A Touch of Magic

One of the most inspiring things about study abroad is feeling the "magic" in the air..

By Carl Cota-Robles

Hi, this is Carl. I was in Broome last semester.  Now I'm in London.  This is (hopefully) the first blog entry of many. I'm just going to cover the main and really cool things about my trip in London on this blog; but if you want a detailed description of everything I've done so far in London, check out the London Blog section of my website at: https://files.nyu.edu/ccr263/public/

Ok, so first really cool thing that happened in London. I saw Platform 9 and 3/4. If you don't know what platform 9 and 3/4 is, you obviously haven't read Harry Potter and should close this webpage right now and pick up that book. If you do know, then keep on reading.

The day after that, we went on a coach tour of London. No, they weren't really coaches, that's what people around here call buses. We stopped to see different landmarks such as the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and we even drove by Big Ben, but unfortunately we didn't get to stop and see it up close.

So far, classes have gone swimmingly. I'm taking three classes over here, British Cinema, Shakespeare, and Screenwriting. I've already started to notice a trend of popularity amongst the classes (3 people transferred out of my British Cinema class and into my Shakespeare class). But I've really enjoyed the movies we've watched in British Cinema so far (Somers Town, The Ladykillers (1955 version) and Picadilly). Picadilly is a silent film, which was kind of difficult to watch at 9am on a Monday morning, but I still enjoyed it once I got into it.

This past weekend, I also went on a walking tour from St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tower of London. That was really fun, albeit a bit cold. We also stopped on the way at places such as the Millennium Bridge (also from Harry Potter) and the Borough Market. The Borough Market was really fun because they had a bunch of cool foods, including the best brownies in the galaxy and the best meat pie in all of England. Mmmmm. Most places also gave out free samples.

Just to finish this post off, I'll give you a little bit of information about events coming up in the future for me:

This Sunday, Feb. 5, I'm going to visit Oxford. Yay!!

On Wednesday, Feb. 8, I'm going to the theatre to see Blood Brothers the musical.

On Sunday Feb. 19, I'm going on a trip to see Bath and Stonehenge.

And on some weekend, I'm planning on participating in Host UK, a program where I get to take a trip to some city outside of London and spend a weekend with a host family.

So that's pretty much it for planned events right now, I'm sure I'll be doing more but I'm not sure when or what yet, so make sure to keep reading my blog to find out!