All twenty London students arrived safe and sound (if a bit sleepy) yesterday morning around 8:30am British Summer Time. I (Peter) met them at the airport, and we took a bus into city center.
Our lodgings are at St Athans, the “eco hotel” in the Bloomsbury neighborhood that GC has long used for London-based courses.
After dropping off luggage and finding some lunch, we walked as a group to the Russell Square tube (i.e. subway) stop and bought Oyster Cards, which will get us into the tube and onto busses throughout the course.
Students then broke into five-person groups and embarked on a walking scavenger hunt, trekking after useful things like ATMS, pharmacies, and laundromats, as well as things like a statue of Noor Inayat Khan, a restaurant featuring cuisine from outside Britain (e.g. Caribbean, African, South Asian, Middle Eastern), and Platform 9¾.
In their spare time, students read the first couple hundred pages of Zadie Smith’s 2000 novel White Teeth, a wry, open-hearted take on British identity in an increasingly multicultural London.
Needless to say, we were all tired by the end of the day, but eager for more!
Blog post provided by Peter Miller, assistant professor of English.
