I can’t believe the time has come where I am getting ready to leave. My experience here has been absolutely nothing like what I imagined! The people in my host culture were reserved but almost more than I expected. While taking the tube around people rarely talked to you which was fine but where I didn’t expect it was when trying to get places if you were in someone’s way nobody would ever say excuse me to get by they would just push by. Also, when walking on the streets I felt like I stood out in the sense that I had to always be weaving through the people that would just walk in a straight line. They wouldn’t move so if I didn’t weave around people I would be running into people. Lastly, this observation was more funny but because they are so reserved they don’t say bless you to each other when someone sneezes.

My food accusation was also not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I enjoyed the food actually! The differences between their food and our food aren’t bad ones and they actually eat healthier than we do in my opinion even though the locals don’t notice that. They don’t use salt as heavily as we do and no high fructose corn syrup! I noticed there food doesn’t have as long of a shelf life as ours does because they don’t process there food nearly as much as we do. I thought it was amazing that they didn’t use high fructose corn syrup and even just looking at the ingredients of things, the ingredients are so much simpler than ours. I did hear they had great fish and chips and I am not to crazy about fish and chips in America but I did try them one time and they were delicious! I tried them in Brighton, located along the coast, so I knew they would be really fresh there and I was happy that I waited to try them there! Also, the whole baked beans and toast experience I didn’t end up trying. However, I didn’t eat true breakfast there in general because I would eat breakfast in my room and I just bought cereal and bagels from the grocery store. My favorite food experience in London and one of the things I’ll miss the most is the Real Food Market which was located by the eye. It was a tiny market but full of high quality authentic diversified food. I tried there was delicious but my favorite would probably be the hummus and falafel Mediterranean wrap.

The residence halls living experience was nothing that I imagined. Everybody participating in the summer program were scattered throughout the hall. I never actually really knew the people on the floor I lived on. On the ground floor though they had a common room and we would at all often hang out there.

My interactions with my host culture was also not as expected but I stay open minded in having conversations with people when they opened up to me. Since the people there are so reserved, I never initiated conversation with them really. When I first arrived I struggled with home sickness and was really overwhelmed by the city end everything going on with it. After the first week though I began feeling better about it and slowly became a lot more comfortable with my surroundings.

Now that my time is coming to an end I am very excited to go home. It took a long time for it to become real to me though that I actually was going home. It truly amazed me how comfortable I became there. My last day running my final errands I realized that I will indeed miss it there. I’ll miss the adventure but I am especially going to miss all of the amazing people I have met here! I have formed some great friendships and those people truly had a great influence on the my time here as well!

Above everybody there were three people I grew the closest too! Kyla, Angelica, and Chelsea. We made a lot of great memories together and I can’t wait to go visit them in their home states. My time abroad would have been a lot different without them and I am truly blessed to have met them!

I am most excited to see my boyfriend when I get home. I really feel like if I didn’t have a boyfriend the moments of it being really hard wouldn’t have been as big of a struggle and I would of been able to study abroad for longer than six weeks. However, because that’s not the case and I am in a relationship I think the six weeks turned out being the absolute perfect amount of time! I really enjoyed my time there and definitely don’t regret a thing!

            My last weekend abroad I took the train under the channel to Paris, France! I went with two girls I met in the summer program and it was absolutely amazing! I have to say though, as much as I loved Paris I do like London more and wouldn’t of wanted to study abroad in Paris. It was definetly interesting trying to adapt to a new culture after getting comfortable around London. The most obvious challenge would be the language barrier in Paris however that wasn’t even the most challenging part of the new culture. I downloaded a speak easy french app onto my phone and practiced before I went some simple phrases. I’d have to say the phrase I used the most while there was, “parlez-vous anglais?”! Most people could speak english, there was only one gal who couldn’t in a small bagguette place we went for lunch and we would just point to what we would like. The most challenging part of Paris was nagivating around. They also have an underground train like London but called the Metropolitan. The metropolitan however stinks and was very confusing! We obviously still had to use it to get around but London’s tube is much better! So once we arrived and found our hostel we took a map from reception, sat down at there restaurant and ordered some food, and planned our weekend there! Exciting, and we even met some friends who were from California! Our first day we bought tickets for a hop on hop off boat that went in a circle along the canal and that day we visited Notre Dame, Champs-Elysees, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower. The second day we explored a little bit, went to a cute little creperie, the love lock bridge, Versailles, and back to the Eiffel Tower. We spent

close to four hours at the Eiffel tower the second day just relaxing and we bought food at a close grocery store for dinner. Then after the sun sets the Eiffel Tower glitters for the first five minutes at the top of every hour.

Although two very busy days in Paris and I was beyond exhausted traveling back to London, I am so thankful that I was able to take advantage of this opportunity. My one hope while abroad was to travel outside of the UK and I did it! I can’t believe I have less than a week left in London now before I fly back home. I have seriously had an amazing time here but I am also very excited to go back home!