London

Hello! I've been in London for about a week now, I've just been busy getting adjusted and everything.
Queen Mary is actually in the East End of London ... meaning its the eastern part of London. I guess it is notoriously known for signs of poverty and crime, but has gotten much better in the past years. It is home to a lot of the new immigrants who came to London ... so it has a large jewish and bangladeshi and Indian community. (as you walk around there are a million signs that say "HALAL food") Our closest tube station is Mile End and we're also walking distance to Whitechapel which has a lot of cheap street vendors.
I finally got my student oyster card... which gives me a 30% discount on oyster fares (which are already discounted) so I'll be able to actually do all the touristy stuff.
Anyways, school is a little different ... a lot of the classes are only like one final determines you entire grade which kind of scares me - i know i'm gonna fall behind. At least I only have class Monday - Wed. =) Its weird too because lectures for one class may be split up into separate lectures throughout the same day ... so for bio i have class monday 10-11, and then 12-1.
So far, we've just done a lot of shopping... went to ikea and random supermarkets. We also took a little boat cruise that was sponsored by the uni for the new associate students... which acutally wasn't as fun as it sounds - but we did get to see the green laser light at Greenwich that denotes the prime meridian.
More to come later =)