Anywho, where shall I begin? I believe the last time I posted was on Sunday, and it is now Thursday. Oh, dear! I've done so much in these past four days, and as I said in my title: I am almost done with my first week of the internship! I can't believe how fast it's going by, but at the same time I feel as if I've been here for ages. Tomorrow will mark a week since my arrival, but I feel as if I've been here for a month. It's weird how quickly you can become accustomed to a new place or a new way of life.
So let me tell you what I've been doing during this internship so far. We start everyday at 10am – not too early, which is wonderful. I'm not a morning person, you see. We start every morning with a lesson to set our minds and hearts on God for the rest of the day and for the rest of the internship, really. Then, we get some time after the lesson to talk amongst ourselves about how we can continue to grow in our faith and help others grow in theirs as well. Usually we finish all of this at about 12pm. Afterwards, we have lunch together as a group until about 1pm. We then head over to University College of London (UCL) to share our faith with other university students until Bible discussion (which we hold in a University of London café area at 3pm everyday). Then round 3:30pm, we (everyone who joined Bible discussion) all head over to a park to either hang out, play some football (also known as soccer for us Americans), or play some games. I pretty much summed up everything in short, because it would talk too long to describe it ALL. But each day is quite exhausting – we do a lot of walking and a lot of talking. My feet definitely hurt by the end of each day, and I sleep like a log every single night. And so far, the other interns and I have been able to see God really work in our lives and the lives of others as well. We are constantly having great conversations with others about God and the Bible, and we always have wonderful time together (as interns) as well. I already feel so close to the other interns, and I know they will be friends for life. There are 15 of us, but we've become such tight-knit family in such a short amount of time. Oh, and I've finally got a hang of the Tube system, which makes getting around London much, much easier now!
Now, let me tell you some interesting things that I've learned about London this week! Let me start off telling you what I dislike most about London, and one of the most appalling facts about London I have learned thus far: they do not serve iced coffee here. Can you believe it? No iced coffee. None at all, zip, nil. Sure, they'll serve you regular hot coffee. However, if you ask for iced coffee, they will either serve you an iced latte, an iced cappuccino, or a frappuccino of some sort. The closest you can come to iced coffee here is an iced Americano – they simply will not ice the coffee here. In fact, when I asked some of the other interns about this (most of them are from the UK), they didn't even know what iced coffee was. No, I don't mind drinking hot coffee, but I do love my iced coffee. So much, in fact, that I used to get an iced coffee everyday at NYU during the school year, even if it was -10ºF outside. But let's move on from this iced coffee dilemma and talk about other things, because I'm starting to crave iced coffee. So another interesting fact: UK students who want to go into medicine go into medicine straight away. They don't have four years of undergraduate pre-medicine and then four years of a separate medical school like we Americans have. They apply to university as a medical student (right out of 12th grade) and stay at the same university for a six-year medical program – from the moment they enter their first year of university, they are considered a medical student. And once their six years are over, they are doctors (considering that they passed all of their required exams)! It makes our process to become a physician seem so long and tedious. Also, since they don't have pre-medicine here, it's quite difficult to explain to the Brits what I'm doing at university – I end up telling most of them that I'm majoring in biology and on the road to becoming a doctor.
So there are some interesting facts about London/England/UK! There are many more interesting facts, of course, but sadly I can't detail them all. It is quite different here than America, but I absolutely love it. I wasn't so sure about studying abroad in London before I came here – I was kind of on the fence about it. However, after spending only a week in London, my desire to study abroad here has been completely solidified. I've already started my application for the spring semester study abroad program, and it's not even due until September! I hope (so badly) that I will be able to come back to London in the spring.
Well, I must be off, I need to get my rest, but I hope this post will suffice for now. I'll be sure to post within the next few days. But for now, enjoy these lovely photos of the Tower Bridge and the Thames! The other interns and I had lunch in Potters Fields Park today, so I made sure to grab some photos. The weather here has been quite beautiful, and it's only rained a few times. But I don't want to get sidetracked right now, I need sleep! Goodnight all – I hope your summers are going as lovely as mine.
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