-lagged and felt very tired so we headed back to the hotel after a small brunch.

View from my window in the St. Giles Hotel.
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Back in my room I was so restless and excited that I couldn’t sleep. I figured that I was in LONDON and had to get out and keep doing things even though my body didn’t want to. I was actually only two blocks away from the British Museum and I decided to head over there since mom ranted and raved about it so much.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM IS AMAZING!!! I had no idea where it was when I was walking towards, only that I vaguely remember a sign pointing in the north direction. But when I looked down side streets it was unmistakable. The museum front was huge! I’ve never seen the White House in person, though I imagine that they look similar. I j-walked my way over several streets and pushed through a crowd of tourists to get to the entrance. Having no clue where to go nor what I wanted to see (maps of the museum were like $10 so I passed) I walked aimlessly to the first exhibit I could find. I was pleasantly surprised.

walking the streets in London
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I walked into the huge Egyptian exhibit. They had tons of sarcophaguses, tombs, sculptures, pottery, jewelry, metopes (large square granite blocks with stories on them), and other things that I couldn’t describe. See the pictures for more details. I spent my time reading every single caption of each artifact because I was blown away at how well-kept they were and that it wasn’t behind glass. It was such an amazing feeling to know that people were working on these pieces such a long time ago. I was awe-struck at their crafts and abilities to express and entire story only through pictures. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel some resentment towards the British for stealing such rich culturally-attached pieces from a civilization. So in all, I was glad that I had the opportunity to witness these pieces, but felt guilty for enjoying them out of context. One exhibit seamlessly led to others and I saw a reconstruction of another ancient structure. I can’t remember the names of all of these but I will be going back and taking more careful note of what I’m taking pictures of. I also saw Greek and Roman sculptures, metopes, etc.

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I spent 3 hours at the museum and I felt like I saw less than a quarter of it. I spoke with several of the employees who were like surrogate curators. One man mentioned that the British Museum has been free for and open to the public for hundreds of years. In fact, most of the artifacts are donated by private owners, funds, etc. And if the museum were to charge visitors, most of the artifacts would be taken back. He told me that the museum displayed roughly 5% of its possessions. I later found out that this was a large exaggeration as I received other estimates of 30% and 80%. Those lying curators. Nonetheless, it’s still amazing that they have over 3 million prints in their basement, as well as tons of artifacts similar to those on display, but didn’t make the cut. One man told me that the museum spends roughly $2M a year buying pieces, artifacts, etc. However, last year was a bit more since they just bought a British coin for $640K.

So that was a neat first real day in the city. All of the Butler students were rallied together at 5:00 PM to undergo a quick speech regarding the differences between US and UK. Things like idiomatic phrases (“knock you up” means to knock on the door till you wake up), money, dentistry, politics, study habits, and cell phone use. Just so you all know, I will be getting a phone sometime soon. All plans in the UK provide free incoming calls. So whenever you wanna call me it’s free for me but you’re service provider will charge something per minute. I’ll give you all the phone number when I get it thanks to Gena who studied at Queen Mary University of London this past Fall 2006 semester.

Dinner was provided to us at the hotel. We had some baked salmon, steamed vegetables, potatoes, and bread biscuits. The food was much better than the plane and I ate healthily. Most of the American students were repulsed by the food, but I was so hungry it didn’t matter, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as Hoch.

After dinner, a bunch of us went to a couple of Pubs. Their beer is something like $8/pint. I had Hoegarden, Strongbow, and Stella Atrois. Very nice beers, all go down smoothly and much tastier than anything at Mudd. Pubs close at 11 pm so we ended that fiasco early and headed on back to the hotel. We stopped at Licester square briefly just to see what the big fuss was all about. We finally ended at the hotel’s bar and just hung out until about 1 AM. Needless to say I slept soundly. My roommate wasn’t feeling to good since he had so much to drink. He was being quite obnoxious and it was waking me up every now and then.