London Weekend 2009 Part 1

London.

Thanks to Hollywood and literature more than anything else, the city had always enchanted me. 

It was where Peter Pan soared over Big Ben; where Marlowe bobbed on the River Thames and framed his search for Kurtz; where Shakespeare's plays were first performed right beside bear-baiting pits and brothels; where 007 called home.

They say if you're bored in London, you're bored with life. 

But as I walked through London with 44 other University of Illinois students from across England, it wasn't London I was bored with -- I was bored with being in a new place surrounded by old ideas.

Cocooned in American accents, blitzed by the familiar names of locations from Champaign, I realized I'd changed.  The month and a half in Bristol had distanced me from U of I by more than time and place.  I was a different person, too.  Just different enough to be uneasy around all the orange and blue.  Just different enough to be bored, even annoyed, with our UIUC way of communicating.

From the first night's dinner chat, it wasn't hard to see that many of the UIUC students were treating study abroad as a party abroad.  They chatted clubs and nightlife, one-upping stories with crazier stories.  Nothing is more University of Illinois than crazy nightlife stories.  It's basically a social currency.  And students will go to mad-crazy-wild-stupid-dangerous ends to get as much of this currency as they can.

I'd left my stash of this currency on the plane.

Don't get me wrong: I've had the time of my life at Illinois.   I love a good time.  I enjoy listening and sometimes partaking in the fantastical excessiveness that tops the social agenda of your typical UIUC student.   Plus, who better to go to a London club with than U of I students?  

Still, I felt they were blocking me from London.  Odd, I know, considering they were the reason I was taking advantage of this free London Weekend in the first place.  But I was in a unique situation.  I was the the only U of I spring study abroad student at Bristol.  By comparison, there were six of 'em at Leeds.   Which means most of them had never had the challenge of sitting on a plane to a place where you don't know a single person.  I did.  I'd had to build a new social life. And the one I built in Bristol was different from the one I'd left at U of I.  

This bored annoyance diminished over the course of the weekend.  There wasn't enough space in my head for minor discontent and all the new experiences in London.  London's way too good for that.  And the 44 study abroad students were way too much fun.

For one, we had four things bringing us together: 

1. Free money (or at least money that's disguised as being free).

2. Free nights in a hotel.

3. Free food.

4. Beer -- free or enough of it not to care.

Put 44 U of I kids from across England in a London hotel with all four of these criteria satisfied. And what does that mean?  

That's the epic of London Weekend 2009 Part 2.