A Little Piece of Me: My name is Melissa and I am a 20 year old college student from the University of California, San Diego, and originally from a city near Los Angeles, California. Choosing to study abroad for 6 months in London, specifically King’s College London, is the biggest move I have ever made. I chose London for several reasons. Some include ones I wish to not share publicly. Others include the many opportunities to explore several countries, cultures, and perspectives while still living in a English speaking country. Living in California, a relatively high privileged place, I would say us Californians are a fairly self-absorbed kind. I do not at all mean that we are stuck up and conceited. I mean that California “has it all”: amazing food, favorable weather, the entertainment capital of the world, and much more. Speaking for myself and from what I have observed, until recently, I never cared about the rest of the world. I grew up thinking that the United States was on a pedestal which the rest of the world envied. While attending UCSD, I learned that was definitely not the case and that the rest of the world has an infinite amount of wonders and experiences that can not be found in the United States alone. So my goal in this journey is to be physically, mentally, and culturally immersed in this new country on the other side of the planet within my 6 month stay. I decided to launch this blog to document my adventure for myself and to share what I learn, see, and do whilst across the pond. Enjoy!
Our last meal together in London at our favorite spot. I can't believe our time here together is over. It's crazy that we met here in London but we both go to UCSD! Hella thankful for how quickly we connected and became each other's rock out here! My study abroad experience wouldn't be anything without you, see you soon 😘👯 #London #StudyAbroad #UCSDtoKCL #MildCaseOfCultureShock (at My Old Dutch)
Thank you to these British mates, especially my flatmates, for being absolutely amazing❤️ From being so welcoming, to helping me adapt to cultural changes, to even traveling around Europe with me, I'm glad to have made some international friendships that will carry on past my time in London. Hope you keep your promises and visit me in California❤️ #CountdownToCalifornia #StudyAbroad #MildCaseOfCultureShock (at King's College London)
Damn. I haven’t been keeping up with my blog! As soon as we got back to London from our backpacking trip, I immediately had to jump into finals mode. I had to write and turn in an essay about a week after we came back, today I just took a final, and now I have two more to go!
I will update my blog on the last cities of my backpacking trip when I get the chance.
Just a few super random midnight thoughts:
I am so glad that back here in most of London, and especially in the United States, water in restaurants are free! It was so annoying having to pay a couple euros just to get water.
Spring is definitely here! It’s so cool seeing the seasons change! Before my backpacking trip, all the trees were just branches and it was always cloudy. The day I got back to London, all the trees were in almost full bloom and the sun was out! I can’t wait for finals to be over and Jen and I want to go to all the big gardens and parks to see how it’s changed since we last went in January.
When I go back to the United States, one of the biggest things I will miss about Europe/UK is that taxes are already included in the prices you see. So when you go shopping for clothes, for example, whatever is on the price tag is what you will pay for!
I will also honestly miss all the convenient cafes and fast food shops like Pret, Caffe Nero, Wasabi, Kimchee, Costa, Greggs, Tesco, etc. Especially with like Pret and Caffe Nero, there’s literally one or both every 5 min or less of walking distance between each other.
Back at home home, I would never study anywhere else but my own room. For some reason I hate studying in Geisel (UCSD main library). I always felt most efficient at my own desk. Here, for one it is almost impossible for me to get anything done in my own room considering how absolutely awful my wifi is. Every single day the past several weeks I have spent 4-6 hours at cafes and sometimes the library! My usual spots are Caffe Nero across Waterloo Bridge or one of the several Starbucks locations on Strand or Embankment.
Like I said, today I took my first final! So different than what I’m used to. To begin with, I don’t write essays so to have to write essays for my finals in economics classes is already stressful for me. I spent the past couple weeks non stop studying for this final. It’s so weird having soo much time being able to study (or ‘revise’ in British terms). I haven’t had lectures since March 27th and it’s May 13th and I just had my first final. Weird. Jen and I were talking about how torturing this limbo phase we have been in. We got almost a whole two months between last classes and our finals! We’re used to only having a couple to a few days in between the last class and finals. Anyways, I had to take a 75 minute bus ride to get all the way to the venue where the finals were being held. This was pretty intimidating since there I was amongst approximately 1500 students in one hall taking different finals at the same time. I felt like I was taking the SATs again, but so much more official. Overall, I don’t think I did too bad!
