Our marketing professor brought us to Fulham stadium to watch a football (soccer) match today! We took the train from Richmond station into Putney, and walked for 20 minutes to arrive at the stadium. The fans there were absolutely crazy! There were families with young kids who were just as into their home team as the adults were! Older men with lots of friends use this as a social gathering event. Lots of chanting and singing from the fans of both teams accompanied the game. Fulham was up 1-0 almost the whole match, but then with 6 minutes of added time at the end, West Bromwich scored on a corner kick. It was a big upset for the home team fans but an exciting game to watch nonetheless.
At the beginning of the game my professor announced that there would be an extra credit opportunity for us. We had to purchase and consume half of the above drink, known as "Bovril", and he had to watch us drink it. I was the first one who volunteered to purchase it. It smelled like a barn. The taste was a very salty, "beefy drink", as shown on the cup. It was just about as tasty as the container appears, but I finished my half before anyone else, and earned my 10 extra points toward my final grade in the class. I washed it down quickly afterward with a cadbury hot chocolate. Cadbury is popular and apparently quite delicious here in London, but I have yet to try just a plain candy bar.
After the game we split up in two groups to go to different restaurants for dinner. I chose Pizzeria Rustica, and boy was it an excellent choice!!! The pizza was amazing!! It was very thin, not too much sauce, and was huge for only around 7 pounds. It was interesting that they served the pizzas whole and we had to cut them ourselves. I'm not ashamed to say I ate the whole thing by myself...The service was great, and I definitely want to go back again soon. It's about a ten minute walk from school!
As expected, there are so many changes that I've had to adapt to while here in London. Culture shock has been a regular occurrence for me with all sorts of things. The pictures above just show a few of those examples. The hot and cold water do not come out of the same spout; instead you have to move your hands back and forth between the two to get the full effect. They also have tons of different coins from one pence, two pence, five pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, 1 pound, and 2 pounds. It's hard telling the difference between them in the middle of a store when I'm trying to pay for something. Also, the keyboards in the library are different. They have a key for Euros and Pounds, and the @ key is with the apostrophe, while the quotation mark is on the 2. The shift keys also don't say shift, and are smaller than the shift bars I am used to. Typing has been a bit of a challenge on these computers, but maybe I'll get used to it. A few other random culture shocks were like when I met a girl in my Psychology class from Bulgaria, and an hour later she gave me a hug to say goodbye. The ground floor is actually the first floor here, so finding my class took be a few extra minutes. When we figured out how much gas would be per gallon in U.S. dollars in comparison to what it is here right now, it came out to around $8 per gallon which is crazy! Their version of a dollar store is known as Poundland, which makes sense! Also, they have a TK Maxx instead of a TJ Maxx, but I wasn't able to find out why. Here, they call french fries chips, and potato chips crisps. Emails with professors are also very formal here, as they address students with "Dear..." and end them with "Sincerely...". Rain boots here are also called "Wellies." There are so many more that I can't even think of right now, but I'm slowly started to adapt to all of these changes. Stonehenge and Bath tomorrow! Pictures to come!
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