London: Tube Travelling and Dr. O'Boyle

Hey everyone!
My second day drew to a close successfully, although I started off the day on a bad note: oversleeping. Six of us had planned to meet in the lobby at 9am to take the tube to our classroom building for orientation. I woke up at 8:58. Luckily, I had already packed my bag the night before, and I didn't smell *that* bad, so I just threw on some clothes, grabbed my bag, and opened the flat door to see my girlfriend waiting patiently.

We allotted extra time to get to the London Centre (as our classroom building is called) by tube because we wanted to make sure we had time to navigate and arrived on time. The tube seemed efficient and safe, but not clean. We all have tube debit cards called Oyster cards, which make paying for the tube a breeze, even though a round trip from the Landward to the Centre is £3. As it happened, we had no incidents and arrived early, although we are all still getting used to traveling in London. We stopped for breakfast at a small cafe on the opposite side of the block from the London Centre. I had a "Toast and Bacon" Breakfast, which ended up being a greasy yet quite pleasing breakfast-ham sandwich. I was impressed that due to the thermal bag in which it was put, the sandwich was still quite warm when I started eating it.

My first orientation session was chaired by Dr. Cornelius O'Boyle. At first he came off very friendly, asking us what we had done the night before, what drinking games are played, what bars/pubs to go to each night, etc. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. Then, after about 20 minutes of this, he stopped and said that if that's all we wanted to get out of our London experience, we might as well go back home. If we treated the London program like an extension of the Notre Dame bubble, then that's exactly what it would become for us.

I'm glad he said this to everyone. I was one of the few who didn't end up at the Duke of York pub just down the street the night before. I definitely want to experience more of London than just a pub down the street in which there are already forty ND students. That being said, I think Dr. O'Boyle's message was not that we shouldn't go to the Duke of York pub, or make sure we don't see any other group of ND students when seeing the London sights, but that we should have our priorities straight and make sure we take advantage of being in such a diverse and interesting city. We should find what interests us, what makes us tick, in the city of London. I'm excited for the opportunity to do so.