So, I woke up knowing that I had my Protocol orientation meeting this morning at 10am. So, I got up and showered and what not and got out the door with enough time to spare….or so I thought. It turns out I still kind of SUCK at estimating how much time it takes to get from my house to different spots in London through the tube system. I know it will come in time but I unfortunately failed hard and ended up about 20 minutes late for the meeting. It was fine though and Michael (my contact) didn’t mind at all. We sat down and I had to fill out a ton of paper work in order to get me set up with Key Portfolio (the company I get paid through), National Insurance, the General Teaching Council and so on. Basically, filling in the same information on multiple sheets of paper for a long time. It’s a good thing I knew my address already! Michael also gave me all of the sheets of information to get me set-up with a bank account at HSBC. Once that was completed I had a chat with a coordinator for the Southwest London area about my teaching experiences and who I see myself as a teacher. On a side note…for some reason every time I talk to a British person the conversation always seems to lead to football. The best part is, they are always amazed at how much I know about the sport and are really impressed!
Once my orientation was completed I went down to a Pret a Manger to pick up a toasted sandwich and a bottle of water for lunch. On the walk down towards Chancery Lane I noticed an area called “Lincoln’s Inn Fields” which is a lovely park and tennis area beside the London School of Economics. I decided to have lunch here and enjoy the beautiful day. This is the beginning of my getting sidetracked.
After lunch I ended up walking down to Covent Garden Market to take in the sights a bit earlier in the day than I did yesterday. The market has an extremely vibrant atmosphere and there are many pubs, cafes, and shops with people moving this way and that. It’s wonderful to just walk around in places like this just to take in the atmosphere. I popped into a tiny upstairs toy shop that actually sells 19th century style card theatres for kids to play with. It was quite bizarre, almost like walking back in time…but then again a lot of London does that to you. I bought a card model of Shakespeare’s Globe for £6 while I was there. It looks like it’ll be a good rainy day thing to tackle when I’m feeling a bit bored.
From this point I figured it would be a good idea to head up to Tottenham Court Road to the HSBC bank there to set up my account. It was a loooooooooooooooooong wait until I finally got in to see somebody, but I managed to read The Guardian (my newspaper of choice) while I was waiting, so something good came out of it . I set up a free bank account with HSBC, even though the guy tried to get me to agree to something else, so I have no fees of any kind unless I use my debit card outside of the UK. Which is fine because if I’m going to be travelling anywhere I’ll just take cash with me when I go as opposed to debiting. The only catch is I have to deposit at least £500 every month to maintain the account, which shouldn’t be a problem.
While I was waiting to get onto the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road I noticed a sign for the British Museum and a new exhibit they have there, “History of the World in 100 Items”. The sign also denoted that it was near Tottenham Court Road…so obviously I had to detour that way. I ended up taking the audio tour of their most popular and important items. This diverted me away from their entire collection but I got to see the highlights which was nice. Pictures of my entire museum trip (there are a lot) are available on my Facebook page.After my trip to the museum I was walking back down the road passed another park and it just struck me how beautiful it was because it was empty…there were barely any people or cars around at all (strange for London) so I had to take some pictures. With the sun starting to set it became quite nice, I got really artsy at this point and tried for some good shots that I’m pretty happy with.
From this point I just decided to go on a huge walk around. I needed to hit Topman again to get a pair of black shoes (mission succeeded) and ended up popping into Uniqlo to check it out and buying a tie for £6 and an umbrella (essential) for £10. I’m definitely going to be living on those two shops plus H&M while here. Though there are a bunch of others suggested by Dusty that I’ll be checking out for sure.I took some time….a lot of time….walking through Soho and the West End all of the way back down to the North Bank and working my way back to Covent Garden. I passed London Fashion Week during my walk….more on this in a later post.
I headed back to the market for dinner, just as beautiful in the evening as the middle of the day. I went to Punch and Judy pub and enjoyed some hand-pumped London Pride and a Steak and Ale pie for dinner. After that it was back home.
I have had a HECK of a three days and my body is super pissed at me for it. I’m specifically not going to be heading into London during the day tomorrow because Protocol is hosting a little boat cruise down the Thames at 6pm. More on that tomorrow!
Cheers, Love, Rock The World!
Erik
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