After almost 1 month, 13 cities, 8 countries, 9 trains, and 8 flights, I successfully completed my first backpacking trip! From ice caving in the Swiss Alps to driving around the beaches of Santorini, from waking up at 3am to catch flights to pub crawls till dawn, from dealing with creeps to making friends in hostels, from being pickpocketed to undoubtedly having the most amazing, growing, and culturing experience of my life. Also couldn't have done it all without my partners @jenniferia73 and @morganlefay214 ! More than ready to keep exploring this incredible world 🎒🙆🌍 #SpringBreak #Eurotrip #MildCaseOfCultureShock
We arrived by train around noon. We had told out airbnb host that we would check in around 1:30. It took us like 3 hours to find our way to her place because we couldn't find wifi, everyone seemed to think we were trying to get to the youth hostel in town so they all led us to it, and we don't have phone plans to call her. So those first three hours in Naples was pretty much hell. We all were in so much pain from carrying all our bags around and we were originally brought to a really...non tourist part of town so we got a bad first impression. But once we got to the lively, tourist part of town and finally put our stuff in our accommodation (which was basically in a former church nursery) our stay took a nice 180 turn. Walking through all the little narrow streets, with tons of vespas and motorcycles and laundry drying in clotheslines everywhere, it truly felt like what you imagine Italy to be like. It felt so authentic it was awesome. There isn't much to do or see in Naples so we just walked around all the shops and plazas but it was still fun. Naples is also where the first modern day pizza originated from so of course we had to have pizza. It was definitely amazing!! We couldn't be out too late because I had a Skype interview for a summer internship, which I'm still awaiting a response. We also had to wake up at like 6:30am to catch our flight to Athens. Naples kind of was like Geneva, didn't do much but still enjoyed my time!
Officially my favorite city in Italy! We spent two nights here and stayed in a bnb, which we were lucky to get because our previous bnb cancelled our reservation just days before us coming. It was a bit difficult because this time we didn't get wifi so we had to figure out a lot of stuff by going to our host's family owned cafe/bar. It was so nice though because we felt like we were part of the family from going in there so often haha. On our first day, we were able to hit all the important and famous spots! At first we went to Vatican City but the Sistine Chapel was closed for some reason and we felt the line for St. Peter's Basilica was crazy long. So we just decided to do the rest of Rome. We got gelato twice, literally one after the other, as we walked to our first destination which was Piazza Navona. The second gelato place, Quinto Gelato, was really famous with a bunch of pictures of celebrities that have been there too. Unfortunately, Jen and I made the mistake of getting Nutella as one of our scoops because it literally was just a scoop of Nutella instead of like Nutella flavored gelato. So Jen and I did not feel so good the next couple hours haha but it was all good! After the piazza we went to Pantheon which was an incredibly old church. After that we went to the disappointing Trevi Fountain. This was one of the spots I was most excited for but it was under construction. So there was no water and a bunch of scaffolding. We took a bit of a walk to the south part of Rome where the huge Piazza Venezia building, Colosseum, and Roman Forum (ruins) were located. All these spots were so beautiful and ancient! We had dinner near the colosseum and made our way home. The worst thing to happen to me this entire trip was on the bus back to our bnb. We got onto a really packed bus and after two stops the bus emptied quite a bit and I looked down to my purse being open and my wallet gone. I'd say I'm a very optimistic person so I'm super grateful I had my expensive camera around my neck, my phone in my hand, and most my money and passport in a pocket of of my purse. So the only thing I lost was my Michael Kors wallet, driver's license, a debit card, two credit cards, and €80. But I can't wait to come back in the summer!
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