The first two days...

First off, a little about me. I am a senior level student at ULM majoring in Risk Management and Insurance. It is due to the wonderful staff and incredible insurance department at ULM that I have the opportunity to work in London now.

I arrived in London Saturday morning and since I truly wish for this blog to be a thorough account of this experience I plan to back up four days and start at the beginning. The plane ride over was quite lengthy but enjoyable none the less. I have found that any opportunity can be a chance to learn something new and I approached it with that attitude. My flight connected in Dallas. I wasn't quite sure of how the grouping would go since we were flying to London on a 767 and there were plenty of passengers waiting to board. However, they called for group two and that included me. While in line I glanced at the ticket of the woman in front of me to make sure that I was in the correct line. Strangely enough her ticket read 38A and I was holding 38B. She turned out to be a very nice Brit living in Dallas. Imagine that! I am heading off to England to work and she has moved to Dallas to work. And I thought...all the blondes want to be brunette and all the brunettes want to be blonde. =) It does get even more interesting from there. She actually works for AIG handling medical malpractice claims as she was formerly a nurse. So, this led to quite an enjoyable flight over with lengthy conversations regarding England, the States, the insurance market, global economy and red wine.

After arriving in London I did feel quite a bit of jet lag. I honestly had not anticipated the six hour difference to really slow me down that much. Boy was I wrong. I made my way to the Premier on Old Kent Road and it was lights out until Sunday. However, Sunday had a purpose and I intended to fufill it. I needed to figure out how to navigate this massive city and be capable of finding my way to work by 9:00 a.m. the following morning among the early Monday hustle and bustle of 7 million people. Easy enough right?

So...Sunday morning I bought a map and jumped on the bus. Yes, the red double decker bus. I even sat on the top. I decided to hop off of the bus at Tower Bridge and wander around for a bit. During this stop I popped in to the Tower Bridge Station and picked up an oyster card. This card allows you to ride all public transport for a much better price than simply paying for each individual ticket. At this point it was getting time for lunch so I went off in search of something authentic to eat. It is really fun to order off of a menu and not know what anything is. Sort of like treating yourself to a surprise. Along the way I noticed a sign stating that a restaurant was below. It said to simply follow the steps down and take a left. I figured that was as good as anything. The steps went down in between two brick buildings and it would have been difficult to know that anything was there if there were no sign. So, I wandered on down and lo and behold it was almost like another city under the city. There were cobblestone streets and ornate buildings. I picked a place called the Mudlark and had my first English meal.

During lunch I studied the map of London. Of course the one street I needed to get to was not on the map. But, I was able to narrow it down and make some sort of educated guess. I decided to roll the dice and take the train that I beleived would get me into the vicinty. Once the train stopped I jumped off, looked left, looked right, decided on left and began walking. Can you believe it...two blocks down I was looking right at the building where I was set to work. Good karma I suppose...

After my sunday outing I decided to head back to the hotel in South London and prepare for work the next day.